Cheryl Bruno is making both mainstream Mormon historian & polygamy skeptics upset. On the one hand, she says polygamy skeptics are making good points about original documents questioning the traditional narrative about Joseph Smith's polygamy. On the other hand, she upsets skeptics because she believes Joseph practiced polygamy. Should we be more careful about claims Joseph practiced polygamy? Check out our conversation...

https://youtu.be/_pxfcZaMHbg

Don't miss our other conversations with Chery!  https://gospeltangents.com/people/cheryl-bruno/

Copyright © 2024

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Giving Polygamy Deniers Credibility?

GT  00:35   I know a lot of people, especially in the RLDS Church, and some in the maybe the polygamy skeptics community, they look at Joseph and Emma, especially their public denials about Joseph's involvement in polygamy. So, I'd like to dive into those, because you have a really unique perspective on that. Where do you want to start?

Cheryl  1:10   Let me just say that we do sometimes call the RLDS, which is now Community of Christ. But back in the time we're talking about they were RLDS. So that's why we switch back and forth on saying sometimes RLDS, and when we're speaking of it today, it is Community of Christ.

GT  1:27  Right.

Cheryl  1:28   But I just want to make that clear. When we first started writing this book over two years ago, there was not this big controversy over whether Joseph Smith practiced polygamy or not. That has grown out of the past two years. So, the book doesn't directly speak to that controversy, but many of the things, especially Mark Tensmeyer’s chapter, have to do with the controversy. And so you can read this book if you're interested in that controversy, and it will give you some information on it. But it wasn't written specifically for that.

GT  2:06  Right.

Cheryl  2:07   Over the past two years, I have become acquainted with some of the people that do that try to do more scholarly work, going back to the original documents and saying that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. But he, in fact, spoke against it, and that Brigham Young and others of the Twelve and polygamy insiders were working behind Joseph Smith's back to develop this principle of polygamy. Then after Joseph Smith died, is when it actually came to the forefront. I personally do not believe that scenario. I believe there's enough evidence to show that Joseph did practice polygamy, but I feel that we should take these polygamy skeptics very seriously, because they are bringing up great points. They're looking at some of the old research that we've done and calling our attention to holes that we have in that and sometimes missteps that we've made.

GT  3:09  You even had an arm wrestle with Chris Blythe?

Cheryl  3:12  I did. Apparently, we settle our differences by arm wrestling now.

GT  3:20  Have you been working out? Is that why you beat Chris?

Cheryl  3:23  Yeah. But I think, well, some of the names, I'm not going to call out names or anything here in this interview, but some people who are Mormon historians in the scholarly community, just want to ignore the polygamy skeptics and not give them a platform.

GT  3:45  Yeah, they base a lot of the dismissals on old RLDS arguments and say that they haven't changed. But some of them have.

Cheryl  3:55  Right, right exactly, and originally, when they first started, there were many different factions in this polygamy skeptics group, where you would have some factions that would bring in other concepts, like, who killed Joseph Smith? Or the Salt Lake Temple was built by aliens, or the flat earth people. You had everyone across the board. That’s one reason why people thought that polygamy skeptics were just crackpots, because in some cases, they were associated with these other [groups.] I myself, I've written on Freemasonry, and I consider myself an expert on Freemasonry. Some of these people were saying, well, Joseph Smith was never a Freemason. They were connecting that with their argument that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. I actually did a podcast showing the documentation that Joseph Smith was a Freemason and telling them that when they connect that argument with the other, they're just hurting themselves. Because we do have much documentation showing that Joseph Smith was a Freemason. I think their argument that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy maybe has a little bit more kick to it. If they can just focus on that, then that's when historians should take note and to try to answer some of these questions. Because many of the questions are coming from primary documents, and we need to be able to explain those if we want to keep our narrative that Joseph practiced polygamy. We need to make an explanation of why we have some of the documents that we have.

 

 

Why Cheryl is Convinced of Joseph's Polygamy

GT  5:46  Okay. Where do you fit in the whole Joseph Smith practiced polygamy [question?] I mean, you think there's lots of evidence?

Cheryl  5:57  No, I think there's not lots of evidence. I always believed in the past that there was lots of evidence, and now I've come to feel that there's not lots of evidence. There is enough evidence to convince me that Joseph Smith definitely practiced polygamy, that he originated it, and he practiced it in the Mormon Church. It wasn't just Brigham that was originating it, or John C. Bennett, but I feel it comes down to Joseph Smith. So there's enough evidence to convince me. But I feel that our narrative around it has some holes and has some problems. And so the narrative we've always used to talk about Joseph Smith's polygamy may have some problems. Some of the evidence that we have used we can go back and trace it. Because the polygamy skeptics are going back and tracing the original documents and finding that they're not what we have always said they were. This is very interesting to me, and that's why I like to give them credence. Because they're finding so much, and I'd like to go back and look at the original documents. Because we can do this in a way that we've never been able to do before.

GT  7:04  Yeah, and thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers.

Cheryl  7:08  The Joseph Smith Papers. We can go to the Church History Library and easily look at scans of these documents. If we have troubles with the scans, we can actually go in. A person can show us the documents. There are many ways that we can address the documents that we have never been able to do before. I'd like to now go back and do those things and revise our narrative in in many ways. But I think that that's threatening to some people, because they don't want to entertain the notion that perhaps he never did practice polygamy. Then on the other side, there's people that are very ready to say, Joseph never practiced polygamy. It's a troubling doctrine. It would be easy to say, No. That wasn't Joseph Smith that did that. That wasn't our Prophet.

GT  7:58  It's just anti Mormon propaganda.

Cheryl  8:00  God would never have sanctioned something like that.

GT  8:04  Which is not a historical that's a religious argument.

Cheryl  8:06  That's a religious argument. But it's very easy to accept, because if you don't like polygamy, you don't want to see Joseph Smith practicing it. But I think that if we go back to the documents, if we use a scholarly approach, then we can have a better way of explaining and understanding Joseph Smith's polygamy.

GT  8:31  Okay, two questions there. There was a story that I don't remember very well. There was a situation where somebody, and I don't know if it was William Clayton or somebody else. Somebody came to Emma with evidence of Joseph's involvement with polygamy. Supposedly, Emma's response was, Well, then he was worthy of the death he died.[1] Are you familiar with that story?

Cheryl 9:03  I’m sorry, I'm not. I've heard the story before, but I've never seen the documentation for that, so I probably can't really comment on it.

GT 9:12  Yeah, because I was wondering.

Cheryl 9:13  Here's the thing. We have all these stories like that. Right? And so what these polygamy skeptics are saying is, well, let's go back and look. Where is the documentation for that? Is it just a story that originated in 1890? Does it go back? Where are we getting this from? So that's the first thing I would do if I was going to look into that, is, let's find where that originated. Sometimes you have to look back through several books. You might find it in one history, and they give you a footnote. So, you go back. You look at the other footnote, and then you look. Then maybe you come to the end of the chain, and it's not an original document. If not, we've got to throw it out.

GT  9:55  Or it's a late document.

Cheryl  9:57  Right, yeah. So, we've got to figure these things out. A lot of people think, a lot of historians will say, Oh, we've already done all that, but no, we have not. We have not done that. There are many cases where some of the polygamy skeptics have shown that we have repeated things other historians have said, and we haven't actually gone back to the original document, and it doesn't say it in the original document.

 

 

Reliability of Clayton Journals

GT  10:21  Well, another issue that I'd like to talk about is the William Clayton journals. There are some people who question their validity and reliability and whether they can be trusted. Of course, the Clayton journals are the best contemporary [evidence.] They're the most voluminous, I guess, contemporary evidence of polygamy. I remember I was doing. In fact, I asked Clair Barrus about this, and I was like, Okay, I need an image of the Clayton journals. And what popped up, to my surprise, and I will admit,