Mormon Church has its polygamy and eats it too

Don’t teach polygamy 
as Mormon doctrine.

Don’t teach it as
NOT Mormon doctrine.

Clear?

See if you can unravel this.

In Mormon Scripture, God says that polygamy is a law, and that all to whom it is revealed must obey or be damned.

Mormon founder Joseph Smith had some 30-50 wives, all in secret, or so he thought. After arriving in Utah, his successors brought polygamy into the open and continued practicing it until 1890, and then, despite denials, secretly continued it into the early 20th Century.

In today’s Mormon Church, polygamy is verboten. It excommunicates polygamists and those who advocate its return. 

Are Kirk and Lindsay van Allen, above, heretics? It depends, apparently, on which Mormon prophet you believe at which time.

In 1998, then-Mormon prophet Gordon Hinckley said on Larry King Live, “I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal.”

Note that part about “not doctrinal.” It 
matters a lot with what comes next.

Earlier this month, Kirk van Allen, a Mormon in good standing, wrote, “I have come to the belief that D&C 132 and Joseph’s teaching of polygamy isn’t, wasn’t, and never will be revelation of God, that polygamy is not of God but rather an idea of men.”

Guess what. His local church leaders told him to revise or delete all comments suggesting that Mormon polygamy was not of divine origin—or else.

So, Hinckley could call it “not doctrinal.” Van Allen cannot.

You can read van Allen’s post by clicking here. Should he remove it, it also appears, with his permission, here.