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Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 5
Contents
- 1 Response to claims made in "Chapter 5"
- 1.3 Claim
- Author's quote: "Orson Hyde reported seeing a 'wonderful lustful spirit' on his visit to the polygamous Cochranite community….In 1834 he acquired his own lustful spirit in Marinda Johnson…."
- Parley P. Pratt's is claimed to have been seald to his "last wife, Eleanor McComb McLean...without divorcing her legal husband, who fatally shot Parley near Van Buren, Arkansas…."
- The murder of Parley P. Pratt is claimed to be "the proximate cause of the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
- Did Parley P. Pratt engage in "theological philanderings?"
- Edwin Wooley married Louisa Chapin Rising as a polygamous wife even though she was not divorced from her legal husband.
- Ezra Taft Benson was "a correspondent of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover…."
Response to claims made in "Chapter 5"
Chapter 4 | A FAIR Analysis of: Nauvoo Polygamy: "... but we called it celestial marriage" A work by author: George D. Smith
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Chapter 6 |
325
Claim
- The author points out that after Joseph's death, Rhoda Richards was sealed to "her cousin Brigham Young."
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- Here the author again relies on presentism to provide a hostile interpretive lens. It was not unusual for first cousins to marry. Nineteen of the present-day states permit unrestricted marriage between first cousins, and most countries have no restrictions at all on marriage between cousins. In its exploitation of the presentist fallacy, the author’s remark is utterly irrelevant in its historical context.
- Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Presentism
327
Claim
- Author's quote: "Orson Hyde reported seeing a 'wonderful lustful spirit' on his visit to the polygamous Cochranite community….In 1834 he acquired his own lustful spirit in Marinda Johnson…."
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- Use of sources: "wonderful lustful spirit"
- Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
333
Claim
- Parley P. Pratt's is claimed to have been seald to his "last wife, Eleanor McComb McLean...without divorcing her legal husband, who fatally shot Parley near Van Buren, Arkansas…."
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- The author again relies on presentism. Practices regarding marriage and divorce differed substantially from the 20th or 21st century.
- The author also tells us nothing about McComb's tyrannical and abusive husband, making him appear the wronged party.
- Polygamy/Parley P. Pratt's marriage and murder
- Polygamy/Remarrying without civil divorce
- Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
333
Claim
- The murder of Parley P. Pratt is claimed to be "the proximate cause of the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
Author's source(s) - Scott F. and Maurine J. Proctor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (1874; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 586-99.
334
Claim
- Did Parley P. Pratt engage in "theological philanderings?"
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Loaded and prejudicial language
- Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
345
Claim
- Edwin Wooley married Louisa Chapin Rising as a polygamous wife even though she was not divorced from her legal husband.
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- Polygamy/Remarrying without civil divorce
- Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Presentism
- Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
351
Claim
- Ezra Taft Benson was "a correspondent of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover…."
Author's source(s) - No source provided.
- Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
- It is not clear what relevance this has to Benson, plural marriage, or anything else, save perhaps that it associates the church president with a figure now regarded as repressive, megalomaniacal, and something of a sexual deviant.
- Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Loaded and prejudicial language
Further reading
A FAIR Analysis of Critical Works |
- American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows— (Index of claims)
- An Insider's View of Mormon Origins — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
- Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
- Ashamed of Joseph: Mormon Foundations Crumble
- Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism/Inside Today's Mormonism — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
- Behind the Mask of Mormonism
- Specific works/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
- Specific works/By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
- Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism
- Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book of Mormon
- Decker's Complete Handbook on Mormonism
- Early Mormonism and the Magic World View — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
- Specific works/Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism
- Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History
- From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism
- In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith — (Index of Claims)
- Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
- Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record
- Is the Mormon My Brother?
- Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
- Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon (2nd edition)—(Index of claims)
- Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined
- The Kingdom of the Cults (Revised) — (Index of claims)
- Leaving the Saints
- Letters to a Mormon Elder
- Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church — (Index of claims)
- Mormon America: The Power and the Promise — (Index of claims)
- The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power — (Index of claims)
- The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism
- Mormonism 101—Index of claims
- Mormonism (Kurt Van Gorden)
- Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? — (Index of claims)
- The Mysteries of Godliness—A History of Mormon Temple Worship
- Nauvoo Polygamy — (Index of claims—Use of sources—Prejudicial language—Presentism—Mind reading—Censorship—Romance—Assumptions—Magick)
- New Approaches to the Book of Mormon
- New Mormon Challenge
- No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith — (Index of claims)
- One Nation Under Gods — (Index of claims—Use of Sources—Prejudicial language—Absurd claims—Presentism—Mind reading—Rewording—Omissions—Sarcasm)
- The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844
- Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example — (Index of claims)
- Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess
- The Changing World of Mormonism — (Index of claims)
- Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
- Under the Banner of Heaven — (Index of claims)
- Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture