Newly Released Saints Volume 1 Provides Honest Look at Early Church History
I ran across this excerpt:
In early May, Emma took Emily and Eliza aside and explained the principle of plural marriage to them. She had told Joseph that she would consent to him being sealed to two additional wives as long as she could choose them, and she had chosen Emily and Eliza, apparently unaware that Joseph had already been sealed to them.
Rather than mention her former sealing, Emily believed that keeping silent on the matter was the best thing for her to do. A few days later, she and Eliza were again sealed to Joseph, this time with Emma as a witness.
So, the author of these words believes it's Emily Partridge's fault that Emma was deceived by the charade? Heaven forbid Joseph take any blame...
After doing the chapter-by-chapter review of Saints, the entire book reads this way. It's never Joseph's fault - it's either the members fault for not being faithful enough that they get punished, or that Joseph was totally doing polygamy in the most godly way he knew, etc.
I can't do it again for volume 2, but it reads like watered down apologetics written for 12 year olds.
I specifically called that out in my review of the book, which I think still sits as the top non-faithful review of the book on Goodreads right now. It kind of made me sick that they pinned that on the teen girl in that situation.
I tempered my language in the Goodreads review but I did drop the F-bomb to describe the way they spun that when I posted the same review to my blog. It's a pretty despicable way to spin the story and they should be ashamed of themselves.
But few know that during those Nauvoo years, church leaders worked to rewrite the U.S. Constitution even as Mormon founder Joseph Smith ran for U.S. president. Few know how polygamy emerged even as Smith worked to conceal and control it and how he struggled even mightier to win converts to these unorthodox unions, especially in his own household. His brother Hyrum, who was slain with him at Carthage, for instance, went from a vehement opponent of plural marriage to a zealous proponent almost overnight, while Joseph’s first wife, Emma, only occasionally veered from her disdain for the practice.
Historian Benjamin Park, author of the newly released “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier,” sheds new light on those subjects
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
LDS PERSONAL FAITH CRISIS Prepared for President Dieter F. Uchtdorf Proprietary and Confidential
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