Last week, I talked about how spiritual abuse tends to occur in communities much like mobbing does. It rarely involves just one person, as it needs to be supported by a group to be most effective. Usually the abusive group believes its leader, or a handful of leaders, speak directly for God, or with ultimate authority that cannot be questioned.
I talked about how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, claims direct authority from God. And how the early church was built on a foundation of spiritual abuse.
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| Photo by Julia Tebbs on Unsplash |
If you are devoutly LDS, you might not want to listen to this episode. I rely on my personal experience growing up in that faith tradition, and I talk about the history of how it was founded to list 4 more tactics which are common when spiritual abuse is taking place. I will list them now.
1. Conditional Kindness
2. Redefining
3. Obsession with Purity
4. Gaming the System
I consider Mormonism, which is the lay man’s term for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and when I say Mormonism, I don’t just mean the mainstream church I grew up in, but also the fundamentalist church and the other sects that came from Joseph Smith) to be founded on a foundation of spiritual abuse. It’s much easier to see when we go back to the beginning. It’s much harder to pinpoint now, which is why I’m going to back to the beginning.
Conditional Kindness
This scripture is from the Doctrine and Covenants, which is canonized scripture in the LDS church. It's a book of revelations given to Joseph Smith. These verses outline how those with priesthood authority are supposed to exercise that authority.
No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy… (Doctrine and Covenants 121: 41-43)
This seems pretty innocuous when you first read it, but it’s really a masterclass on emotional abuse. Think about it: You’re nice to the person, you treat them really well until they do something you don’t like, and you think you have authority over them, so then you treat them all mean and reprove them with sharpness. And then once they come around and do what you say, they you’re really super nice to them again.
That is a how-to guide on how to emotionally abuse someone; and it’s how my parents parented us children, because they thought it was the divine pattern handed down from God.
When I was a child and making too much noise in church, my dad would grab me beneath the arms (I was a toddler) and take me out to the hallway and into the classroom where there would be a hard metal chair, and then he would slam me down on the chair and he would yell—reproving with sharpness. It hurt.
And then any time I moved, with his finger, he would tap me hard on the top of the head. It was like Japanese water torture until I figured out how to sit still. Other times when that didn’t work, he would sit down in the chair and put me on his lap to put me in a hold like a straitjacket. My hands were folded and his arms were holding my wrists like a straitjacket.
The more I struggled, the harder he would hold me until I would stop struggling. He would say, “Stop struggling and I’ll let you go. Stop struggling, and I’ll stop holding you so tightly.” The more you struggled, the tighter he would hold you. And you’d struggle and struggle until you ran out of energy. Then the moment you’d given up and your will had been broken, he would release you. Thus teaching you the lesson that you just do as your told. You just do what we want you to do.
You obey, and then you will be free. Stop struggling, and then you will be free.
Reproving with sharpness, and then with affection afterwards. “Oh that wasn’t so bad. I love you. Let’s go back in and try again.”
It’s a masterclass on emotional abuse.
And that’s how they do it in the church. They actually teach the parents to parent that way, and it’s interesting because when I talk to other people about Mormon children and how they’re perceived in general, I always hear how amazingly sweet and obedient they are.
This is why.
It’s because they’re broken. There wills have been broken. And this comes from the fact that the church is resting on a foundation of spiritual abuse.
Makes you feel crazy.
Back in 1836 there was this teenage servant that worked for Joseph and Emma Smith. Teenager. Did I mention she was a teenager, and that she WORKED for Joseph and Emma Smith?
Her name was Fanny Alger.
Some months after she moved away in 1838 and was no longer employed by the the prophet and his wife, Oliver Cowdery—one of the Three Witnesses to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon—who was well respected, and really treated like gold by Joseph Smith, serving as one of his right hand men—he wrote to his brother concerning his indignation at Smith's relationship with Alger. Cowdery said he had discussed with Smith the "dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's ... in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself."[7]
So it came out.
Joseph Smith admitted to having the affair with Fanny Alger. Well, no actually, he didn’t admit to the affair. He admitted to having sex with her, a teenage servant in his home, but as Richard Bushman has noted, Smith "never denied a relationship with Alger, but insisted it was not adulterous. He wanted it on record that he had never confessed to such a sin."[8]
The best statement Smith could obtain from Cowdery was an affirmation that Smith had never acknowledged himself to have been guilty of adultery. "That," wrote Bushman, "was all Joseph wanted: an admission that he had not termed the Alger affair adulterous."
Historians like to debate about whether Alger was an affair or if she was Joseph’s first plural marriage. Joseph said it was a marriage, that this was polygamy, and Cowdery did not believe that. He saw what they did together and termed it a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair.”
So In April of 1838, Mormon leaders meeting as the Far West High Council excommunicated Cowdery, in part because he had "seemed to insinuate" that Smith was guilty of adultery.
Just as my father followed this pattern of being sweet and then sharp and then sweet to get me to behave according to his wishes. The church itself, and Joseph Smith along with those around him, operated in an ecosystem where this person, Oliver Cowdery, who Joseph approved of, who was his good friend, who was a high leader in the church received the same treatment to keep him in line.
Joseph had been sweet to him. He gave him the priesthood and gave him all this power. He was relied on and trusted in a lot of ways But that suddenly changed when he called Joseph out for having sexual relations with the servant. All of a sudden, after this, Cowdery was excommunicated.
It’s the same pattern. It’s spiritual abuse.
Oliver Cowdery was cast out of the fellowship of the saints even though he still believed in the gospel itself.
Redefining
The church likes to redefine words that we understand one way in our vernacular to mean something else. When I was a child, we would talk about free will. Everyone has free will.
Everyone in the church has free will.
As I grew older, the church gradually changed free will to free agency. They didn’t like the word “will,” because people might think they could do what they wanted to do. So instead they went with free agency. Well, after awhile, leadership and the people in power started giving these talks saying they didn’t like free agency as a term because “free” gave people the impression they could choose to do what they wanted.
So then it was changed to agency.
We all have agency. And for years and years, we heard about agency. Until, all of a sudden, leadership started saying they didn’t like agency, because it left out accountability. See, we don’t want people to think that they have choices. We want them to know that, yes, they have choices, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that if they choose wrong, they must be accountable.
All of this to stress that we’re free, but not really free to choose wrong, or bad things will happen to you.
This is the church’s message.
Here is a scripture from the book of Mormon--2 Nephi 2:27,
Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.
Let’s go back to the law of the priesthood, shall we?
Now, as touching the law of the priesthood, there are many things pertaining thereunto. Verily, if a man be called of my Father, as was Aaron, by mine own voice, and by the voice of him that sent me, and I have endowed him with the keys of the power of this priesthood, if he do anything in my name, and according to my law and by my word, he will not commit sin, and I will justify him.
Here comes the rest of it, about polygamy.
Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify him; for he shall do the sacrifice which I require at his hands for his transgressions, saith the Lord your God. And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else. And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified. But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified. And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood,
Now, he’s talking now about the law of the priesthood. Basically, Joseph can have more than one wife, right?
As pertaining to these things,
And he has a wife. His wife is Emma.
then shall she believe and administer unto him,
So Emma has to believe and let him have other wives
or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her… (Doctrine and Covenants 132: 58-64)
I think it’s pretty clear that Emma had a choice here. She had agency. She had agency and accountability. She could do what her husband said and let him take more wives, or she could be destroyed. God would destroy her. That was how she would be accountable.
In case you’re wondering. In case you’ve not figured it out, this is not freedom!
Nothing about the Mormon concept of agency is freedom. It’s all about being obedient and doing what leadership says, to the point that even if you have a valid criticism or a valid reason why something is wrong, it doesn’t matter.
Wrong isn’t what you feel is wrong.
Wrong is what the leadership says is wrong. It’s set by the leadership which directly communicates with God. So you can see why I had a problem with this when I really dug into the history.
Emma didn’t want her husband taking other wives. She didn’t want him to practice polygamy, but she was forced to do it in order to be in good standing with God, because… it’s a religion built on spiritual abuse.
Back in 1841, at the age of 20, Zina Huntington Jacobs was taken as another one of Joseph Smith’s wives. She was married to another man at the time, but Joseph wanted her to be his wife also. And her husband, Henry Bailey Jacobs, was a member of the church.
He was aware of the plural marriage, and what he wrote in response was, "[W]hatever the Prophet did was right, without making the wisdom of God's authorities bend to the reasoning of any man." (Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness pg. 81-82)
That’s it. Right there. Whatever Joseph wanted: that was right. He even had people lie about polygamy.
Back then, in Nauvoo, polygamy was not legal. It was not something that was socially acceptable. If we look at the time and what was considered okay back then, nothing about what Joseph Smith was doing was normal or okay. Taking a bunch of wives was against the law, which is why he lied about it. And he had people all around him lying about it.
Eliza R. Snow, who was also married to Joseph Smith actually organized a petition in the summer of 1842 with a thousand female signatures denying Smith was a polygamist. She organized a campaign for him to lie and cover it up. As Secretary of the Ladies' Relief Society, she published a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy even though she was in a polygamist relationship with Joseph Smith at the time. William Clayton said Smith told him in February 1843 that Snow was one of his plural wives. So we know that she was, in fact, in on it.
Lucy Walker, married to Joseph on May 1, 1843, at age 17 had this to say when she wrote about her plural marriage to Joseph:
So again, she only did it, because she believed Joseph Smith was God's prophet.
This is all redefining. Each of the people in history were redefined into roles. Joseph was redefined as the prophet, who could basically get away with anything he wanted as long as he convince everyone that God had commanded him to carry it out. Each woman who married him was redefined as Joseph’s wife, each was redefined as a disciple. Words were redefined to mean something that would guarantee their obedience. This wasn’t adultery, it was plural marriage. It wasn’t immoral, it was God’s commandment.
I grew up slotted into the role of the perfect Mormon disciple. And as such, my needs did not matter.
They didn’t matter.
My role as a disciple, as a missionary to those outside the church. My role as a wife meant I had to be subservient to my husband. It meant I had to raise my children to be little disciples also. I didn’t see their needs for a long time. I only saw their roles. They were redefined as their roles. And my worth was boiled down to dinners and diapers and staying quiet during Sunday school.
Spiritual abuse.
I wasn’t Angela. I was Sister (last name). Men are also redefined in the church. They’re redefined by their priesthood. It begins as young as 12. They’re redefined as deacons, and then as teachers and priests. They’re redefined as brothers or as elders or bishops, but they are not defined as people.
The roles mattered. The faces… not so much.
Obsession with Purity
This is important because the natural man that we’re supposed to put away is very much linked to sexual sins such as masturbation.
Masturbation is seen as really, really bad. You just don’t do it.
If you masturbate and you tell your bishop that you masturbate, you’ll be sitting in his office with the door closed on a regular basis while he tries to help you formulate a way to stop doing it.
He’ll try to make you feel bad about it, to seek forgiveness, and it will turn into a long, extended situation where you just feel really bad about yourself. In Mormonism, sexual sins are considered next to murder in seriousness.
Spencer W. Kimball had this to say about sexual sins in regards to women in particular: “…far-reaching is the effect of the loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained… It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.“
I was taught growing up that it was better to die, than to live if someone had raped me. My early morning seminary teacher told this story about a woman who was also a piano teacher. A stranger showed up at her door and tried to force her, using a knife to cut her fingers open, because he knew she was a pianist.
But somehow, she was able to talk him down, and he left.
My seminary teacher said that was the best possible outcome to the situation, because the piano teacher was able to keep her virtue. She was okay with that struggle and that pain.
It would have been better for her had she died struggling than if she’d survived an encounter like that having lost her virtue.
That is so messed up! But it’s what the church teaches, or at least, what it taught me. And it causes intense self-loathing. It forces you to rely on your religion for forgiveness in a way that keeps you emotionally stunted like a little child. You’ve got these one-one-one interviews, you're obsessing over your sexual purity, and with the church requiring you to reveal private matters that break down personal boundaries, it very much keeps you in a child-like state, to the point that you’re completely reliant on them to believe you're worthy in any way.
This obsession with purity is extremely damaging. It causes people to carry around massive amounts of guilt and shame. And that’s spiritual abuse.
It gets worse, though. Because this obsession with purity in the early church extends to blood line and race. In the Book of Mormon narrative, people who become wicked are cursed with a dark skin.
Joseph Smith gave the priesthood to a black man, but it caused so much friction with other church leaders, Elijah Abel was the last black man that Joseph ever gave the priesthood to. It was Brigham Young that put a full-on ban on that. There was already racism in the religion. The Book of Mormon itself is racist, but Brigham Young fully entrenched it. He made Utah a slave state.
Here’s one thing he taught:
So again, here’s priesthood being used to oppress people.
On another occasion, Brigham Young said:
Is it any wonder black people were not permitted to hold the priesthood or participate in temple ordinances until 1978? I mean, that’s some messed up stuff.
This condemnation of impurity, and then defining impurity in ways that it’s based on something a person can’t change, and that really isn’t even wrong, is so detrimental. It causes an artificial reliance on a spiritual leader to feel worthy, and it’s particularly damaging to those not embraced by the church due to their race, or gender-identity. Even people who are theologically unorthodox are seen as impure. So it can create a deep self-loathing that’s damaging.
It’s spiritual abuse.
There was one black woman in the early church named Jane Manning James who wanted to have the blessings of the temple. And the only way she could have those blessings was to be sealed to Joseph Smith as a servant. At her funeral in 1908, Church President Joseph F. Smith proclaimed she would receive all her temple blessings in the eternities and become a white and beautiful person (Matthias Cowley, Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life and Labors, 1909 p.581).
This obsession with purity was a cover for white supremacy.
Gaming the System
In case you’re wondering. In case you’ve not figured it out, this is not freedom!
Nothing about the Mormon concept of agency is freedom. It’s all about being obedient and doing what leadership says, to the point that even if you have a valid criticism or a valid reason why something is wrong, it doesn’t matter.
Wrong isn’t what you feel is wrong.
Wrong is what the leadership says is wrong. It’s set by the leadership which directly communicates with God. So you can see why I had a problem with this when I really dug into the history.
Emma didn’t want her husband taking other wives. She didn’t want him to practice polygamy, but she was forced to do it in order to be in good standing with God, because… it’s a religion built on spiritual abuse.
Back in 1841, at the age of 20, Zina Huntington Jacobs was taken as another one of Joseph Smith’s wives. She was married to another man at the time, but Joseph wanted her to be his wife also. And her husband, Henry Bailey Jacobs, was a member of the church.
He was aware of the plural marriage, and what he wrote in response was, "[W]hatever the Prophet did was right, without making the wisdom of God's authorities bend to the reasoning of any man." (Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness pg. 81-82)
That’s it. Right there. Whatever Joseph wanted: that was right. He even had people lie about polygamy.
Back then, in Nauvoo, polygamy was not legal. It was not something that was socially acceptable. If we look at the time and what was considered okay back then, nothing about what Joseph Smith was doing was normal or okay. Taking a bunch of wives was against the law, which is why he lied about it. And he had people all around him lying about it.
Eliza R. Snow, who was also married to Joseph Smith actually organized a petition in the summer of 1842 with a thousand female signatures denying Smith was a polygamist. She organized a campaign for him to lie and cover it up. As Secretary of the Ladies' Relief Society, she published a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy even though she was in a polygamist relationship with Joseph Smith at the time. William Clayton said Smith told him in February 1843 that Snow was one of his plural wives. So we know that she was, in fact, in on it.
Lucy Walker, married to Joseph on May 1, 1843, at age 17 had this to say when she wrote about her plural marriage to Joseph:
In the year 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said, "I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman." … He asked me if I believed him to be a Prophet of God. … He fully Explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage … that it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father's house. … [Joseph encouraged her to pray] "that the grave would kindly receive me that I might find rest on the bosom of my dear [recently deceased] mother … Why Should I be chosen from among thy daughters, Father I am only a child in years and experience." And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul. … [The marriage] was not a love matter—at least on my part it was not, but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world.
So again, she only did it, because she believed Joseph Smith was God's prophet.
This is all redefining. Each of the people in history were redefined into roles. Joseph was redefined as the prophet, who could basically get away with anything he wanted as long as he convince everyone that God had commanded him to carry it out. Each woman who married him was redefined as Joseph’s wife, each was redefined as a disciple. Words were redefined to mean something that would guarantee their obedience. This wasn’t adultery, it was plural marriage. It wasn’t immoral, it was God’s commandment.
I grew up slotted into the role of the perfect Mormon disciple. And as such, my needs did not matter.
They didn’t matter.
My role as a disciple, as a missionary to those outside the church. My role as a wife meant I had to be subservient to my husband. It meant I had to raise my children to be little disciples also. I didn’t see their needs for a long time. I only saw their roles. They were redefined as their roles. And my worth was boiled down to dinners and diapers and staying quiet during Sunday school.
Spiritual abuse.
I wasn’t Angela. I was Sister (last name). Men are also redefined in the church. They’re redefined by their priesthood. It begins as young as 12. They’re redefined as deacons, and then as teachers and priests. They’re redefined as brothers or as elders or bishops, but they are not defined as people.
The roles mattered. The faces… not so much.
Obsession with Purity
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3: 19)
This is important because the natural man that we’re supposed to put away is very much linked to sexual sins such as masturbation.
Masturbation is seen as really, really bad. You just don’t do it.
If you masturbate and you tell your bishop that you masturbate, you’ll be sitting in his office with the door closed on a regular basis while he tries to help you formulate a way to stop doing it.
He’ll try to make you feel bad about it, to seek forgiveness, and it will turn into a long, extended situation where you just feel really bad about yourself. In Mormonism, sexual sins are considered next to murder in seriousness.
Spencer W. Kimball had this to say about sexual sins in regards to women in particular: “…far-reaching is the effect of the loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained… It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.“
I was taught growing up that it was better to die, than to live if someone had raped me. My early morning seminary teacher told this story about a woman who was also a piano teacher. A stranger showed up at her door and tried to force her, using a knife to cut her fingers open, because he knew she was a pianist.
But somehow, she was able to talk him down, and he left.
My seminary teacher said that was the best possible outcome to the situation, because the piano teacher was able to keep her virtue. She was okay with that struggle and that pain.
It would have been better for her had she died struggling than if she’d survived an encounter like that having lost her virtue.
That is so messed up! But it’s what the church teaches, or at least, what it taught me. And it causes intense self-loathing. It forces you to rely on your religion for forgiveness in a way that keeps you emotionally stunted like a little child. You’ve got these one-one-one interviews, you're obsessing over your sexual purity, and with the church requiring you to reveal private matters that break down personal boundaries, it very much keeps you in a child-like state, to the point that you’re completely reliant on them to believe you're worthy in any way.
This obsession with purity is extremely damaging. It causes people to carry around massive amounts of guilt and shame. And that’s spiritual abuse.
It gets worse, though. Because this obsession with purity in the early church extends to blood line and race. In the Book of Mormon narrative, people who become wicked are cursed with a dark skin.
Joseph Smith gave the priesthood to a black man, but it caused so much friction with other church leaders, Elijah Abel was the last black man that Joseph ever gave the priesthood to. It was Brigham Young that put a full-on ban on that. There was already racism in the religion. The Book of Mormon itself is racist, but Brigham Young fully entrenched it. He made Utah a slave state.
Here’s one thing he taught:
...suppose we ... here declare that it is right to mingle our seed with the black race of Cain, that they shall come in with us and be partakers with us of all the blessings God has given to us. On that very day and hour we should do so, the Priesthood is taken from this Church and Kingdom and God leaves us to our fate. The moment we consent to mingle with the seed of Cain, the Church must go to destruction.
So again, here’s priesthood being used to oppress people.
On another occasion, Brigham Young said:
...if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane [sic] [i.e. black people] the only way he could get rid of it or have salvation would be to come forward & have his head cut off [and] spill his blood upon the ground. It would also take the life of his [c]hildren.
Is it any wonder black people were not permitted to hold the priesthood or participate in temple ordinances until 1978? I mean, that’s some messed up stuff.
This condemnation of impurity, and then defining impurity in ways that it’s based on something a person can’t change, and that really isn’t even wrong, is so detrimental. It causes an artificial reliance on a spiritual leader to feel worthy, and it’s particularly damaging to those not embraced by the church due to their race, or gender-identity. Even people who are theologically unorthodox are seen as impure. So it can create a deep self-loathing that’s damaging.
It’s spiritual abuse.
There was one black woman in the early church named Jane Manning James who wanted to have the blessings of the temple. And the only way she could have those blessings was to be sealed to Joseph Smith as a servant. At her funeral in 1908, Church President Joseph F. Smith proclaimed she would receive all her temple blessings in the eternities and become a white and beautiful person (Matthias Cowley, Wilford Woodruff: History of His Life and Labors, 1909 p.581).
This obsession with purity was a cover for white supremacy.
Gaming the System
There’s a right way to live and be happy.
It is choosing the right every day.
I will follow the teachings of Jesus.
They will help me and show me the way.
Choose the right way, and be happy,
I will always choose the right.
This is a church song I sang when I was little.
Naturally, if you’re taught from the cradle that the only way to be happy is to be obedient and never leave the church, you will be easy prey in a stratified system that oppresses anyone that isn’t a powerful priesthood-holding man.
In Mormonism, the priesthood is given to all worthy men ages 12 and older. Women cannot have it, which means that a priesthood holding 12-year-old boy has more authority from God than his adult mother.
Women just aren’t allowed to do certain things.
They aren’t allowed to hold certain callings or have power over men in any capacity. This stratified system invites spiritual abuse.
Talk about being surrounded by communities of believers. I mean, you’ve got a whole community of people who believe this. People reinforce the entrenched system with gossip, with doctrine, and with ostracism. They reinforce it by challenging your reputation, involving leadership, and by questioning your sanity if you reveal any doubts or speak up against the status quo.
When I was leaving, I had a non-Mormon neighbor who didn’t understand why it was a big deal. She thought all religions were beautiful and most have a messed-up past, but you just need to overlook it. She didn’t think spiritual abuse was real, so I couldn’t talk to her about it.
But then, most of my Mormon friends were just telling me I was overreacting, and none of this was a big deal.
To make matters worse, the financial benefits the church reaps from denying temple attendance to members unless they pay a full 10% of their income, puts the church in a place where they can game the internet.
There used to be several accurate sites on church history not run by the church itself. One easily accessible site still out there is Wikipedia. It has sources you can go to and it’s a good place to start, thankfully. But there are several valuable websites that are now gone, most likely because the church has used its legal department or other means to kill them.
Mormonthink was easily accessible back when I was researching, and a support community called New Order Mormon had good information on it. There was also wivesofjosephsmith.org, which was fantastic. Now when you google “Nauvoo Polygamy” for instance, wanting to find out about polygamy in the early church, you get this site with the url: josephsmithspolygamy.org, which was built by church apologists and is slanted to make the church look good.
The page for Fanny Alger on this website literally reads, “Fanny Alger—Evidence of Sexuality” as if sex is the only troubling aspect of her story. And while the website does use reliable quotes and sourced documents, everything is framed to cast doubt on the critics of early church polygamy. It twists everything.
For instance, it tries to cast doubt on whether the Fanny Alger affair even happened, the same way a lawyer would in a court room when he says, “Well, you don’t have video evidence of that. So… how do we know that really happened?”
That is truly how it comes across.
And… I mean, the Helen Mar Kimball page—this is a girl that married Joseph Smith when she was 14 years old, okay? That page is a masterclass in gaslighting.
They’ve got the reliable sources on there. They’ve got her quotes. What she faced was clearly spiritual abuse, but they turn it all around and make it sound like it’s okay.
I mean, Helen had her father pimp her out to the prophet at 14. Her father and her mother were sitting in a room with Joseph Smith, giving her to Joseph as a wife.
Do they talk about that? Do they talk about what a huge violation of trust it is that a parent would do that to a child?
No. They don’t.
Instead they rationalize that the marriage was totally fine, because her parents were okay with it.
The fact that Mormons can even read this website and be appeased shows how deeply ingrained spiritual abuse is in the religion. And with that I’m going to wrap this podcast episode up.
If you have any question, drop me a line.
Thank you for listening.
In Mormonism, the priesthood is given to all worthy men ages 12 and older. Women cannot have it, which means that a priesthood holding 12-year-old boy has more authority from God than his adult mother.
Women just aren’t allowed to do certain things.
They aren’t allowed to hold certain callings or have power over men in any capacity. This stratified system invites spiritual abuse.
Talk about being surrounded by communities of believers. I mean, you’ve got a whole community of people who believe this. People reinforce the entrenched system with gossip, with doctrine, and with ostracism. They reinforce it by challenging your reputation, involving leadership, and by questioning your sanity if you reveal any doubts or speak up against the status quo.
When I was leaving, I had a non-Mormon neighbor who didn’t understand why it was a big deal. She thought all religions were beautiful and most have a messed-up past, but you just need to overlook it. She didn’t think spiritual abuse was real, so I couldn’t talk to her about it.
But then, most of my Mormon friends were just telling me I was overreacting, and none of this was a big deal.
To make matters worse, the financial benefits the church reaps from denying temple attendance to members unless they pay a full 10% of their income, puts the church in a place where they can game the internet.
There used to be several accurate sites on church history not run by the church itself. One easily accessible site still out there is Wikipedia. It has sources you can go to and it’s a good place to start, thankfully. But there are several valuable websites that are now gone, most likely because the church has used its legal department or other means to kill them.
Mormonthink was easily accessible back when I was researching, and a support community called New Order Mormon had good information on it. There was also wivesofjosephsmith.org, which was fantastic. Now when you google “Nauvoo Polygamy” for instance, wanting to find out about polygamy in the early church, you get this site with the url: josephsmithspolygamy.org, which was built by church apologists and is slanted to make the church look good.
The page for Fanny Alger on this website literally reads, “Fanny Alger—Evidence of Sexuality” as if sex is the only troubling aspect of her story. And while the website does use reliable quotes and sourced documents, everything is framed to cast doubt on the critics of early church polygamy. It twists everything.
For instance, it tries to cast doubt on whether the Fanny Alger affair even happened, the same way a lawyer would in a court room when he says, “Well, you don’t have video evidence of that. So… how do we know that really happened?”
That is truly how it comes across.
And… I mean, the Helen Mar Kimball page—this is a girl that married Joseph Smith when she was 14 years old, okay? That page is a masterclass in gaslighting.
They’ve got the reliable sources on there. They’ve got her quotes. What she faced was clearly spiritual abuse, but they turn it all around and make it sound like it’s okay.
I mean, Helen had her father pimp her out to the prophet at 14. Her father and her mother were sitting in a room with Joseph Smith, giving her to Joseph as a wife.
Do they talk about that? Do they talk about what a huge violation of trust it is that a parent would do that to a child?
No. They don’t.
Instead they rationalize that the marriage was totally fine, because her parents were okay with it.
The fact that Mormons can even read this website and be appeased shows how deeply ingrained spiritual abuse is in the religion. And with that I’m going to wrap this podcast episode up.
If you have any question, drop me a line.
Thank you for listening.
