Did Polygamy Accomplish the Purpose Given in LDS Scripture?

Over the last couple of months, the LDS Church has been publishing some in-depth “Gospel Topics” essays covering controversial issues such as the translation of the Book of Abraham and the First Vision accounts. The latest essays are on polygamy in the early church, and specifically, on the plural marriages of Joseph Smith (which some Mormons were not aware of—this is the first time this information has been officially stated by the LDS Church, though it’s been available through other sources for quite some time).

Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson have been going over the LDS polygamy essay on their Viewpoint on Mormonism podcast (see the episodes on 11/10–11/25), giving more detail about the historical documents informing this issue. 

As part of the discussion, they responded to the LDS claim that God commanded polygamy for the sake of raising up more children, quoting from their book Answering Mormons’ Questions:

Polygamy certainly is not encouraged in the Book of Mormon. Speaking of David and Solomon’s “abominable” practice of having many wives and concubines, Jacob 2:26-27 [part of LDS scripture] warns, “Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old. Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none.”

Jacob 2:30 does offer a single exception: “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.” In an essay titled “Notes on Mormon Polygamy,” writer Stanley Ivans states, “While polygamy increased the number of children of the men, it did not do the same for the women involved. A count revealed that 3,335 wives of polygamists bore 19,806 children, for an average of 5.9 per woman. An equal number of wives of monogamists taken from the same general group bore 26,780 for an average of 8. This suggests the possibility that the overall production of children in Utah may have been less than it would have been without benefit of plurality of wives” (p. 64).

McKeever and Johnson recommend the books Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith and In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (both written by Mormons) to learn more about polygamy in the early LDS Church.

Comments

[Tom]

Making Mormon Spirit Babies
By Ed Decker

Mormons believe that when a worthy Mormon man becomes a god over his own planet and gets his many polygamous, goddess wives, they must reproduce spirit children, having sex the same way they did on earth (Mormons believe they continue to be physical beings). But in order to populate a planet like earth, the god-man has a big job cut out for him in the reproducing area.

Forgetting about any of his other responsibilities as a god, look at the job of just making babies and keeping his wives eternally pregnant…
Demographers have come up with estimates ranging between 69 billion and 110 billion humans who have lived on earth. That gives us a spread of 41 billion, a pretty formidable margin of error.

One study estimates that 96,100,000,000 people have lived on the earth to date. Another study says: 106,456,367,669.

Let’s assume for simple math that there have been 100,000,000,000 or 100 billion people who have lived and are yet to live on the earth before the end of time.

For purposes of a simple mathematical look at the idea of sexually producing pre-existent spirit beings to people the next earth, the LDS man who becomes a god would have his hands full, working at a high speed assembly line rate and assuming that every single ‘encounter’ produces a spirit child.

If you estimate that the rate is 1 celestial Impregnation every 5 minutes = 12 per hour = 288 days =(not counting the Sabbath, the LDS day of ‘rest’) 1728 impregnations = 89,856 per year.

Assuming he is able to say hello, arrange the physical situation, impregnate the wife, and be at the next goddess in less than 5 minutes, the maximum goddesses would have to be about 90,000 exalted women, with another non sexual 10,000 or so to take care of the babies for the goddess wives who rush back into this baby factory assembly line. This is not counting bathroom breaks, eating or sleeping.
Let’s assume that this man-god is working day and night at just his reproductive responsibilities of one goddess every 5 minutes, it would take 11,128,917 years of non-stop, vigorous sexual action to create all the spirit beings for a place like earth.

[Darren Russell]

The author's math seems to assume that there was an available one to one ratio available, so yes, based on his article, a man with one wife had more children with her than a polygamist had with each of his wives. But, if after the Mormon men were killed, or if there was a larger conversion among women, etc. and there were more remaining women then men and a man took, for example, three wives and had 5.9 with each of them. In this scenario, the monogamist man would produce 8 children and the polygamist man would produce 17.7 children, or more overall children.

[Amy]

Darren, if I'm understanding you correctly, that would be true if there were more women than men. I seemed to remember that I've heard before that there were actually more men than women, so I just did a quick search online for census statistics and found this, which says, "All census numbers in Utah from about 1850 up to 1960 show more males than females in the state." The specific numbers are on that page.

I also came across this quote:

Mormon Apostle John Widtsoe wrote on pages 390-391 of his book entitled Evidences and Reconciliations,

"The most common of these conjectures is that the Church, through plural marriage, sought to provide husbands for its large surplus of female members. The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more females than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seem always to have been more males than females in the Church... The theory that plural marriage was a consequence of a surplus of female Church members fails from lack of evidence."

As I said, this is just the result of a quick search, so I'm open to hearing arguments against the census numbers.