Polygamy In America

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What is Polygamy? Polygamy is the practice or custom of having more than one wife at the same time. How much polygamy is actually practiced in the America today? In America alone there is about 50,000 to 100,000 people involved in polygamy. How much is it accepted? In modern times today about 16 percent of American approve of polygamous religions. There are some parts of polygamy that are harmless but in reality the odds the harm outweighs the harmless parts. Although many believe polygamy is just another harmless life style, they are blinded to the reality of what actually goes on in polygamous families because television has detrimentally desensitized people’s perspective on morality of polygamy in America as entertainment rather than identifying …show more content…
Polygamy first started developing in Nauvoo, Illinois; before Joseph Smith's death the teaching had started to be spread around and taught in churches in the town. To teach this new marriage and family arrangements you had to be authorized because they wanted those teaching the doctrine to stress the strict covenants, obligations and responsibilities associated with polygamy. Yet others who didn’t get the complete doctrine rather more heard rumors of the revelation which lead to misguidance and wrong teachings. An example of the teaching being twist was by John C. Bennett; he taught the doctrine of “spiritual wifery”. Spiritual Wifery was John Bennett's way of having illicit sexual relationships with women in which he told them they were married "spiritually." In doing so he spiritually claimed to be married to them whether or not they were married formally. He also convinced woman and men of this by saying the Prophet approved the arrangement. This action became known as The Bennett Scandal in which John Bennett got excommunicated from the church and created an anti-mormon expose charging. A couple years later people associated with Bennett published The Nauvoo Expositor which exposed plural marriage, leading to many events, such as the death of Joseph …show more content…
When join wives became accepted gaining more wives was typically the first wife who accepted the practiced and convinced her husband to grow their family. On occasion if the men introduced the idea of adding a wife the woman were not as accepting of the idea or the woman. Their was many times that plural marriage lead to difficult family issues, and then their were other times where there was much less issues in the plural families. In these plural marriages the idea of divorce was not promoted, Brigham Young did not like the idea of divorce but would typically grant the wishes of woman because he wanted the woman to have the ability to find a better family. On the other hand if the wishes of divorce came from a man Brigham Young would not grant the wish because he claimed the man need to step up and take the role of the polygamous
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