What is the best explanation for polygamy from a non-Mormon view? Dr. Larry Foster from Georgia Tech gives his best explanation for the practice.
Larry: So it wasn’t like God suddenly said, “You should start polygamy.” Joseph Smith asks God, according to the revelation that was written, recorded in 1843 that is now section 132 of the Utah Mormon Doctrine and Covenants, he asks, “Why did you allow the Hebrew patriarchs like Abraham, Solomon, and David and all these other people to have plural wives?” Then God tells him, “It’s time to reintroduce the system in a different form in preparation for the millennium.” That’s reading a few extra things into it.
Then similarly, the argument that he was just mentally disturbed, there’s some definite possibilities there, but you have to ask, is there an assumption that anybody who would think that they wanted to introduce polygamy would automatically have to be mentally disturbed? Then you’d have to say, “Well, all those people in the Bible were mentally disturbed.” I don’t think that that would hold up.
But I do think that there are some definite psychological peculiarities about Joseph Smith that I’ve argued–several different interpretations that might work to try to help explain how unusual psychology and narcissistic and possibly bipolar manic depressive tendencies might have contributed in sort of encouraging him to move toward polygamy, and maybe sincerely believe it was God’s will, but mainly, might have been his own desires that were sort of feeding back into, “It’s coming from God,” sort of thing.
Check out our conversation….
