Mormon Church Renounces Polygamy
The Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, formally renounced the practice of polygamy on September 25, 1890. This decision, known as the Manifesto, was prompted by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld federal antipolygamy laws. Polygamy had been a sanctioned practice within the church since a divine revelation claimed by the church's founder, Joseph Smith, in 1843, but it faced increasing opposition from the broader American society, which associated it with moral and legal issues.
In the latter half of the 19th century, various anti-polygamy laws were enacted, leading to significant repercussions for members of the church, including property confiscation and imprisonment for those who continued the practice. The Manifesto was not a complete repudiation of plural marriage; rather, it was a pragmatic response to legal pressures. Following this declaration, the church imposed strict penalties on those who practiced polygamy, ultimately facilitating Utah's path to statehood in 1896. The church's renunciation of polygamy remains a significant turning point in its history, reflecting the complex interplay between religious beliefs and societal norms.
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Mormon Church Renounces Polygamy
Mormon Church Renounces Polygamy
The worldwide Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, officially sanctioned the practice of polygamy until September 25, 1890. On that day, following a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court affirming the constitutionality of federal antipolygamy laws, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Wilford Woodruff, issued the Manifesto, a statement renouncing polygamy.
The Mormon practice of polygamy comes from a divine revelation that the prophet Joseph Smith claimed to have received on July 12, 1843. Although there was little concealment of the practice after the Mormons settled in Utah, Smith's controversial revelation was not officially proclaimed until August 1852, when Brigham Young, his successor, judged the community strong enough and sufficiently isolated to prevent serious consequences. However, such popular American activists as Harriet Beecher Stowe soon linked polygamy with slavery as those “twin relics of barbarism” that must be swept from the face of the earth. After Young's death in 1877, the Reverend De Witt Talmage of Brooklyn, New York, even paused in the midst of a church service to suggest to the national government, “Now at the death of the Mormon chieftain . . . is the time for the United States government to strike. . . . Give Phil Sheridan enough troops, and he will teach all Utah that 40 wives is 39 too many.”
The existence of polygamy raised difficult legal problems for those legislators in Congress who desired its prohibition. The U.S. Constitution does not prevent a man from having as many wives as he wants, nor does it prevent a woman from having as many husbands as she desires, although that latter scenario was not part of Joseph Smith's revelation. Moreover, legislation against polygamy might conceivably be interpreted as an infringement upon the constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. Nevertheless, anti-polygamy laws were passed beginning in 1862 and later supplemented in 1882 and 1887. Under these statutes not only was polygamy forbidden, but the Mormon Church was also disincorporated and much of its property temporarily confiscated. Vigorous prosecution was carried out in Utah, where polygamists caught in surprise raids were heavily fined and given prison sentences. The elderly John Taylor, who had succeeded Brigham Young as president of the church, went into hiding in 1884 and directed church affairs from seclusion until his death in 1887.
On September 25, 1890, following the Supreme Court decision, Taylor's successor Wilford Woodruff issued his Manifesto. It was not a revelation, nor an explicit retraction of the Mormons' belief in plural marriage, but merely a declaration of expediency which read in relevant part,
To Whom It May Concern: Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside, to have them do likewise.
A general church conference held in October of that same year supported this move and laid the ban of excommunication on persons continuing to practice polygamy. On January 4, 1893, U.S. president Benjamin Harrison granted amnesty to all husbands who repudiated their extra wives and to all polygamists who married before November 1, 1890. The renunciation of polygamy cleared the way for Utah's statehood, achieved on January 4, 1896.