Bruno, “Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy” (Reviewed by Kevin Folkman)

Review
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Title:  Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy
Editor: Cheryl L. Bruno
Year Published: 2024
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: History
Format: Hardback
ISDN: 9781560854715
Price: $39.95
Pages: 450

Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters

After almost two hundred years, and more than a century since the practice ceased, the specter of polygamy continues to vex the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. New information continues to come to light about the practice, while others within and without the church deny that Joseph Smith, Jr, was ever involved.

Independent historian Cheryl Bruno has edited a volume of essays titled Secret Covenants: New Insights on Early Mormon Polygamy, addressing the latest research insights and current scholarship on polygamy, and addressing the historical, practical, and theological impacts that echo down through the contemporary church. Where Bruno and her co-authors have most succeeded is by telling the truth. In so doing they have made this reviewer more uncomfortable about the history of polygamy in the church.

It’s not that I have been unaware of Joseph Smith Jr.’s involvement in his system of celestial marriage, but the deeper I read these histories, the more I struggle with the facts as presented. I do not think I am alone among fellow members of the church in knowing a fair amount about polygamy but finding that more knowledge only deepens the vexation.

Take for example Don Bradley’s chapter “‘Dating’ Fanny Alger.” Under normal circumstances the story of Smith’s relationship with teenaged Alger, working as a maid in Smith’s home raises questions. Bradley’s research places Emma’s discovery of Joseph and Fanny’s relationship in proximity with several other significant events in the history of Kirkland and helps with explaining those contemporaneous events. However, that does not help with understanding the exact nature of the Smith-Alger liaison.

Mark Tensmayer addresses the gap between the settled academic facts about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and those within the church who still deny either the fact of Smith’s polygamy or the exact nature of it. Tensmayer lays out the reasons for the differences in perception, including the intense secrecy surrounding the principle of polygamy in Nauvoo, and the exclusion of information about it in official church records of the time. Twenty or more years ago, when the Priesthood and Relief Society were studying the presidents of the Church, the Joseph Smith manual made no mention of his polygamy, and manuals on other presidents took little or no notice of the practice.

Bruno herself goes into great detail concerning Emma Smith’s denial of the practice of polygamy, despite evidence that she was personally aware of the practice and was present at a small number of the ceremonies sealing her husband to other women. Part of this, Bruno writes, is due to the details and technicalities in her statements denying the practice in Nauvoo, designed to provide plausible deniability, while still condemning adultery, fornication, and lasciviousness in general. She also suggests that following the martyrdom of her husband and brother-in-law, Emma may have suffered from dissociative amnesia or other post-trauma conditions. Again, the veil of secrecy still defies complete clarity, all these years later.

For this reviewer, the chapter by William V. Smith on the doctrinal influences of the 1843 revelation on polygamy resonated most deeply. When Jospeh Smith, Jr. shared his thoughts in his funeral discourse for King Follett early in 1844, he laid out some intriguing thoughts on the nature of humankind’s eternal existence that he was never able to fully articulate. What he meant by eternal and uncreated spirits sparked a lot of speculation, especially in light of the doctrine of plurality of wives as outlined in the 1843 revelation. Such a written text, Smith argues, has weight. The defense of polygamy in 19^th century Utah often included the idea that righteous men required many wives in the hereafter to populate worlds without number with actual spiritual offspring in a concept called by historian Jonathan Stapley as ‘viviparous spirit birth.” In William Smith’s view, elements of this concept are contained in The Proclamation on the Family, another text that has considerable influence, particularly about the eternal nature of gender. How can the two spiritual creation concepts be reconciled? Not easily, it appears. More vexation, indeed.

Additional chapters study the parallels between Abraham and Sarah’s marriage in the Old Testament to Joseph Smith’s marriage to Emma, the legal landscape as it applied to adultery and bigamy in 19^th Century America, and the comparison of Smith’s marriage proposals to Emma and his plural wives. Todd Compton examines whether or not any of Smith’s plural marriages were for “eternity only,” and Devery Anderson looks at the particular case of Willard Richard’s unusual multiple marriages.

While much of this volume deals with minutiae and details about the practice of polygamy, it also provides valuable context for why polygamy continues to be such a difficult concept for some Church members. There are many other scholarly works about the practice of polygamy out there, but Secret Covenants helps to fill in some of the gaps in the historical record and aids in understanding the foundations of the practice that came to be the defining characteristic of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19^th century. It may be uncomfortable and vexing at times, but Secret Covenants is for those reasons a valuable and important addition to gaining a greater understanding of the early practice of polygamy. Just don’t count on it to answer all your questions.