I Believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet, but also Sexually Broken

Why I Have Come to Believe He was a Sex Addict, and Am not Shaken

By Candice Wendt

Introduction

The narrative taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asserts that Joseph Smith reluctantly bent to the will of God in taking dozens of wives before his death. It claims not only that God commanded Joseph to enter polygamous illegal marriages against his personal desires, but that God coerced Joseph into submission by threatening to kill him. This is based on the fact he taught others God sent an angel to him “with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment (of taking more wives) fully.” The Church’s gospel topics essay notes that Joseph felt “reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma.” (quotes from Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo Gospel Topics Essay).

When I was a youth and questioned LDS polygamy at church, the angel with a sword detail was often used to subdue young people into accepting polygamy’s divine validity. The discussion leader would say something like, “polygamy was so important that God sent an angel with a sword to make sure Joseph obeyed” to shut the doubts and challenges down.

I used to swallow these truth claims, but they proved to be poison that degraded my perceptions and experiences of the gospel and God. What the church taught me to believe about polygamy has proven deeply incompatible not only with my personal moral compass, spiritual experiences, and personal desires, but also my life experiences and learning. Wisdom and knowledge I’ve gleaned as an ordinary woman in the trenches of life have led me to very different conclusions about the reasons polygamy became part of our faith tradition.

There is a real need to come up with intelligible explanations for what happened. The sole explanation that the church’s gospel topics essay gives is that it was “to increase the number of children born in the gospel covenant.” This idea polygamy can grow a population faster than monogamous relationships is refuted by research cited by Carol Lynn Pearson in the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy and by the author of this thoughtful Exponent II post. Polygamy simply can’t increase births, common sense reveals by definition it decreases them. Joseph’s behavior has been a psychological enigma. Laurence Foster, an expert on Joseph Smith’s polygamy who has been searching for answers about why Joseph instigated the practice for several decades says he has come to the conclusion even Joseph himself did not understand what was really going on and what his motivation was (see this episode interviewing Laurence on Gospel Tangents). He suggests Joseph struggled with narcissism (something that frequently coexists with sex addiction). I have something richer, more detailed and interesting to offer in terms of a theory for why polygamy happened.

Compulsive Sexual Behavior

I have spent time supporting individuals impacted by compulsive sexual behaviors and sex addiction and learning about these struggles. I know what it is like to support women married to men struggling with these behaviors, and I know what the behaviors and their impact on relationships can look and feel like up close (though I haven’t dealt with this as a spouse). This is not due to my career, this has just shown up in my circles of people to care about, and I know that many others in the LDS community will understand what I am talking about. Compulsive sexual behavior is a fairly common problem, but we tend to avoid discussing it openly because it is stigmatized, misunderstood, and often painful and shameful to talk about.

What is sexual compulsive sexual behavior? It is generally unwanted, secretive sexual behavior that is driven by self-contempt, shame, and unhealed childhood wounds and attachment issues. It is complex to understand and has deep roots in the emotions, personal stories and psychology of individuals, including desires for and fantasies about relationships, love and belonging. Activities like buying sex or using porn might be used in some ways to attempt to avoid and numb unpleasant feelings and to try to feel a sense of belonging or being accepted, yet at the same time, such behaviors are also used to stay in contact with deep-seated feelings of being unwanted, inadequate or ashamed of oneself (to understand the psychology of the wounds and family dynamics that lead to such problems, I recommend Jay Stringer’s Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing pgs. 10, 37-44, 86-105).

How these behaviors manifest and the level of severity vary greatly. For some individuals, compulsive sexual behavior resembles addiction. The behaviors spiral out of control such that the addict abuses sex more and more over a period of time in an effort to cope with personal struggles. This creates a vicious cycle in which the shame and problems only increase, causing more of an to act out (see “Understanding and Managing Compulsive Sexual Behaviors”). Behaviors in relationships may include secrecy and lies, manipulation, rationalization, and projection (e.g. blaming others for the behaviors and avoiding accountability) (Addictive Thinking by Abraham Twerski, chapters 6-13). Self-deceptive addictive thinking patterns can play a role such that individuals genuinely deceive themselves into believing their own unfounded rationalizations for continuing to abuse and act out. Loved ones are often deceived and buy into excuses designed to conceal and enable addictive behaviors. The excuses may seem reasonable and can be seductive or even ingenious but can prove silly when challenged (see Addictive Thinking by Abraham Twerski, pg. 6, Chapter 2, “Self-deception and Addictive Thinking,” and Chapter 10 “Manipulating Others”).

Individuals who struggle with compulsive sexual behaviors are not bad people; they need support and healing. The experience of having an intimacy disorder can be genuinely confusing and bring a lot of suffering. There are a lot of good men in and out of the church who struggle with varying levels of compulsive sexual behaviors and sex addiction. I feel compassion for these individuals. Their struggles are real. Suitable mental health care and supportive communities can be hard to find, access, and afford.

Joseph’s Behaviors
Based on what I have witnessed and learned about sex addiction, as well as what I have found in Joseph’s and Emma’s history, I have come to believe Joseph Smith suffered from compulsive sexual behaviors that manifested like an addiction (I’ll call this sex addiction for short, recognizing that some people resonate with and prefer this term, and others don’t, and I respect both ways). I didn’t seek this belief and framework out; it showed up on its own as the most probable and honest framing of what happened. I believe he created rationalizations for taking excessive sexual partners that deceived himself and others. It appears he justified himself in order to resolve dissonance between his behaviors and his own moral and theological values, and this self-justification became more entrenched and hardened over time.

We will probably never know what exact wounds Joseph bore that led him to an intimacy disorder, but we do know he had a challenging family life. He faced poverty and a transitory lifestyle throughout childhood. He grew up in a large family who faced tragic turns and hard times. He faced persecution, malice and mockery from others starting in his early teens for his claims to mystical experiences and for religious vision and roles. He had a limp. He wasn’t well educated. He struggled to support his own family, and his unique leadership position was full of stress and struggle.

Was Joseph reluctant or discouraged about his lifestyle and multiple marriages at times as the church narrative claims? Yes, the history shows that this was clear (one example of this can be found in Richard Bushman’s talk on Joseph and Emma). But his ambivalence shouldn’t be assumed to serve as evidence polygamy originated from God. Psychologically, sexual behavior is too complicated to draw such conclusions. Joseph’s reluctance and frustration could actually be symptomatic of addictive behavior, which is fueled by shame and ambivalence. “Sexual addicts feel tremendous guilt and shame about their out-of-control behavior, and they live in constant fear of discovery. Yet addicts will often act out sexually in an attempt to block out the very pain of their addiction. This is part of what drives the addictive cycle” (see this introductory article by the Center for Healthy Sexuality).

Patterns of Behavior Congruent with Sex Addiction
I find that Joseph’s behaviors followed patterns that fit the mold of how a sex addiction develops and progresses. The following points describe Joseph’s behaviors in relation to his wives that are recognized today as features of sex addiction and self-deceptive addictive thinking. I’ve created this list based on the standard list of clinical indications of sex addiction from Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide to Partners of Sex Addicts by Dr. Stephanie Carnes and symptoms of addiction described in Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception by Abraham J. Twerski. My source for Joseph’s behaviors comes from a biography of Emma, Mormon Enigma by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery. I’m using this source because it includes many details of Joseph’s interactions with women and unlike most biographies is not apologetic or defensive of Joseph’s polygamy.

1. Difficulty admitting wrongs done and avoidance of accountability (Twerski Chapter 13) Joseph skirted around answering questions about his relationships with other women, only telling Emma pieces of the truth when caught and directly confronted. There is some evidence he admitted the wrongness of his actions and apologized for early illicit encounters he had when his behaviors had been directly witnessed. This happened once under pressure by male friends to make things right with Emma. In another instance, Joseph took back his things he said about plural marriage in public when members of the community asked him to (Mormon Enigma 65-6, 95-96). Early on his secret practice of polygamy, Joseph doubted his actions and worried about his salvation (100). His struggles to admit anything was wrong with his plural marriage teachings and behaviors would only grow over time as he became more entrenched in self-justification.
   
2. Secrecy and deception (Carnes pg. 11, Twerski Chapter 2) Joseph hid relationships from his first wife Emma, burned letters, and demanded others involved burn documents and swear themselves to secrecy (Mormon Enigma 95-115). Close friends of Emma’s, including ones who lived in Emma’s house, knew more about Joseph’s polygamous relationships than she did. Some of them were married to Joseph without her knowledge even though they lived together (136-147). More than once, she discovered Joseph’s secret relationships by stumbling upon them by accident and through hearing rumors rather than through direct communication from him (65-66, 136-7, 152-3). Finding out about betrayal through unexpectedly discovering evidence is a typical for the spouses of sex addicts (Carnes 174). Betrayed partners are usually kept in the dark. Joseph also intentionally misguided Emma when she confronted him about rumors and concerns. He intentionally withheld the truth; he led Emma to believe that he had nothing to do with the “plural wifery” going on in Nauvoo (112-15). Doing this, he prevented Emma from intervening in behaviors he was aware she did not consent to. Even after Joseph was compelled to fess up to his new practices, he continued to refrain from sharing information about new relationships with Emma, took more wives than he agreed to, and also broke promises to dissolve illegal marriages (151-9). In one case he went so far as to have a deceitful repeat wedding to two sisters, Emily and Eliza Partridge, whom he had already secretly married so he wouldn’t have to admit what happened when Emma decided to grant him permission to do so (143).
   
3. Duplicity (Carnes pg. 11) Joseph lived a distinctly duplicitous life regarding plural marriage, publicly condemning the practice and privately disseminating it. He taught his followers to do so as well (Mormon Enigma 95-100, 112-13, 119-20, 158-9), Even when highly pressured to face his actions in public, he avoided this and fell into patterns of denial and self-defense (128-9, 181). Not being open, up front and public about his behaviors suggests shame and some, however unconscious, level of awareness that his behavior and justifications were wrong.
   
4. Denial, rationalization, and projection (Twerski Chapter 6) Over time, Joseph rationalized his behaviors to the extent that he denied the questionable nature of his behaviors altogether and projected his doubts and self-blame onto other people. Joseph created theologically-themed rationalizations that not only made having multiple wives allowable and inspired, but steps to heaven and exaltation. This framework flipped things such that Emma’s opposition to polygamy became the sinful and culpable stance (Mormon Enigma 139-40). His teachings about polygamy were also a way to project responsibility for his behaviors onto God. Joseph’s account that an angel of God threatened to take his life if he did not instigate polygamy and take yet more wives was used to pressure reluctant women, even sometimes after multiple other rejected marriage proposals (Ghost of Eternal Polygamy 92-3). The message was essentially: “marry me even if you don’t want to or God will kill me. Don’t blame me. It’s GOD’S fault!” Getting his closest followers, the Twelve Apostles, involved in the same sexual lifestyle was yet another way to project his responsibility onto others. Who could point a finger of criticism at him when they were taking extra partners themselves? Joseph also showed bizarre signs of emotional immaturity and numbness when burdening others with his polygamous teachings. He was insensitive to Emma’s and many others’ pain when he brought undesired sexual situations into their lives. When he gave the news that they’d be required to live polygamy to the Twelve Apostles, he leapt in a giddy, happy way like a young boy because he felt a huge weight was lifted. For their part, many of the Twelve were deeply depressed and troubled at first. Brigham Young desired death (97).
   
5. Ridiculous explanations for boundary violating behaviors (Twerski Chapter 23) Joseph’s justifications for polygamy were both ingenious and absurd. He made obtuse promises that plural marriage led to a higher exaltation. He required very reticent individuals to ignore their moral convictions and follow his example to prove their loyalty to him and their faith (Mormon Enigma 97-99). He made high-pressure proposals to women, some of which included promised signs that meant it would be right to go against their moral convictions. He sometimes told women who turned him down that he’d pray for them as if their lack of consent was a spiritual deficiency. Joseph also claimed he had received revelation he must marry certain women to convince women and their families he had received direct revelation from God that he should take a specific woman as a wife. He promised exaltation to women and their families if they would go against their desires and accept the proposals (see diverse proposal stories in chapters 7-10 of Mormon Enigma, including on pgs. 110-1, 146-7). Joseph’s interactions with women include features of sexual grooming that can commonly be found in church sexual abuse situations (see the Holy Hurt Podcast episode on sexual abuse and grooming: https://holyhurtpodcast.com/ep-4-all-in-the-family/)
   
6. Delusions of grandeur (Twerski Chapter 12) Joseph affirmed a hierarchy in which being sealed to him meant higher heavenly experience and guaranteed exaltation in the afterlife for women and their family members (Mormon Enigma 146-7). He seemed to presume being married to him was spiritually superior to being married to someone lower down in their religious structure because of his close ties with God. Defying the law as well as the convictions and norms of his own country and people, Joseph acted as if considered himself to be higher than the law and normal moral boundaries. “Men’s privileges” was one of the secret code words he used to refer to his polygamy.
   
7. The need to increase the intensity, frequency, number, or risk level of behaviors in order to achieve the desired effect (Carnes pg. 10) There is a pattern of escalation in Joseph’s acting out. Things started subtle and small with Emma just hearing rumors Joseph behaved inappropriately with young women, then occasional liaisons through the next few years (Mormon Enigma 64-68), but Joseph seemed to experience an an impulse to form additional relationships that snowballed over time rather than being satiated. Joseph initiated most of the illegal marriages in the last three years of his life with an explosion of new wives (see this list of wives and dates of union). Acting out tends to escalate when stress and unpleasant experiences increase, which was true during the last years of his life. Polygamy and the marital tension and persecution it exacerbated worked as a vicious cycle that created more strain, stress, persecution and personal pain that led to more acting out.
   
8. Inordinate amounts of time focused on creating sexual opportunities (Carnes pg. 10) Considering all Joseph’s responsibilities, and that much of his acting out happened during periods of death such as bouts of malaria, his own children’s deaths, major relationship rifts including a threat of divorce from Emma, as well as threats of violence against Joseph and the Kirtland and Nauvoo community (such as conflict with the Missourians) it is bizarre Joseph prioritized spending so much time forming new relationships with women and focused as much as he did on this facet of his life. It is simply not reasonable and meant his most important relationships went neglected.
   
9. A marriage dynamic in which a betrayed partner desperately attempts to set sexual boundaries for the person acting out (Carnes pg. 54-56) Mormon Enigma asserts Joseph sexually consummated illegal marriages with at least 16 of the plural wives. The historical evidence shows that sex was part of many of the relationships. Sometimes this was a surprise; one of his wives, Helen Mar Kimball, expressed she would have never agreed to marry him if she knew he would require sex (Mormon Enigma 146). Emma anxiously acted to try to stop Joseph from spending time alone with his illegal wives, sometimes standing outside the door or making efforts to prevent a wedding night with a new wife (144-5). A relationship dynamic in which one spouse is anxiously trying to enforce sexual boundaries matches that of a marriage with someone in active sex addiction. The other spouse feels forced to over-function and control the offending partner.
   
10. Continuing excessive sexual behaviors despite recognition of recurrent social, moral, and other obstacles and dangers posed by the behaviors (Carnes pg. 10) It is remarkable that Joseph insisted on pushing plural marriage onto his very morally-driven monogamous followers. He continued to disseminate the practice and marry more women despite many unpleasant things his behaviors brought; including threats of mob violence, bad press, and the intense emotional pain Emma, plural wives, and the legal husbands endured. Joseph seemed to be aware his acting out put his life in greater jeopardy and that his behaviors jeopardized his wife’s well-being and their relationship, but this did not stop him (Mormon Enigma 151-8). Addicts’ behaviors sometimes spiral out of control during desperate efforts to get a fix that will temporarily help them feel differently. They also sometimes knowingly put their health, their relationships and even their lives in jeopardy in order to continue to act out.
    
11. Using coercion and threats of abandonment to induce guilt in the betrayed partner and get them to cooperate with unwanted and excessive sexual behaviors (see https://michellemays.com/when-you-become-an-acting-out-2/) Joseph created threats of divine disapproval and destruction against Emma in effort to enable his excessive liaisons to continue without Emma’s resistance in writing what is now D&C 132. The text was actually written as a personal message to Emma. It’s interesting to note Joseph did not go through his regular process of utilizing the Urim and Thummim to receive revelation from God. Instead, he claimed that the words were already in his mind, memorized and ready to dictate. Emma likely burned the document, one recorded account actually says she demanded Joseph do it (Mormon Enigma 151-4). Joseph only allowed Emma access to all the ordinances of their church (endowment and a sealing to him) during periods when she submitted to his plural marriages. Joseph held her spiritually hostage by requiring she submit to his excessive relationships to have access to religious ordinances she was valued. (Her acceptance of his plural marriage doctrine vacillated and ultimately did not last (142-3, 170-1). Emma eventually definitively concluded that Joseph had been deceived about polygamy and that her gut feelings on the subject were valid rather than a symptom of moral weakness (272).)
    
12. Hypersensitivity and anger problems that increase as behaviors escalate (Twerski Chapter 14) Toward the end of his life, Joseph’s lifestyle was burning him out; he was tired of living as a polygamist and irritable about it. He became more physically aggressive, quicker to anger, frustrated and depressed. Joseph ordered the destruction of the printing press that condemned him for his behaviors shortly after its first printing with the support of his high council. The paper was organized and written by LDS Nauvoo men who were disenchanted with polygamy and Joseph’s political power. They sought to advise Joseph and Nauvoo of needed reforms, not to become enemies. The issue discussed and criticized the tactics used to convince local women to become plural wives. In order to adequately respond, Joseph would have had to publicly discuss his plural marriage teachings, something he refused to do. Instead, he responded recklessly in shame and anger at being exposed. The destruction of the press broke the law, and began a torrent of violence and retribution that would lead to his death (Mormon Enigma 181-2). Joseph also repeatedly struck a tax collector who came to his home. He physically kicked people out of his house when angered (159-60). When he had some bizarre symptoms including violent vomiting, he accused Emma of poisoning him and was verbally abusive, including in public, calling her a child of the devil and his greatest enemy (164-5).
    
13. Low Points of recognition that the problems caused by the acting out come to outweigh any gratification from the addictive habits (Twerski Chapter 18) There are some recorded accounts that Joseph Smith told William Marks and the twelve that he had come to the conclusion he had been deceived about polygamy and that he and the others must turn away from the practice. Emma was under the impression that shortly before his death, he was starting a path of moving away from plural marriage (Mormon Enigma 207). He had dissolved some of the marriages in front of her at her insistence (170). It would not appear that Joseph set plural marriage aside completely before he died, and he might have vacillated in his views, or said things to please or satiate others and protect himself, but perhaps he saw glimmers of the reality outside the self-justified thinking he’d been building up (179-80). This is something that can happen when addicts are facing more negative experiences than positive due to their acting out. Some people like to call it a “rock bottom” experience. (see also Laurence Foster’s thoughts about how evidence Joseph regretted polygamy complicates our historical understanding of his mental health and motivations).

Impacts of Partner Betrayal on Women
Broken down, some of Joseph’s patterns of behavior are indistinguishable from betrayal and abuse that women married to sex addicts experience today. (See also this post from By Common Consent for more details about how polygamy aligns with domestic abuse).

Being married to someone who repeatedly betrays you is a psychologically harrowing experience. Sitting with and supporting the wives of men struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence to me that a loving God would never command something as devastating to women as partner betrayal. Betrayal is psychologically disorienting and often leads to anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and PTSD (Carnes 135). Women doubt their attractiveness and self-worth and may feel they are going crazy. Partner betrayal is what happened to early Mormon women whose previously monogamous partners formed additional relationships with illegal wives. Betrayal is unavoidably built into Mormon polygamy, in which fidelity and unadulterated trust and intimacy are impossible. I find the same kind of heartache and misery caused by partner betrayal in the accounts of Mormon plural wives like Emma as we find among women experiencing betrayal today.

Polygamy was a way for men to get out of choosing just one person to commit to and be accountable to; it strives to fulfill a romantic and sexual fantasy in which virtually any woman is a potential partner. And if a husband was mistreating, neglecting, or not getting along with one wife, there were others he could go to. Husbands could avoid accountability and personal growth. This is an immature stunted way of being in relationship. Because of eternal polygamy doctrines, these distorted and unequal relationship dynamics still harm LDS marriages today.

The Need to Heal Institutional Betrayal
Joseph’s behaviors have had long-lasting negative consequences on others. He not only abused others, but also disseminate his behaviors and distorted theological beliefs onto his followers, leading to a legacy of codependence on his unchecked errors. Leaders and members are still co-dependent on Joseph’s sex addiction as we defend his immoral behaviors despite the reservations and doubts that frequently arise. Doing so offers us certain benefits, including feeling more certain about who he was and about his call from God, or not having to delve deeper into a challenging analysis of the events that transpired. We still perpetuate the spiritual abuse Joseph enacted, esp. harmful ideas the accepted polygamy narrative implies about God, sexuality, and the worth and roles of women and men. Joseph’s harms also continue to live on in sexist temple sealing policies that create eternal polygamous unions without and against women’s consent. Polygamy has also contributed to traditions of unhealthy and unchecked parent-child like relationships between leaders and members in which members to this day are sometimes taught trust in and follow priesthood authorities above their own moral and spiritual intuitions and desires. The legacy also reinforces patriarchy and the subordinate role of women in the church to this day.

For anyone who has sat in the misery and darkness of betrayal, an experience that many Latter-day Saints undergo during childhood due to our parents, in our own marriages, and as we support other individuals, the church’s polygamy story piles on additional layers of pain and betrayal. Such individuals know deeply in their embodied, lived experiences that betrayal is immoral and destructive. They know that sexual betrayal and infidelity could not come from God. The church’s polygamy narratives and continued doctrines grind on the faces of those already beaten, stung, and scarred by betrayal. The story makes such individuals feel forsaken by God, who in it demands individuals submit to being repeatedly betrayed by their spouses. It makes us feel betrayed by the church for condoning abuse and infidelity in our history. We are also betrayed by the church’s choices to put the reputation and authority of Joseph Smith and other leaders, the church’s truth claims, and its polygamous traditions and policies above the personal dignity and spiritual and psychological well-being of its members. The spiritual abuse instigated by Joseph Smith has had a great ripple effect, creating over a hundred years of institutional betrayal as the church persists in inflicting its polygamy narrative and policies on the members regardless of great costs.

The standard narrative about plural marriage justifies abuse and sin. It makes Joseph look reluctantly obedient and God look heartless. (A strange thing when you think about it—should we trust Joseph’s or God’s goodness more?) The narrative suggests that sometimes there are bizarre exceptions to core principles of our religious faith, such as honesty, integrity, fidelity, virtue and chastity, love, and using persuasion, kindness and patience instead of force (D&C 121:41-43). The polygamy narrative throws a wrench into the restored gospel’s transformative and healing power intended to help people build good lives and relationships and overcome sin.

The Latter-day Saint people and the church have not held adequate dialogue about the obvious intersection of mental health, sexual ethics, spiritual abuse, and polygamy in our history and current teachings and practices. We stamp out members’ legitimate protests about polygamy’s immorality and harm. We close our eyes to the possibility that Joseph Smith passed down a legacy of lies and abuse regarding polygamy.

Concerning institutional betrayal, Brene Brown writes, “when the culture of a…church…mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of that system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of individuals…you can be certain of the following problems: Shame is systemic, Complicity is part of the culture. Money and power trump ethics. Accountability is dead. Control and fear and management tools. And there’s a trail of devastation and pain” (Atlas of the Heart pg. 195). Such problems have been going on in our church for a long time. Repenting of and repairing the institutional betrayal is the responsibility of leaders in power. “[T]he only way back from betrayal is accountability, amends, and action. None of these things are possible without acknowledging the pain and possibly trauma we have caused someone without rationalizing or making excuses” (Brown 195).

Regardless of whether leaders and members may be open to the theory that Joseph Smith struggled with compulsive sexual behaviors, to heal the damage of polygamy, his actions and teachings regarding plural marriage should be recognized by our leaders for what they are– morally wrong and abusive. How is it possible that all this time we’ve believed that God condones his acts of lying, secrecy and duplicity, taking other peoples’ spouses for himself, breaking marriage laws, and manipulating individuals by exerting his authority and promises of exaltation? We know that Joseph did these things. How have we bought into the story that God sent Joseph a death threat that stole his sexual agency? Even if there had been little or no sex involved in his illegal marriages, the other actions and abuses of authority alone should be treated as inexcusable.

I feel compassion for the leaders. This is the water they’ve been swimming in since birth, they didn’t invent polygamy. It is confusing. But I also perceive that they have not adequately listened to members, and they have not thought deeply enough about this issue or searched the scriptures thoughtfully enough in grappling with it. The patriarchy and sexism polygamy did so much to foster in our church legacy is a major obstacle to the listening and reframing that needs to happen.

Bringing Nuanced, Non-dichotomous Thinking into the Faith Tradition and Claiming Personal Authority
I recognize there are not sufficient historical documents from the plural marriage years of Joseph Smith’s life to conclusively settle his motivations for instigating plural marriage or any specific psychological illnesses he may have had, but I believe compulsive sexual behavior is a probable, compelling, and compassionate interpretation. There have long been two major and polarizing ways to interpret his actions: Joseph was hungry for power and sex and ill-intentioned, or he was blameless and divinely directed. Neither is wholly satisfying because something is always left unresolved. If we treat him as ill-intentioned, Joseph’s sincere voice and authentic spiritual vision are inexplicable. If we treat him as inspired and chaste, the fact he trampled so many clear and deep-seated ethical boundaries and hurt so many lives is troubling. The possibility of him struggling with an intimacy disorder (sex addiction) is one way to make space for both Joseph’s sincerity and his disturbing choices. It can account for him feeling convinced he had legitimate reasons to instigate plural marriages (due to self-deception rather than genuine inspiration) as well as why he felt justified in his harmful behaviors (due to emotional and relational sickness, not malevolent ill-intent). This real possibility of mental illness could help us make sense of his bizarre behaviors, to begin to forgive Joseph for the harm he inflicted, and to move toward a truly post-polygamy Latter-day Saint faith. And moving this direction is possible while still remaining anchored in the true and good things that Joseph revealed, taught and instigated that the holy ghost can bear witness of. His story about the Book of Mormon checks out; it works. The Book of Mormon is a rich visionary text that brings many close to God. Joseph was human and flawed, as he acknowledged himself, and these kinds of moral, mental, and spiritual difficulties could happen to anyone in certain situations.

I say this having personally witnessed that men can be good people, people of faith who’ve had powerful experiences with God and have been influenced by God’s spirit who also have deeply struggled with unwanted compulsive sexual behaviors. There are so many such Latter-day Saint individuals among us. People are complex, and none are infallible. It’s okay to move prophets off the pedestal of perfect trustworthiness, the scriptures demonstrate this need with many prophets. It doesn’t mean we don’t care about them or listen to them anymore, it does mean that we members become more mature and responsible for our personal faith and beliefs and relationships with God. It means being more realistic and in how we frame what religion and church are: part inspired by God, part human made and clumsy, as well as the risks religion entails, including false teachings and spiritual and sexual abuse. We don’t have reasons to believe we are not more protected from such dangers than other faith groups.

While we wait for the institution to wake up and make amends, we can do a great deal as individuals and as communities and families to differentiate from the accepted narrative, and to heal and prevent the wounds of polygamy in our own souls and among others in our spheres of influence.

Polygamy is fair game for Latter-day Saint individuals to reinterpret and claim moral authority about within their personal lives, families, and spheres of influence. It’s messiness and spiritually abusive nature are the very reasons to wrestle with it rather than let others tell us what to believe. It IS a big deal; I perceive it as the church’s greatest wound and greatest problem because it casts doubt on Joseph’s trustworthiness, promotes misogyny and inequality between the sexes, and has led to so much spiritual anguish and relationship damage. You don’t need to be a professional historian, theologian, or a psychologist to draw your own conclusions about polygamy or to be a voice in the community. We can trust the things we feel and know deeply in our souls through our own experiences. We can shine the light of contemporary insights and knowledge onto polygamy, and see what shows up. We as individuals have great potential to influence how the story of polygamy will be passed down and shapes the wisdom and values of the next generation; we can and should pass down healthier beliefs and knowledge to our children on this subject than any generational has done before.

Some Personal Thoughts on What All This Means for Me, and Grappling with the Impact of this Reinterpretation

Even if you don’t turn a skeptical eye on Joseph Smith’s mental health regarding polygamy, the impact of betrayal on women is so negative, that this alone is enough to designate polygamy a deeply bad spiritual fruit that should be discarded from our tradition and scriptures. I consider my decision to reinterpret the polygamy narrative from a psychological lens as a conscious choice in which I choose the present and future well-being of women, children and men in the church over the reputation of church leaders and loyalty to conventional truth claims.

I prefer my current explanation for polygamy over what I grew up with because it opens the possibility of a God who doesn’t hurt me and whom I can really love. For me, the choice whether to be on board with the institution’s polygamy narrative, scriptures, and continued practices (such as multiple sealings offer to living men but not for women) is a choice between a healthy and happy relationship with God, or one ridden with resentment, existential dread, and and a sense of inferiority and self-loathing as a woman. The possibility of a nuanced interpretation of Joseph’s life and actions that treats him as a real, flawed human like the rest of us makes a difference in whether I stay in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

I grew up with polygamy as a thorn in my side that flared up regularly and infected my relationship with God and others. It put a damper on my early marriage, as it does for so many young LDS women. It made me doubt God’s love. The story and D&C 132 asserted there were very important, eternal contexts in which God didn’t care about women’s desires or needs. God was insensitive to my moral convictions and sense of modesty and decency, things I thought actually seemed to stem from my own divine nature. God went against the scriptures, and broke women’s and offended their sense of virtue, things the scriptures claim God seeks to cherish and desire to be protected (see Jacob 2). My vision of God’s cruelty, betrayal of women, selfishness, and misogyny was also mirrored by some of the men around me during my childhood and youth, which only reinforced my vision of God’s shadowy, dark, inexplicably unloving side.

In people’s attempts to help me make sense of polygamy history and doctrines, they taught me absurd, degrading, and false things. That men and God the Father have a need to be with multiple sexual partners, and women don’t, so polygamy is the right sexual situation. That consecration means everything has to be shared and sacrificed, even the things that feel most intimate, including sex and romance. That someday my husband would need to take more wives because men are so flawed and sinful that there would be very few of them in heaven, or because we would need to populate new worlds rapidly with my husband’s children. One tactic used to convince me of polygamy’s goodness was quoting the testimonies of early saints who claimed to have revelations from God that polygamy was divine. I remember hearing these and thinking oh crap, God revealed it even to the women who didn’t want to live it, I guess someday that will happen to me. Using these testimonies felt like a way to trap me spiritually and manipulate my belief system. Sometimes the men who taught me these things, including seminary teachers, Sunday school teachers, and BYU profs (including an accomplished Joseph Smith history scholar who seemed to wield a lot of authority) seemed WAY too into their belief that the afterlife would provide them with multiple wives. I sensed the self-deceptive male fantasy at work. Their determination to prepare me to accept my supposed fate of living polygamy for eternity came across to me as emotionally and morally numb and sometimes even sadistic, as if they enjoyed watching me suffer.

I could never reconcile the cruel and selfish God of the polygamy narrative with the loving and affirming God who met me in prayer starting in my teens. I couldn’t make sense of it in light of the standards of the church and gospel, the perfect beauty of the idea of a happy monogamous marriage lasting through life and beyond the grave, or the loving and equitable ways of Jesus.

I used to pray that God would give me a revelation about polygamy that would make me feel better about it. For thirty years, God never answered these prayers, and miserable heaven and a vision of God as woman-hating and dismissive of my most sensitive parts and greatest desires kept rearing its head during times when I sought peace and communion with God.

I reached a point in my mid-thirties when I felt I needed to make a decision if I were to continue my relationship with the Latter-day Saint God. Would I remain open to the possibility that polygamy came from God or not? I told God I was closing the door forever on polygamy. It was a bad fruit inside and out that only bred pain, spiritual injuries and dread for me. I was pushing polygamy out of our relationship for good. This decision brought me great peace of mind. Five minutes after my declaration to God, I had a powerful spiritual experience feeling the loving, accepting embrace of God. God communicated their acceptance of my decision to me. This was the first time any prayer about my concerns about polygamy was answered. For me, it took assertively making a decision about the question.

Today I have come to believe early saints’ testimonies of polygamy once used to convince me that the narrative should be treated with great scrutiny. Psychologist Valerie Hamaker discusses how experiences individuals had that they interpreted to be the spirit affirming the goodness of polygamy were actually instances of psychological self-justification and self-deception in the face of cognitive dissonance. The mind finds a way to regain equanimity when our collective and individual actions are at odds with our values and beliefs. Self-justification of abusive societal structures is very evident, for example, in histories of slavery and of residential schools, in which devout individuals felt justified before God in upholding immoral, dehumanizing and violent lifestyles and relationships. With their salvation, standing in the Mormon community, and often basic physical needs at stake and little or no authority in their relationships with leaders, many early saints didn’t have a true, fair choice whether to enter a polygamous lifestyle. It makes sense they could unconsciously create reasons to feel better about their circumstances. In light of the abusive circumstances and cognitive dissonance they faced, these old testimonies should not bear weight today. In addition to the distortion-prone context they were received in, they are also not authoritative revelations for the church, just personal perspectives. What should matter much more is what the spirit bears witness to us today, as well as what the scriptures teach. Apart from D&C 132, do they teach us a restoration of biblical polygamy was revealed and commanded by God or not? (I’ll note here that any impulse toward total trust in church leaders and resistance to advancing toward a more complex or mature stage of faith can still jeopardize the clarity and authenticity of their thoughts and spiritual sensibilities on this topic today). 

Many Latter-day Saints recount the spirit witnessing to them that Joseph had the encounters with God he claimed to have. But virtually none claim to have received a witness polygamy was God’s will. I have never heard such a testimony. Instead, like most of the early Saints we feel disgust and confusion and might go through a period of feeling off-kilter and ill at ease about the church due to it, but then we just try to move on and ignore it. But we should pay greater attention to what the spirit tells us and does not tell us because a great deal is at stake, including the quality of our beliefs and faith and our relationships with God and many other parts of life, including our sexuality, relationships, marriage, gender roles, and the afterlife.

I admit that attributing the origins of LDS polygamy to mental illness in Joseph Smith requires a major re-envisioning of the world and our relationships with God and with religion itself. It requires dismantling and reconstructing many traditional LDS beliefs about faith, the church’s founding, church leaders and proper relationships members should have with them, and what it means for God to be at work in the world through prophets.

It raises all kinds of questions like What would God choose such a flawed or broken person to be a prophet and to found a religion? If it was uninspired, why didn’t God stop polygamy sooner? Can we trust Joseph’s later teachings like the temple ordinances when he was caught up polygamy while he established this? And many others.

For some people, going down this road might require too much nuance, too much complexity, too much autonomy and personal responsibility in religious life for what they are ready for, and their willingness to continue in the faith might snap. 

But for many of us, going down this road could be healing and and conducive to spiritual growth and joy. The re-envisioning could lead to revelation, a better church, happier members, and a better world. We find liberation dismantling assertions that prophets cannot lead their people astray and creating frameworks that are wiser and more realistic. We grow in spiritual maturity as we see the problematic nature of follow the prophet rhetoric and the parent-child leader-member relationships at church that became the norm in the early church. We find joy getting in touch with God as someone who truly loves and treats people of all genders with equal love and respect. A God who honors the agency, needs and desires of all their children, a God who is so loving an generous we can trust they would seek a joyful self-chosen afterlife experience and consensual relationship situations for all. A God who is fully, truly worth of our trust, love and worship.

We may be filled with awe as we realize God, who I now firmly believe does not condone, create, or send violence or abuse, miraculously works through broken and struggling humans despite their blindspots and the risks this entails. We are humbled to recognize that the wounds and flaws that lead to struggles with addiction, betrayal, and domestic abuse are so common among humans they are ubiquitous. 

Deconstructing the polygamy narrative might put us in touch for the first time with a bigger picture of God working through many broken people in our world, including through many faith traditions. A view in which we see that what God has to work might be a lot humbler, less in their control, or predictable that we might have thought or would perhaps prefer. We may perceive a slow and patient unfolding and experiment in which so human mistakes happen. Self-aggrandizing faith narratives may shed their untruths and simple-mindedness. We might feel more vulnerable, less protected, and less special or favored in relation to other cultural and faith groups. The path of deconstructing polygamy from the very roots rather than superficially could lead to a worldview that is more in touch with the realities of the pluralistic world full of God’s beloved, vulnerable, and flawed children that we can witness all around us.

I feel supported in my nuanced interpretation of Joseph’s life and actions when I look at many other inspired historical figures whom I consider to have had great minds and hearts who made similar mistakes justifying betraying their partners, being with multiple women, or abusing women. These lives seem to me to attest God can work with sexually broken people and manage to bring about great good through them. I’m thinking of both spiritual leaders and great writers, including Thomas Hardy, Martin Luther King Jr., Karl Barth, the prophet Mohamed (I include him hear because he also became a polygamist, and the inclusion of this in the faith bothers many Muslims today), Charles Dickens, Gandhi, and many others. Some of these men eventually saw what they did as tragedy and a blight on their lives as Joseph might have. These men’s immoral behaviors did not entirely dim the light and inspiration in their lives. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, had big issues going on in his sex life, including affairs, and a twisted relationship with sexual sin and repentance in which he premeditated sexual liaisons and then enjoyed purging himself from sin (see the section on this in How Can I Forgive You?). There was also at least one instance in which he was complicit in rape). All this was happening while he continued to do immense good in the world, and speak prophetic words that are still helping to create a more just and loving world. Today, despite us knowing he had an intimacy disorder and self-deceptive beliefs about sex and repentance, millions of both religious and secular people continue to regard him as “the Greatest American Prophet,” a title attributed to him.  Things are complicated in a world full of clay vessels trying to seek God and a better world. Embracing this is a movement into, rather than away from, God’s light. It would appear God trusts us to learn wisdom and gain greater strength from all of this.

I also highly recommend this episode (#35) from Latter-day Saint Struggles entitled “The Shadow of Joseph’s Polygamy and its ongoing Institutional Reverberations” which takes a Jungian approach to Joseph’s struggles, and argues neither he nor the church has faced his shadow side.

Candice Wendt is the fifth great-granddaughter of Brigham Young and his first wife Miriam Werks, who died young of TB, through their first child Elizabeth. As a child, Candice would look a portrait of Miriam and wonder what she would have thought of her husband’s household later in SLC. She bears a resemblance to her Danish-American 2nd great grandmother Sophia Poulsen who was born to polygamous parents in Cache Valley. Candice was born in Utah, raised in Washington state, and now lives in Montreal, where she works at McGill University’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. She has a master’s in comparative humanities studies (literature and philosophy emphasis) from Brigham Young University.