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The polygamy thing works great for new religions because it is a sure fire way to easily create more adherents from a small amount of stock. Indoctrinating children from birth is way easier than converting adults.
It also makes it way easier to convert some adults
Mostly male adults
Mostly.
It’s weird that a polygamy religion even recruits women, and that it did so so effectively that Mormonism is now a major and accepted religion.
Any man who claims he’s only polygamous for religious reasons is lying. We all know he just wants a harem of women in his bed.
Hey now don’t be bigoted. Some of us want harems with more than just plain old women.
This is why islam allows 4 wives
Now imagine how much the christian god’s mind was changed by the roman government
Thousands of Christians were martyred in the first centuries after Christs death. Often they were tortured and/or crucified.
Not exactly a punishment that was unique to the Christian.
My point is that they didn’t bend to the Roman government.
No, but eventually they would become the Roman government and then they bent a whole lot
How?
Roman emperor was the head of the church, so Christianity became a political tool to manage the population.
The Empire was politically managed by having it divided into two halves, a Greek speaking eastern half and a Latin speaking western half. Which ended up shearing Christianity into Catholic and Orthodox.
My favorite argument is that I was given access to Super God when I a child. Which gives me access to Super Heaven when I die. It’s waaaaay better that regular heaven. You keep praying to regular god or whatever, you mud dwelling peasant. I’ll be looking down on you from Super Heaven and laughing for Extra Eternity.
I believe that Satan has a hold of you.
I believe that the Lord God has sent me here.
And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people.
-“I Believe” from The Book of Mormon (the musical)
I see that show every time I go to NYC, its required.
I think organized religion is always a risk for causing trouble, but this Mormon God’s flexibility is exactly the kind of anti-extremist leadership I’d like to see more of if we are going to keep doing the religion thing. Now if only he would get cool with beer and coffee.
Utah has a legal limit on the amount of alcohol that can be in cocktails because of those puritans lmfao
Now if only he would get cool with beer and coffee.
And birthdays and people who don’t believe in him
Note that slavery was abolished in 1865 and the civil rights movement started in 1950s-1960s.
And in 1978 mormon god said that black men can have the priesthood which is mormon god’s way of saying black men are treated as equals now. (Women, regardless of race, never were treated equally and still aren’t).
The Mormon church likes to celebrate the fact that black men are treated equally but they never mention that this was 110 years after slavery was abolished and still ~3 decades after the civil rights movement started. Mormon God sure has great timing.
But polygamy is actually still alive and well in the Mormon church, and i mean the actual Mormon church and not an offshoot. The Mormons stopped practicing polygamy outright but it is still alive in how they actually treat marriage.
Under mormonism they marry you for eternity. Except if your spouse wants a divorce or they die then you are no longer married from a civil law perspective. If a woman wants to get married again then she needs to have special permission from the Mormon prophet which i believe they do to release her from the Mormon eternal sealing. To do this they also try to get the ex-husbands approval (and too bad if he’s dead). Where this gets interesting is that if the husband wants to remarry then he can. No strings attached. He can have as many eternal sealings as he wants. No permission needed from the prophet or wife. Just can have only one civil marriage at a time but if you get a civil divorce then a man can easily get another eternal marriage and a woman cannot. Basically this means that Mormons are letting men practice polygamy in the afterlife. It’s wild.
But this just one example of how women aren’t treated equally in the Mormon church. And don’t get me started on LGBTQIA+. But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you. They believe that being gay is a sin and you can only be accepted at arm’s reach if you’re gay, but never do anything gay, and conform to your gender. Telling someone you accept them while believing part of them they can’t change is a sin is Olympic level mental gymnastics. But welcome to Mormonism!
I don’t think anyone was framing Mormons as the good guys
Even by the standards of organized religion, Mormonism is very weird. Cf Ruby Franke. The early history is absolutely wild, and in Utah they still have tons of money and power and everyone acts like it’s just a normal thing.
The early history is absolutely wild, and in Utah they still have tons of money and power and everyone acts like it’s just a normal thing.
Replace Utah with USA, and it’s the same thing with a lot of shit.
To be fair, Joseph Smith wrote “The Articles of Faith” well before polygamy was abolished, which states:
- We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
So the belief that polygamy still has value may remain. Or it may not. It’s hard to tell without a change in the law.
Mormons still practise polygamy sort of. They have “sealings” which is marriage forever, not just “'til death do us part”. If a widow is to remarry, she needs to break the sealing to her dead spouse if she wishes to be sealed to get new one (or she could stay sealed to her first spouse and only marry the second until death).
A widower, however, doesn’t need to break the previous sealing. He can be sealed to multiple women no problem. Essentially polygamy, but only in the afterlife.
Can confirm. If any Mormons are reading this and think it’s made up-- ASK YOUR BISHOP what happens if you were to die or have a civil divorce and you or your spouse wants to remarry in the temple.
They don’t teach this openly, and your bishop may beat around the bush but this is all true.
I’ve hung out with a bunch of Mormons and while they personally felt it was weird now, because they have grown up in a monogamous nation, the church itself would definitely gear up to switch back, if it was legal.
That would be a process, though. They are currently taught that it is morally fine, but following the laws of the land is important, and basically treat it like part of their history. On an individual level, the ones I know seemed fine with that, even those that had an active role in the church.
It’s also not that strange in more secular contexts, see this article about polyamory in general. So I think it makes sense for people to be okay with the concept of plural marriage, while not wanting to engage with it themselves (e.g. it wouldn’t work for me).
I suspect most of the time, non monogamy via religion is going to be shitty. It’s probably going to favor men and be controlling.
I know many people who do consensual non monogamy in real life. Personally I don’t like the DADT or strictly-hierarchical modes
People who aren’t familiar with it say some pretty wild things about it.
My take is if you can have multiple friends, and you’re okay with your friends having friends, you’re like 80% of the way there.
The last 20% is likely to crash into “it just is, stop asking me to introspect this is uncomfortable and I’m mad!”
Why is polygamy even illegal in the first place?
Because gender bounded polygamy causes serious social issues. Look at the FLDS for examples of it in modern day. My stance is to remove the gender bounding and enforce strict minimum age to marry laws. But yeah, 18th century USA wasn’t going to let women have multiple husbands much less let men have multiple husbands and women have multiple wives.
Yup, I think we should change the whole notion of marriage. Basically, the government would provide sets of contracts that grant certain privileges for certain responsibilities, like tax benefits for sharing financial responsibility. People can pick and choose among the various contracts, and there could be a “marriage” bundle that roughly corresponds to today’s notion of marriage. Marriage than becomes a religious ceremony that people are free to define themselves, separately from any legal commitments.
This way you don’t need prenups or whatever, you only sign the documents each party is comfortable with. If you’re in a polyamorous relationship, you might combine finances with half of your partners, share hospital visitation rights with a separate half, etc, and you could marry all or some of them. Custody of children would be between biological parents or, if waived, assigned legal parents/guardians based on the contracts signed.
That’s a bit complicated, but it would make things a lot more flexible. Individual contracts could be limited in number of people involved, but you could choose to sign different contracts with different people.
That’s why Scientologists > Mormons
I think Mormons are what Scientology wants to become: Enough power and money to control an entire state government while being accepted as regular Americans. (Mitt Romney)
The scientologists did manage to bend the arm of the entire federal government (hence my remark above which apparently irked some mormons).
See Operation Snow White if you’re not familiar with the story. It’s far from the only thing that sect has done.
I don’t think it was Mormons upset about your post that caused down votes but your claim that Scientologists are greater than Mormons. Mormons are the greater cult.
