Review
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Title: The Persistence of Polygamy, Vol. 3: Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy from 1890 to the Present
Editors, Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster
Publisher: John Whitmer Books
Genre: History
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages: 631 pages
Binding: Softcover (also available in hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-934-901-199
Photos, Images, Charts included (not listed)
Notes and Index
Price: $44.95 (softcover) and $56.15 (hardcover)
Reviewed by Melvin C. Johnson for the Association for Mormon Letters
Newell Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster have edited and delivered the third volume of the series “The Persistence of Polygamy: Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy from 1890 to the Present.” The noted editors present, as they have from volume one, a collection of original essays written by esteemed experts in Latter Day Saint Restoration history and culture. The initial book examined Joseph Smith Jr. and the beginning of the unique Mormon marriage practice. The second volume focused on the practice and differences in the many Mormon groups before 1900.
This latest volume delivers new commentary and research on modern Fundamentalist Mormonism and its practice of polygamy about and after the 1890 manifesto to the present day. Benchmark Books, in publicizing an “Evening with the Editors” night, quoted Martha S. Bradley-Evans, editor of “Plural Wife: The Life Story of Mabel Pendleton,” who succinctly noted that “this volume . . . deploys seasoned historians and talented newcomers to unravel the inscrutability of modern day Mormon fundamentalism. Ranging from theology to personality, it provides both insider and scholarly views and will undoubtedly become the go to volume on fundamentalist Mormonism.” I concur. The quality and breadth and content of the essays grasp the seasoned scholar as well as the newest lay person interested in the field.
The world of Mormon polygamous fundamentalism emerged in the struggle between the United States government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) during the last half of the 19th century. The 1890 Manifesto by Wilford Woodruff, the LDS Church president, supposedly ended the peculiar doctrine. However, its prohibition was flouted by many of the church’s general authorities, continuing *sub rosa* for more than a decade. Mormon fundamentalists have always pointed to the revelation given in 1886 to President John Taylor that stated polygamy, stating that was God’s doctrine, one that He would never command to be stopped.
The revelation has grounded Mormon polygamists for a century in their belief of its authorized sanctity for a century. This volume’s writers discuss the rise, development, and organization of various polygamous Mormon communities as well as their charismatic and dominant personalities, female as well as male. These original essays explore the depth and dedication and willingness by these leaders and followers to pursue, for better or worse, their devotional faith in spite of cultural, religious, secular, and physical obstacles.
Begin with the last essay first, “Wrestling With the Principle: A Historical Bibliography of Mormon Polygamy” by Todd Compton and Patricia Lyn Scot; it grounds the reader in an indispensable reading list about Mormon polygamy and fundamentalist literature.
Then move on to the first essay, by Barbara Jones Brown, “Manifestos, Mixed Messages, and Mexico: The Demise of ‘Mainstream’ Mormon Polygamy.” She captures the trials and personal tribulations, as well as their devotion and faith and perseverance, of those men and women trying to obey and live what they considered the highest law of the Mormon Kingdom. They were caught up in the political mayhem surrounding the Manifesto, having to emigrate to Mexico to complete their polygamist families and to face the hardships found there. Then many who had considered themselves the ‘salt of the kingdom’ came home to discover an ever-growing majority of monogamous church members who misunderstood and trod under their co-religionists’ sacrifice and hardships.
Brian Hales explains next, in “John Taylor’s 1886 Revelation,” the theological grounding of the polygamists. He notes the simple power that “The manuscript is important to modern polygamists, not only because of its content, but also because it simply exists.” According to the words of God recorded in the document, the New and Everlasting Covenant (meaning Mormon polygamy) is “everlasting” and could not be revoked. The article examines and establishes the document’s bedrock for the fundamentalist narrative conferring on the polygamous believers and practitioners, in their collective and individual minds, as the true inheritors of Joseph Smith’s Restoration Gospel. Accordingly, this chronicle condemns LDS church leadership as well as the collective monogamous membership’s betrayal of Smith, the gospel’s Restoration heritage, thus threatening the monogamists’ own possibility of exaltation.
The historical narrative of the movement and its powerful, charismatic, and dominant leaders are captured in seven powerful essays. They should be read one after another to grasp a solid understanding of the movement’s dynamic, fluid history. The scattered and poorly-linked families and kin frameworks, often at odds with one another and always persecuted by the main branch of Mormonism, evolved during the decades of the Twentieth Century’s first half an enduring society founded in ranches, villages, and compounds from Utah to Montana.
No matter the personal and communal quarrels, the movement always survives by its linkage of shared attitudes and interests and purposes. Follow Hales’ essay with:
Anne Wilde, “Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Fundamentalist Mormon Perspective.”
Christopher James Blythe, “The One Mighty and Strong(s): Messianism and the Rise of Mormon Fundamentalism.”
Marianne T. Watson, “From Nineteenth-Century Mormon Polygamy to Twentieth-
Century Mormon Fundamentalism: Three Contemporary Perspectives on John W. and Lorin C. Woolley.”
Kenneth Driggs, “Joseph White Musser and Truth Magazine: Championing Plural Marriage in the Twentieth Century.”
Eric Paul Rogers and Kari Roueche, “Rulon C. Allred and the Search for Refuge.”
Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster: “Rulon and Warren Jeffs: The Making of Two FLDS Prophets and the Changing Face of Fundamentalist Mormonism.”
Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster, “The 1980’s Schism within Fundamentalist Mormonism: The Emergence of Centennial Park.”
Then pursue your individual interests and passions with the following enlightening and attention capturing essays. My personal favorite is Craig L. Foster, “Plural Wives of the Mormon Fundamentalist Leaders.”
If you are interested in fundamentalist female fashion sense, see Shannon E. Spafford, “The Changing and Unchanging Nature of Fundamentalist Mormon Clothing Styles.”
Or the YFZ raid in Newell G. Bringhurst, “The 2008 Texas Raid on the FLDS YFZ Ranch: Its Impact on the FLDS Church and Other Fundamentalist Mormons.”
Or race issues in Newell G. Bringhurst, “Fundamentalist Mormon Beliefs on Race and African Americans.”
Or Joseph Lyman Jessop’s moving account in “A Personal Perspective: Growing Up and Out of the Polygamist Community of Pinesdale, Montana,”
Or what is any Mormon article without genealogy: Marianne T. Watson, “Polygamous Ancestry of Contemporary Fundamentalist Mormons.”
Or Craig L. Foster, “Modern Media Stereotyping of Polygamy.”
Good history must be good literature, and the series achieves that goal with excellent prose that captivates the reader’s attention to the end. The quality of work in anthologies is always somewhat uneven; thankfully, this product delivers quality insight and good writing from the first page to the last. Each of the volumes in this series surpasses the earlier ones, not an easy task.
Scholarly ennui too often contours how we practice our discipline. Nothing new is to be found or seen or heard, we think. So we skip round about that common sense informing us more remains to be found, more remains to be examined, more remains to be interpreted. And all that is important can be found in this volume. All three volumes have startled me with new points and different ideas that I had not known, had not occurred to me, or was presented in a new light. These volumes define the current state of scholarship on polygamous Mormon fundamentalism.
The series, if it continues, reveals that more work is coming on “free range” polygamists operating beyond the confines of fundamentalist churches. We need to learn about and understand the stories of their spouses, families, children, and their involvement and interaction with the larger polygamous and monogamous communities and society. Many years ago I worked with a young man in St. George, Utah who was from such a “free” polygamous family and met his sister. They talked like the rest of us at work, and they dressed like us, and they liked the same food and music. We played together on the same company softball team at the Elks field. He married multiple wives, she became the second wife of a much older polygamist. I want to read more about such people and families, and I want to know how their worlds intersect ours.
Recommendation: don’t wait, get out the gate to your favorite book store or jump online. Buy two. One for your desk so that you can impress your history friends when they come over. And one for your bedside table, for late at night when the question that haunts comes to fore of the mind. Finally, all should buy one for each of their wives.