Rescuing Joseph Smith from False Polygamy Narratives

Did Joseph Smith really practice polygamy?

More than 70 eyewitnesses who knew Joseph Smith have provided more than 130 statements affirming that he initiated the practice of plural marriage. In 2014, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a Gospel Topics Essay titled “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo” that affirms he did. And 11 years later, in an official statement, the Church reiterated: “Joseph Smith introduced the practice, not Brigham Young.”

With such abundant historical evidence and plain declarations from official Church outlets, it may be surprising to learn that some Latter-day Saints in recent years have questioned Joseph’s involvement. A few have even been excommunicated over their insistence that he practiced strict monogamy. So why are they in denial? 

The Impulse to Deny Joseph’s Polygamy

The motives of some polygamy denialists are easy to understand. Polygamy in the Bible and among Church members between the 1840s and 1904 was unequal in its treatment of genders: polygyny was permitted and polyandry was not. That inequality is hard to defend and easily offends current social sensitivities. Furthermore, when viewed through the lens of presentism (judging the past by today’s standards), polygamy generates immediate suspicion that libido, rather than an angel with a sword, might have prompted Joseph Smith to restore its practice. It also spawns additional false narratives regarding his sealings to young women, civilly married women, and maintaining initial secrecy from Emma. Separating Joseph Smith from such potential entanglements by declaring he was not involved and that later Church leaders introduced the practice might seem desirable.

While we do not know why God commanded Joseph Smith to restore plural marriage, the revelation of challenging commandments is a familiar pattern among God’s prophets. Abraham was commanded to offer Isaac, Lehi was directed to migrate to the Promised Land, and ancient Israel was asked to leave the security of Egypt for a wilderness. God periodically requires specific sacrifices from believers, among other things, “to prove you all” (D&C 132:51). Likewise, multiple later accounts report that Joseph complied only reluctantly, requiring three angelic visits rather than simply one.

Joseph’s closest associates responded in much the same way. Brigham Young later recalled that when he first learned of the principle, it was the first time in his life he had desired the grave. John Taylor described the teaching as an appalling thing to contemplate, given his strict ideas of virtue. These are not the reactions of men seeking license. They are the reactions of believers wrestling with a commandment they did not want and would not have invented.

Even if a denialist is well-meaning, Joseph Smith taught that if Church teachings, policies, or doctrines needed to be corrected, God would not inspire changes through lay members, grassroots efforts, or unauthorized sources. In an April 13, 1833, letter to John S. Carter, Joseph wrote (in his own hand):

I will inform you that it is contrary to the economy of God for any member of the Church or any <one> any one to receive instruction for those in authority hig[h]er than themselves, therefore you will see the impropriety of giving <heed> to them, but if any <have a vision> heavenly or a visitation from an hevenaly [heavenly] messenger it must be for their own benefit and instruction, for the fundimental principals, government and doctrine of the church is invested in the keys of the kingdom.

The prophets and apostles in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve hold the keys of the kingdom. If needed, they receive God’s inspiration to guide all the Church’s actions and teachings. Accordingly, God never inspires alternate voices to criticize or publicly oppose the official teachings of the keyholders. If it were otherwise, any member with a disagreement could merit our time and attention to determine whether God had directed them, and the whole Church should comply. The result would be chaos, in contrast to God’s house, which is a house of order (D&C 132:8, 18).

Trained Versus Untrained Historians

As the debate has unfolded, a clear line has appeared between the alternate voices claiming that Joseph did not introduce polygamy and those who disagree. To date, essentially all trained historians who have published on this topic—regardless of their personal religious views—agree that Joseph Smith initiated plural marriage. This is remarkable, since most professional historians are fiercely independent and quick to critique their colleagues’ reconstructions when they find weaknesses. Consensus in this group is difficult to achieve. In contrast, the prominent voices declaring Joseph Smith’s monogamy are generally untrained lay scholars.

On its surface, accepting the conclusions of trained historians and rejecting those of untrained researchers might seem like a credential fallacy or an appeal to authority. Yet the problem runs deeper. Trained historians adjust their expectations when investigating past secret activities and they anticipate predictable research obstacles. In contrast, inexperienced researchers may not alter their expectations and methodology. Using tools designed to detect historically overt practices may yield faulty conclusions when applied to the search for covert processes or behaviors. Table 1 identifies the problems and contrasts.

Evaluating Evidence for a Secret Historical Practice

	Trained Historians	Untrained Historians
Contemporaneous evidence	Expect sparse direct documentation: also expect narrative gaps, coded language, incidental mentions, private references, and legal, financial, or circumstantial hints. Willing to read between the lines to identify evidence.	Expect overt records: Expect clear contemporary documentation and explicit references. Accept absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Small imperfections are used to justify rejecting otherwise highly credible evidence.
Contemporaneous denials	Read denials in context: Evaluate denials in context, considering wording, purpose, chronology, audience, and definitions. Expect ambiguous language, careful wording, qualified statements, technical literalness, and protective vocabulary.	Take denials literally: Accept denial language as proof of nonexistence of the practice. Later claims that it existed are viewed as contradictory or unreliable. Supportive and contradictory evidence are held to significantly different evidentiary standards.
Late recollections	Test reliability of late recollections: Predictably the richest source of descriptive detail, late statements are tested for proximity, independence, consistency, specificity, possible bias, corroboration, and compatibility with contemporary evidence. Convergence is identified across diversities in sources.	Dismiss late recollections: Reject late accounts as unreliable, biased, or invented because they came years later. Deemed inferior to contemporary denials and documentary silence. Discrepancies are treated as grounds for rejection. May adopt conspiracy theories to explain an abundance of late contradictory sources.
Methodology	Cumulative and probabilistic: Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of available evidence and assess credibility cumulatively. Ask which hypothesis best explains the sparse direct records, the pattern of denials, and the converging testimony together. State degrees of confidence explicitly.	Binary and proof-oriented: Evaluate each piece of evidence independently as credible or not credible. Imperfect evidence is rejected. The resulting lack of proof is interpreted as evidence that the secret practice did not occur. Alternatively, one may declare the whole matter is forever unknowable.

Historians are trained to evaluate evidence on a credibility spectrum based on its probable accuracy. In contrast, researchers without an understanding of historical method may judge evidence using binary assessments. Manuscript data must either be deemed accurate or inaccurate; if inaccurate, it is rejected. Under such circumstances, a series of imperfect accounts from divergent sources, all conveying the same message, might be discarded. In their place, a few contemporaneous denials, without considering context, might be accepted and even defended. The result is a historical verdict built on the thinnest evidence while the richest manuscript data is set aside.

Imagine researchers trying to document the families in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe who hid Jewish people from the authorities during World War II. Contemporaneous evidence of their heroic actions is sparse, and German records might include interrogations in which family members denied hiding anyone. Most details would emerge only after the war ended and the need for secrecy subsided. However, an untrained historian might take the lack of contemporaneous evidence as evidence that the practice did not occur. Likewise, the recorded denials could be taken at face value and late accounts ignored because they were chronologically removed. Yet no serious historian doubts that such rescuers existed.

As shown below, applying different methodologies can yield diametrically opposite conclusions from the same evidence.

This chart shows how historians would look at a credibility spectrum rather than a binary assessment of evidence.

The Nauvoo Evidence Follows the Predicted Pattern

The historical record from Nauvoo matches the pattern this table predicts. Contemporaneous documentation is sparse because participants sought to keep the practice secret. Yet incidental evidence survives. William Clayton’s journal records Joseph’s private teachings and several plural sealings during 1843. On July 12 of that year, Clayton served as scribe when Joseph dictated the revelation now found in Doctrine and Covenants section 132. And the following month, Hyrum Smith read it to the Nauvoo High Council, which multiple witnesses later corroborated. Dissenters who published the Nauvoo Expositor during Joseph’s lifetime also confirmed the revelation existed.

The public denials are equally predictable. In May 1844, Joseph Smith protested: “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery and having seven wives, when I can only find one.” Yet his words reflected the legal and public reality that he had only one recognized wife.

As expected, the richest details came later, after the need for secrecy had passed. In 1869 and 1870, Joseph F. Smith gathered dozens of affidavits from women sealed to the Prophet and from witnesses who performed or attended the ceremonies. In 1892, during the Temple Lot litigation, Emily Partridge, Lucy Walker, and Melissa Lott testified under oath about their marriages to Joseph Smith. These accounts come from different people, at different times and places, often with little to gain and much to lose. Yet they converge on the same essential facts. Trained historians recognize such convergence as powerful corroboration. Untrained researchers may simply dismiss it as “late.”

A Slippery Slope Destroying Faith in the Restoration

The question of whether Joseph Smith introduced and practiced plural marriage is more than a disagreement among scholars over a few seemingly contradictory pieces of evidence. Embracing the denialists’ version of history places adherents on a slippery slope where faith in the Restoration may gradually decline, perhaps without the member realizing it.

The monogamous Joseph Smith version of history rejects the multiple testimonies of Eliza R. Snow, Zina Huntington, and Bathsheba Smith—the second, third, and fourth General Relief Society Presidents of the Church. Likewise, it dismisses plain statements from Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow, all of which describe how Joseph Smith introduced and practiced plural marriage. The denialist position portrays the Church’s top leaders for the next 50 years after Joseph Smith’s death as blatant deceivers.

The implications do not stop with the nineteenth century. If the denialists are correct, then today’s prophets and apostles, who have approved Church publications affirming Joseph’s role in plural marriage, are either uninformed about the Church’s own history or are willfully misleading its members. Neither conclusion leaves much room for confidence in living prophets.

The methodology of untrained historians brings additional problems. Disallowing late accounts and labeling them as unreliable undermines confidence in the temple endowment, which was not fully written down until 1877 in St. George, Utah. In addition, rejecting section 132, which speaks plainly of restored plural marriage, would also reject the primary descriptions of the sealing authority used to create forever families (see verses 7 and 19).

This iceberg analogy illustrates how beliefs about Joseph Smith’s introduction and practice of plural marriage may affect core faith issues in the Restoration.

A Matter of Trust

An important human quality seems to empower believers on both sides of this issue: trust. Since most Latter-day Saints cannot spend personal time weighing all the evidence regarding Joseph Smith and plural marriage, each must choose which voices to trust. God-given agency lets everyone decide which voices to trust. Science and evidence may become secondary to feelings of trust, which individuals then use to guide their belief systems. For some, the teachings of professional historians, the established Church, and priesthood authorities are less believable than the declarations of seemingly sincere alternative voices.

This observation is helpful when encountering denialists of any persuasion. For many, the issue is not about logic or data; it is about simply trusting some sources of information and mistrusting others. Moving the needle on their beliefs will come only by first earning their trust through prolonged listening and empathy. We are all people with genuine feelings, and no one wants to be deceived. But denialists generally must be met on their own terms, which often require a bedrock of trust that cannot be established in a single conversation or even several. Patience and charity on both sides are paramount to constructive dialogue and documentary transparency.

Testimony of Polygamy Not Required

Finally, it is important to point out that Latter-day Saints do not need a testimony of plural marriage in order to sustain Joseph Smith as a prophet. Many devout members acknowledge discomfort with polygamy while maintaining firm testimonies of the Restoration. Discomfort, however, is not a license to rewrite history. When a historical claim requires us to disbelieve General Relief Society presidents, Church presidents, sworn witnesses, and today’s keyholders all at once, we should approach it cautiously because it may be toxic to faith.

It might be said that in our day, Joseph Smith needs rescuing from false narratives at both ends of the polygamy spectrum. This article addresses one of them: the claim that he never practiced plural marriage. At the opposite extreme are polygamy narratives that grossly distort his motives and conduct in plural marriage. Those too must be discarded because they are not true. Learning about Joseph from a transparent, unspun historical record helps us to more easily reject both caricatures.

Critics often portray Joseph Smith as a sexual predator, as a polyandrist who took other men’s wives, and as a deceiver who lied to his wife and his followers. The documentation tells a different story. His sealings to his youngest wives appear to have been unconsummated, functioning more like betrothals. He regarded polyandry (a woman having more than one husband) as adultery and did not tolerate it in himself or in others. He was patient with Emma over many years. His carefully worded public statements read like the words of a man trying desperately hard not to lie, without disclosing a practice the general membership was not yet prepared to accept.

Ultimately, rescuing Joseph Smith does not require separating him from plural marriage. It involves seeing him as early Latter-day Saints saw him: an imperfect but always-worthy prophet who reluctantly obeyed a difficult directive, translated the Book of Mormon, and restored covenants and ordinances that persist beyond the veil of eternity, allowing us to be sealed to our families and bound to God.

Note: This article drew on the author’s presentation at the FAIR Conference in August 2026.