Nelson, you asked the following question: "My question was and is: exactly what did the change consist of, and was it more than an accommodation, possibly temporary, to American law?"
This was in response to my earlier posting that the Church changed its doctrine after a revelation from God to the President of the Church. Now, my response, which you say has nothing to do with the "factual question" you asked, in fact has everything to do with the factual question.
IF you believe in that God spoke to the head of the Church, then there can be no other answer. It is not a response to political pressure; it can only be that God spoke, and the Church responded. That is a fully sufficient explanation to your question.
If you do not believe that God speaks directly to people, then we can perhaps agree that it is political question, and we can see the abandonment of polygamy as a necessary precondition to the Church getting its property back and to Utah statehood.
My other point was simply this: If one believes in such things as the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or the burning bush talking, then presumably one can accept that God spoke to the head of the Church. If so, then I would think there can be no further investigation of motivation or historical causation. God caused the change and that is that.
I do not consider myself competent to interpret the causation value of God talking to the head of the church (or the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or the burning bush talking) and therefore, as a historian and a law professor, I must look to other interpretations of why the Church changed its mind. However, I know there are people on this list who do believe in God talking to the head of the church (or the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or the burning bush talking) and for them, I should think that Mormon Church doctrine is a fully sufficient explanation for the change in the church's views on polygamy.
I hope it is now clear why I said what I said in the earlier post. I am sorry for any misunderstanding to for my failure to sufficiently explain my analysis.
- Paul Finkelman Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law University of Tulsa College of Law 3120 East 4th Place Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office) 918-631-2194 (fax)
Nelson Lund wrote:
I don't have the slightest idea what the post below has to do with the perfectly simple factual question that I asked. I had imagined that when the church changed its position on polygamy, it would have issued some kind of written document explaining the change to its members. Because there are so many historians on the list, I was hoping that one of them might know what the exact contents of that document were.
Rather than risk any further misinterpretations of my simple factual question, I hereby withdraw it.
Nelson Lund
Paul Finkelman wrote:
Well, your question presumes that you do not believe that the president of the Church of LDS received a revelation from God telling him to change church law. I am not competent to comment on whether that was true or not, any more than I can comment on whether Jesus rose from the dead, was born of "virgin birth."
But, if you accept either of the latter, or at least accept the possibility of either of the later, than you, as a matter of comity, ought to accept the former. So, in that sense, your question is answered by God.
On the other had, if you do not accept the possibility of virgin birth and rising from the dead, then you might not accept the idea that God told the president of the LDS to change the rules of polygamy, and then we are back to the political question. The U.S. Government had been conducting a "war" of sorts against the Mormons, with the Supreme Court often leading the way. Congress had authorized, and the Court upheld (see Late Corporation of the Church of LDS) the confiscation of almost all Church property; thousands of Mormons were in jails and persecution was rampant. Under those circumstance, the Church changed its doctrine. See generally Edwin Frimage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts.
It is important to note that polygamy was a requirement for Mormon men who could afford to support more than one wife, if there wre single women in the community. Thus the war on the Mormons was persecution for religous doctinre and belief. Davis v. Beason (1890) upheld a proseution for belief, not action. It shows how far the U.S. govt. and the Court can go in persecuting religious minorities.
Paul Finkelman
Nelson Lund wrote:
Of course the church changed its position. My question was and is: exactly what did the change consist of, and was it more than an accommodation, possibly temporary, to American law?
Paul Finkelman wrote:
The Church of LDS in fact officially changed its position, claiming revelation from God. The literature on this is pretty strong. You could start with RELIGION AND AMERICAN LAW: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (Garland, not Routledge, 2000) (Paul Finkelman, ed.) which has a number of entries on the Mormon church and lots of bibliographic leads to other more complete sources.
Paul Finkelman Univ. of Tulsa College of Law
