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Ep. 87: Exposing the Expositor Pt. 3 (For more on the McMurrin family story)
Ep. 58: Sariah and the Matriarchs
Chapter Index
0:00 Intro
1:30 Did Denver Snuffer put Michelle up to this?
8:05 Context of Jacob chapter 2
22:30 Was Lehi a polygamist?
26:20 What is “celestial plural marriage”?
34:05 Is monogamy selfish?
36:00 Equality of men and women vs. a hierarchy
41:20 Which of Brigham’s doctrines does Benjamin disagrees with?
48:05 Brigham’s Adam-God doctrine
1:00:10 Is polygamy required for exaltation?
1:03:10 Polygamy devalues marriage
1:05:35 Keys and marriage
1:10:10 Blood atonement
1:19:42 The question of racism
1:26:00 The question of slavery
1:38:50 Young girls and polygamy
1:49:50 The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy
1:52:10 The Restoration without polygamy
2:01:00 Agreeing that The Book of Mormon is anti-polygamy
2:03:30 Outro
Transcript
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome back to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy for the second half of my conversation with Benjamin Schaeffer. I know we left you on a bit of a cliffhanger last week, so I’m excited to jump right back in there. I want to again. Give a huge shout out to Benjamin Schaffer, um, and thank, thanks, Benjamin for coming and showing up the way you did. I really, I really appreciate it. I hope that it will be the first of many conversations with, um, if there are any other people that I’ve invited many people on who really oppose what I’m doing, who are either members of the church who are very, um, in favor of pulling. You’re very bullish on polygamy or fundamentalist, and I want to continue to extend that invitation. I really do appreciate engagement. And again, I hope that the, um, convivial, um, tone of the conversation that Benjamin and I had can be, um, followed in the comments back and forth. I really like it when we can talk about ideas and engage while We are seeing one another as fellow children of God, who are all just trying to do our best as we walk this path. I want to again remind anybody if you feel like you could, um, donate to help this podcast. It is deeply, deeply appreciated. Thank you so much to all of those who have. And with no more being said, here’s the second half of my conversation with Benjamin Schafer.
[01:29] Benjamin Schaffer: My other really big question was, did Denver Snuffer or Phil Davis or someone else or both put you up to this? Because I was concerned that the whole polygamy denial was specifically to give Phil Davis or Denver Snuffer or one of these other cultists power in a movement that I believe is strongly supported. And my concern is, is that I, I see that Joe Smith never lived polygamy, whole movement as essentially being propped up by these cultists. And I thought, OK, what’s your connection to all of this? Because that’s, that was my accusation and my real concern.
[02:02] Michelle: OK, I will give you my answer. The challenge is, other than telling people, come talk to anyone in my family, come talk to my church leaders, come to, you know, like, go ask um anyone who knows Denver Snuffer or Phil Davis, go ask them so I can tell you exactly. So, throughout 2020 and 2021, I was very, I was going to leave the church. I was going through extremely difficult times, and I was appalled by appalled by the church’s reaction after already seeing a lot of problems, right? Some, um, so a member of, I didn’t even Know what the doctrine of Christ was, but a guy named Dustin Smith, who since he passed on, who I have met, who I met a few times, he befriended me online and kept inviting me to things and was actually really supportive when I was going through hard times. Full
[02:46] Benjamin Schaffer: disclosure friend of mine, he’s the one who invited me to go meet Phil Davis.
[02:51] Michelle: OK, so he just kept inviting me to gatherings and at one point when I finally was recovered enough that I was like, OK, it would be nice to be around people. We went to one of these gatherings and I had no idea who the guy was. I like, and so I heard Phil Davis, um, teach. I didn’t know that was his name. And personally, I was massively unimpressed and I just was like, I don’t like this. And then when I was talking to people afterward, it felt to me, and I, and I’m hesitant to say this because there are a lot of people that are probably maybe in those meetings that I, you know, I don’t, but just my experience was when I was talking to people afterward, it felt to me like the scriptures I would want to discuss, they weren’t very familiar with, but they kind of had their hobby horse scriptures that they knew really well that seemed to be. So that was the one and only meeting I ever went to with anything like that and was like, OK, this isn’t, this isn’t for me. So that was my experience. That’s the extent of my experience with Doctor Christ. Other than I’ve come to know more people since then who, who I haven’t, you know, like, like I don’t, I don’t have, I, I just have always been a member of the church. I was even after 2020 and the time I felt by the Lord told to stay in the church, because I was just saying, tell me where to go. What’s better? Where can I go, you know, and I was, I was very strongly told to stay in the church. So that’s my experience with the Doctrine of Christ, the full extent of it. And then, um, I mean, people did add me to Facebook groups where conversations were being had where I would engage sometimes. And so when people say I’m a member of the Doctrine of Christ, I always am like, do they mean the Facebook group that someone added me to? Like, so that’s my full extent with the Doctor of Christ. It sounds like you have.
[04:28] Benjamin Schaffer: There is a larger movement though, right? Denver Snuffer, right? He was trying to stay. Denver Snuffer for a long time was trying to stay. I’m, I’m a faithful member of the church. I’m not going anywhere until he got excommunicated. He was absolutely in the church, and I was a very big fan of his for a long time, ever since he came out with the first book, The Second Comforter, right? Very big fan of his. He teaches a lot of good stuff, but That doesn’t mean that.
[04:53] Michelle: I was finishing up Doctrine of Christ. That is, I was gonna say it sounds to me like you have as much or more association with Doctrine of Christ than I have. I’ve been to, I went to a total of one meeting. And then, you know, whatever has happened since that, I have no idea. Then, on the other hand, with Denver Sefer, I did feel very led by the Lord to his first book, which really saw I was reading in the Book of Mormon, learning things through the scriptures that were hard for me to think, how can I think I know this when, you know, so his book served as a second witness. To me and really blessed me right when it came out. And then when, um, I, I was sad that he was excommunicated just because I don’t like excommunication, you know? But, and, and there were people who we would meet occasionally who would invite us to something. I just never felt any I have, I’ve studied enough with Abraham Gileotti, who also was excommunicated to know that those movements, and again, I don’t want to offend anyone, because I think there are marvelous people everywhere, but also there can be, um, kind of a Energy in all of these movements that’s like a almost a spiritual. Um, competition in a way or what I wanna be on a platform or I wanna put people on the platform, where are you and your like I just never felt drawn to any of this, so I didn’t meet Denver Stuffer for the first time until I was over a year into my podcast. I met him one time. And then I’ve met him one more time since then and and that’s my association with Denver Snuffer. So that’s, so I am completely only ever a member of the church and any interaction with the others are have been very minuscule and incidental and only because there was some overlap and like like part of the reason I stopped I. I, I was really disappointed when Denver Snuffer was talking about Section 132 and saying how it came from these different like someone sent me one of his podcasts or said, Oh, you mean on blogs. I never read. All I did was read his first book, and then I read his last book. That’s all I’ve ever read of Denver Sneffer. When I read his blog about that, I was like, you think that 1:32 was of God? OK.
[06:54] Benjamin Schaffer: I’m not very really weird take on it and by revelation he’s
[06:57] Michelle: now
[06:57] Benjamin Schaffer: in a totally different way.
[06:59] Michelle: Yeah. So I have had him on the podcast, which was, I guess, the maybe the 2nd time I had interacted with him at all. So, so that’s my association. So no, I’m totally doing this. Like I really did feel like my experience is just genuine. I lost my two little girls, felt like, called to do this, felt like that was, was told that was part of the reason that I was always meant to have them, but I was meant to do this so they couldn’t be here. They’re, you know, like, and I was called to do this and then. Started out with polygamy is not of God even though Joseph Smith did it, Joseph made a mistake, then progressed to where I am now through the evidence. So I’m completely sincere if that answers the question. I hope people will believe that because there’s nothing I can do to
[07:42] Benjamin Schaffer: Right. And the other, the other thing though that that is a tricky thing is that the lens we bring really does make a huge difference on the outcome. This is uh something George Bernard Shaw said. He said, uh, no one believes the Bible means what it says. Every man believes the Bible says what he means.
[08:00] Michelle: Sure, we all have context. We all have to have it and I
[08:02] Benjamin Schaffer: know I have it too, you know, it’s all about context. I actually wrote a whole article on um Jacob 2 and 3. Um, um, called Context is Everything, where I tried to explain that I think the context does not point to monogamy.
[08:17] Michelle: So what is your context for Jacob 231?
[08:22] Benjamin Schaffer: Um, well, I’ve got my scriptures here. Let’s see which one’s 31. I mean, I know the whole chapter pretty well, but I don’t know, I
[08:29] Michelle: don’t
[08:29] Benjamin Schaffer: remember exactly.
[08:29] Michelle: I just feel like 30 gets all of the attention and we kind of leave 31, 32, 33,
[08:36] Benjamin Schaffer: and 34, 1st, I’d like to say before I even get there that I think it’s in context. And what is that context I think is broader than just the is broader even than the whole chapter. The context, um. Is that uh this is an Old Testament polygamist Torah observant people. That um had things like leverett marriage in the law which commanded polygamy in many instances
[09:02] Michelle: so funny when people say that. OK,
[09:03] Benjamin Schaffer: I recognize that some people are like, oh no, they don’t have to do that, you know, I remember thinking this rather funny. There’s this ceremony called Khaliza that Orthodox Jews still do because most, most Jews, not all, but most Jews are monogamous. There are, there are some polygamist Jews, but by and large, most of them are monogamous and um. There’s a ceremony called Khaliza, where when a man dies, his widow is supposed to go to his nearest relation, or at least a brother or, or, or if he doesn’t have one, an uncle or.
[09:32] Michelle: And generally, it’s always the younger brother, not the married brother. It’s very, very rare
[09:38] Benjamin Schaffer: what she does is she takes off his shoes and spits in his face.
[09:44] Michelle: No on the ground. Sits on the ground. They say spits in the face is a mistranslation. But they, they, she spits on the ground.
[09:51] Benjamin Schaffer: Some people spit in the face.
[09:53] Michelle: I, I, I studied it quite extensively and I only ever
[09:57] Benjamin Schaffer: heard and my point is, I think it’s hilarious that they’ve turned a punishment into a ritual. Literally, the entire point is, if this, if this guy is not man enough to be a polygamist and take care of this family, then you should you should take off his shoes. You should throw them at us spit on him. You should run him out the gates of your city. You should call him he who hath had his shoe loose because you know this is not an honorable man in Israel. You should, you know, it is like banishment basically. And now they’re turning it into like a ceremony, you just do it because why? I don’t know, like because we love monogamy more than we love the rams.
[10:33] Michelle: It’s usually a younger brother. It has nothing to do with polygamy. Where it comes from is the story of Judah and Tamar, which the story took place before the law was substantiate was was written, and Judah and Tamara, you know that story because that’s
[10:49] Benjamin Schaffer: pretty, that’s pretty bad story.
[10:51] Michelle: Well, and, and
[10:53] Benjamin Schaffer: so Judah
[10:53] Michelle: was supposed to give the young, and it’s supposed to be the younger brother. So the fact that that’s the best example
[10:59] Benjamin Schaffer: because somebody’s younger doesn’t mean they’re not married. My younger brothers are married. I mean,
[11:05] Michelle: the woman has to be childless. If she’s not childless, then it’s, I mean, I mean, it’s disallowed by the law explicitly. You can’t marry your brother’s wife, so she has to be childless, and then it’s only to have a child and it’s almost like if you look up Khalia, it is the younger brother and that’s. It was interpreted in that lot too. And that’s the story of Judah. He was supposed to give the younger brothers, like Onan, and then a younger brother again, right? That, that they didn’t carry out. And it was also, it came from a context where women were considered, considered property. So the family would pay the bride price
[11:42] Benjamin Schaffer: was highly patriarchal.
[11:44] Michelle: Purchased the woman and her role, the reason the family purchased her was to provide the descendants, right? So if she hadn’t fulfilled her role for which she was purchased, the family got to keep trying to use her for her purpose for which she was purchased. So it’s not a, it’s a, it’s not a godly law. It’s a societal law, right? We don’t, the law right before it has something to do with if your slave. He wants to stay with you after his 7 years are up. You hammer his ear to the, to the all with a, with a post, right? And he goes. And maybe that’s, well, it says you hammer him to the all of the door, right? That’s how you pierce his ear as a symbol. And then, and then there’s then one before after it, it’s something to do with an ox, I believe. I can’t remember. I’ve looked into all of this. It’s just not fresh in my mind. We also have Of the law that if, um, two men are fighting and the wife of one grabs the testicles of the enemy, her hand needs to be cut off. So it’s funny to me that we look to these random
[12:40] Benjamin Schaffer: Torahs. I love the Torah. I love the I love the,
[12:47] Michelle: you cannot claim that the Bible commands polygamy and using lever at marriage to try to claim. Like the fact that that’s the best 132 clearly says that God commanded Abraham to become polygamist. That’s biblically completely inaccurate. And so when we say God never commanded polygamy, and the best example is Leverett marriage, that just shows how like bottom of the, oh, kind of, well, there, it could be that lever. Marriage might in some instances perhaps result in polygamy, maybe. So therefore, God commands polygamy. So anyway, that’s,
[13:19] Benjamin Schaffer: there’s also like the passages and kings and Samuel that uh that even that the church likes to quote, which says that I, the Lord gave unto your wives and I would have given you more. The Lord did it.
[13:31] Michelle: You know that’s from Nathan, right? And I’ve done a whole on that as well, so we don’t have to go into look,
[13:35] Benjamin Schaffer: there’s a whole bunch of things. To me it’s not about one obscure thing. It’s like all over the place. So yes, I see what I see is, is what I, what I see you trying to do when we talk about the context of Jacob 2 is that I’m like, OK, so the entire scriptures. are constantly full of polygamy all over the place and analogies about polygamy, like, for example, Christ in this church that we talked about earlier as as literally and almost all of these righteous analogies or the analogy about the covenant of Israel is always this marriage covenant. All marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage all over the place. I don’t see lots of divorce, divorce, divorce all over the place being the primary thing. I see marriage
[14:14] Michelle: but I do see Adam and Eve.
[14:19] Benjamin Schaffer: We’ve got a big difference there.
[14:21] Michelle: I see Adam and Eve and then I see Lamec, who was the first one who took multiple wives, and then I see um but but
[14:30] Benjamin Schaffer: but Bible in English and you think Adam and Eve are names. Adam and Eve are titles and in and in Hebrew Hava H V H hava, which is we translate as Eve, is a plural word. I don’t think Adam and Eve were monogamists.
[14:45] Michelle: you been taught that Adam just brought one. Well,
[14:49] Benjamin Schaffer: right now, the lecture at the Veil, right, he says, and Adam brought one of his wives with him who such and such, right? But, but everything from Jewish midrashes to plenty of other statements we bringing me on seemed to indicate to me that there were definitely multiple wives here involved. There’s Lilith who gets named, and Eve is the generic term, and there’s also a Sarah, uh, which is why Sarah was renamed Sarah instead of Serai. Um, that gets talked about in some of these other documents. Now, again, not just Genesis and the King James Version, but I see this context throughout history.
[15:28] Michelle: And so I think I do want to know what context, OK, I do want to know the context you read. We can just focus specifically on 31, but we can also go through 35, like 31 to 25. I mean, Jacob 231 through 35, I think don’t get. Enough focus and so I just wanna, and then we can talk and then I have other questions. I do want to have like have another discussion I think it’d be fascinating. So you can just
[15:46] Benjamin Schaffer: 3135. OK, so I’ve got it right here. Jacob 2:31-35, for behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem. Yeah and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands. And I will not suffer, sith Lord of hosts, of the cries of the fair daughters of this people which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, should come up unto me against the men of my people, say the Lord of hosts, for they shall not lead away the captive lead away captive the the daughters of my people because of their tenderness. Say I shall visit them with a sore curse, even under destruction, for they shall not commit whoredoms like unto them of old, sayeth the Lord of hosts. And now behold my brethren and ye know that these commandments were given to our Father Lehi. Wherefore ye have known them before, and ye have come under great condemnation, for ye have done these things which you ought not to have done. Behold, you have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. You have broken the hearts of your tender wives and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them, and the sobbings of their hearts, ascend unto God against you, because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you. Many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.
[16:57] Michelle: So what is your context when you read verse 30, which says, so the entire preface before that is saying having many wives in a compaines is an abomination. Having more than one wife is an abomination.
[17:10] Benjamin Schaffer: I
[17:10] Michelle: reject
[17:11] Benjamin Schaffer: it. That’s why Jacobs it in your point of view, and I don’t see that.
[17:17] Michelle: We’ll just go to 24 people and
[17:19] Benjamin Schaffer: that’s the term he used. Whores are being committed.
[17:23] Michelle: He says, behold or behold, behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, sayeth the Lord. That’s pretty clear. We go down to verse 34, if I will sayeth the Lord of hosts, raise up seat unto me, and we could definitely talk about this. I will command my people. I will command my people, otherwise they shall hearken unto these things. For behold, I The Lord have seen the sorrow and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem and in all the lands of my people. And it goes on the entire rest of the chapter talking about the God giving the reason for the command. God giving the reason why, um, having many wives and concubines is, is an abomination that is forbidden. So, so that seems to always be ignored. So the con anyway, you go ahead and respond, then I’ll tell you my thoughts.
[18:14] Benjamin Schaffer: I would respond to that by saying, I think you see the context very differently than I do here. Were there horrible things that happened among these people? Absolutely. There was clearly violence. He talks about being led away captive. I assume that that means literally kidnapping and rape. Um, to be led away captive because of their weakness, because of their tenderness. I’m like, OK, so these people are literally abducting people.
[18:37] Michelle: Um, well, or, or we could even turn it into an early Utah when The leaders of the missionaries would go abroad and say, no, we’re not, we’re not polygamists. Look, here’s section, here’s Section 101 in our doctrine and covenants. Then the people are led away to Utah, where there’s not really an escape, and all of a sudden surprise, you have to be married to like you have to be married to this man to pay back the perpetual immigration fund, or you have to be married to this man or you won’t eat. That happened all the time in early Utah. That sounds like being led away captive to me.
[19:12] Benjamin Schaffer: Interesting. Again, history that I would disagree with on several points. I mean, like Wilfred Woodruff baptized more people in England than anybody basically, and the publications that you can read in the Millennial Star published in England that talk about plural marriage are many. Many defenses, you know what I mean, um, and so maybe it depends on what year you’re saying that you were OK, um, and is a good example, but I, I, OK,
[19:44] Michelle: um, and I have I’ve done
[19:44] Benjamin Schaffer: I’m not saying that nobody ever felt like they didn’t understand what was happening or but it does seem a little bit shocking to me for people not to have been a little bit more knowing about that. I mean, there’s people now who say, I never even heard of a Sears stone. The church lied to me. The church told me there was no, and I’m like, no, it’s, it’s, it’s there. Like I understand that some people are ignorant.
[20:05] Michelle: Well, I think that that’s like, like I, like there was a very poor family in Scotland and then their name escapes me, maybe I can add it later, but um they were very poor. I believe he was blind, so wasn’t able to work. They sent their two children, their two oldest children, she was 14 or 15 and her little brother on the perpetual immigration fund to come to Zion like like the missionaries told them to send them, right? Her the little girl gets here and within just a few months of being in Utah is married to an older man with many rights, right? It was. 14 or 15, it was very often the story with my great great grandmother very often that or great great great grandmother, the unprotected girls whose fathers had passed away, right? So it’s it’s like, like, and there was no escape from Utah there was so so it’s an interesting thing to consider how these things might apply because I guess my question is. Knowing what how God talks about the knowing God’s reason for always forbidding polygamy is because God cares about women specifically.
[21:09] Benjamin Schaffer: I’m saying just the opposite. I’m saying I think that. Confusing celestial plural marriage with whoredoms, kidnapping, and violence, I think it’s a very, very big difference. And, and, and were these were these people doing something evil? Definitely there’s one thing I think that I definitely agree with you on in the context of Jacob 2. Jacob 2 was a situation where prophet was getting up and condemning wicked people, OK? And I just think that when you’re a prophet and you get up there to condemn wickedness. And to say, this will not be allowed anymore. We’re putting a stop to this wickedness. I would just say that in the context of the scriptures, never ever is that the time to introduce to them a higher, more celestial law. You don’t take the most wicked, most violent, most, um, disobedient people and say you’re not higher law. You’ve been living this polygamous society for thousands. years. But now, I’m gonna give you this high revelation. I’m gonna reveal to you what celestial marriage truly is. No, he’s condemning wickedness. Now you and I might disagree on what that wickedness is, but I think we both agree that he’s condemning wickedness. He’s not revealing higher truths to an enlightened people who are prepared for the higher law, right? He’s condemning.
[22:25] Michelle: He’s reminding people of the laws that had already been given to them because if you read the scriptures through one of the main reasons that Lehi was led to warn the people in Jerusalem and then led to leave Jerusalem was because of the polygamy that they were practicing in Jerusalem,
[22:44] Benjamin Schaffer: right? And I’ve heard that you don’t believe that Lehi was a polygamist then, which I find. Because the context of a guy with an old woman wife who’s clearly past childbearing with 4 adult sons, goes in 4 adult sons, goes into the wilderness, and then as soon as they go back to Jerusalem because they were told to get wives, to raise up seed, all of a sudden he has 2 new children, only a few years later. I’m sorry, makes it almost physically impossible unless there was a miracle, in which case, why didn’t they mention the miracle that somehow Sarah had 2 new children in her old age. It seems pretty obvious to me that he would have taken a second wife there, um.
[23:24] Michelle: So I have, I have an episode that I did on Soraya, I believe it’s called Soraya and the Matriarchs plus 2 Claims or something like that. I’ll, I’ll put a link to it, that covers these exact things. So she had 4 unmarried sons, which means they were all, you can look up the age of marriage in the in the Jewish context. They were all teenagers. Right? And she went on to have two younger children. I was pregnant at the same time as my daughter-in-law.
[23:53] Benjamin Schaffer: Right, so you can have a big gap
[24:02] Michelle: between the two. Well, we don’t know all of the children that we know aren’t right, so, so. To claim that Soraya, like we think of Lehi and Soraya as these old people, that doesn’t make any sense. They had 4 teenage sons, right, who were not yet married. Their oldest child was not yet married. Well,
[24:15] Benjamin Schaffer: they all got married and had children at the same time as the two younger children were born. But you’re saying that’s possible. You can just overlaps like I did it, yeah.
[24:24] Michelle: My mom did it. Yeah, I’m the same age as my niece. And it’s very common when, when we’re not using birth control. Having a 20 to 25 year gap between your oldest and your youngest, if you continue having children is not at all unique, especially when you consider, I didn’t have my first until I was 22. And in this, in this context, that would have been very late. They could have started having children at 18.
[24:48] Benjamin Schaffer: And again, I’m not necessarily saying. That my interpretation is the only possible one. I, I think you can reasonably hold the view that you do. I still think that It doesn’t make it a great example to try to say Lehi was a monogamist. I don’t see that. Um, could
[25:06] Michelle: have been it’s
[25:07] Benjamin Schaffer: possible. You’re saying it’s possible maybe, but I don’t think it likely, um, and but I don’t think it’s this positive way.
[25:18] Michelle: Yeah, and I won’t take the time to go through all the scriptures, but Lehi was commanded that they should only have one wife. And if you count that, that, that was part of what he was commanded to be brought out of Jerusalem. That was part of the abominations. They had to flee in order to raise up seed, which means raise up a covenant people to God by obeying the commandments that God established. So it says in verse
[25:38] Benjamin Schaffer: 3. I think you’re reading something that isn’t there. I don’t think that was the commandments. They are violating the commandment of Father Lehi, but I don’t think the commandment was monogamy. Um, I think monogamy was is entirely out of context for any non-Roman or non-Greek civilization, uh, at least until almost modern times. Polygamy was generally something that happened in almost every culture in the world, and so I don’t, I don’t see it there,
[26:01] Michelle: but it’s
[26:01] Benjamin Schaffer: a modern anachronism we’re trying to put in there because we want monogamy.
[26:07] Michelle: Slavery happens in every culture. War and genocide happen in every culture. Prostitution happen in every culture. We’re supposed to be a higher elevated covenant culture that does away with things that are not godly,
[26:20] Benjamin Schaffer: and that’s why, that’s why we have celestial marriage instead of polygamy.
[26:26] Michelle: Right, and so it’s interesting. So, can you tell me where in Doctrine Covenants 132, which was the revelation given by God for this principle, where does it talk about celestial plural marriage?
[26:37] Benjamin Schaffer: The whole thing.
[26:39] Michelle: No, because you said that Joseph condemned constantly polygamy, plural marriage, spiritual wifery. We condemned
[26:46] Benjamin Schaffer: the various kinds that are justified. So for example, some of the things people have justified are marriage and divorce, right? They make the law of no effect because they, they think they can put aside their wife and take another, um, and the law doesn’t permit that. Jesus talks about this, you know.
[27:05] Michelle: So Jacob too explicitly condemns many wives and concubines, having many wives and concubines, which is exactly what the doctrine is called in 132. It’s called the doctrine of having met the principle and practice and doctrine of having many wives and concubines, right? But it never mentioned celestial plural marriage because I think that when Joseph, every time he talked about it, he used every term he could think of. He lumped it all in together. Having more than one wife is all of these things whoredoms, um, adultery, spiritual wifery, polygamy. He lumped it all in and there wasn’t yet the term many wives and concubines. I think that’s a term that was invented to try to justify why Joseph condemned everything else. And if, if it were then
[27:49] Benjamin Schaffer: you’re saying you think Joseph.
[27:53] Michelle: If it were this highest holiest doctrine called celestial plural marriage, then I would expect that in the revelation God gave about it, it would name it by the correct name. God would know what it was called.
[28:06] Benjamin Schaffer: Right, and that’s just kind of a term that we, uh, here’s the thing that’s tricky about these terms, right? You’re saying you think Joseph lumped all these terms together and I’m saying no, I think you’re lumping all these terms together. I think there’s a whole lot of distinction between marriage. There’s a big difference between marriage and Horedom. There’s a big difference between marriage and, um, and being a sex slave. There’s a big difference between marriage.
[28:26] Michelle: Marriage is one man and one woman. Anything different. than that is lumped in as adultery, polygamy, spiritual wifery, plural wives, and
[28:36] Benjamin Schaffer: the tables on you. Where does the phrase one man and one woman appear in the Bible or the Book of Mormon or the document covenants or any scripture? One man and one woman is a modern construct that we are trying to write into the past and say they think we, I think they would have accepted this definition if they’d had it even though they never wrote about it.
[28:54] Michelle: OK, so I could go to Done in the Covenant several sections, and I could go to Genesis where it says, Therefore, a man and shall clean to his wife and none else. A man and a woman should be one, right? Um, the man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. Doctor and the Covenant’s 42:22 makes it especially explicit, right? To condemn that it’s one and one. I could point. To the original 1835 Section 101, the 1844 section 109, that says a man should have one wife, a woman should have but one husband, which is a ridiculous attempt to explain it away and say that, um, that it that it’s not supposed to be but one. And then we could even go to things like in the New Testament, a bishop was supposed to only have one wife, and that was in the context of knowing that in ancient Hebrew, The word for a plural wife was Tara, T S A R A H is one of the spellings, which actually means adversary, pain, suffering. It’s, they knew that having more than one wife brought sorrow because those were the stories that we have. The stories that come from polygamy are not happy stories. And so they said, look, if it’s gonna be a bishop, he can’t have this kind of stuff going on in this family. It’s just got to be one wife. We can find a consistent. Instant pattern in scripture of following the exact pattern that God established every time he wanted man and woman to multiply and replenish the earth. Right? That’s what he did with Adam and Eve. That’s what he did with, with Noah and his wife. That’s exactly what he did. Lehi, it shows. Right. And
[30:26] Benjamin Schaffer: I, and then, of course, I’m listening to you say this and I’m thinking to myself, yes, marriage is of God, and Adam, polygamist, Noah, polygamist, Lehi, polygamist. You know what I mean? Um, and, and, and, and I feel like what you’re doing is you’re trying to say, well, you like marriage just enough that you don’t love celibacy. But you don’t love marriage enough to accept all marriages. And, and to me that just seems like a weird place to put on the brakes. Like I see a lot of talks about, I see a lot of places in the scripture talks about marriage and how good marriage is and how the union of male and female is this joyous thing, the, the joy of the bride and the groom, and I see all these, but I see that as meaning God loves that we rejoice, that we love one another, that we build our families. Coming from a polygamist perspective, I never saw any of that as implying anything like monogamy because I only see monogamy is really existing where somebody, usually with the force of law out of the barrel of a gun, tells a woman she may not have her children, she may not have her husband, right? That’s where I see monogamy. I don’t see monogamy. What does that mean.
[31:27] Michelle: What do you mean that she may not have her children, she may not have her husband. What does that mean?
[31:31] Benjamin Schaffer: That means that, yeah, I, I said, well, I’m thinking about all the situations where people have tried to forbid a plural wife from having any association with her husband. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s very it’s a very misogynist thing, monogamy in my mind. It tells a woman she can only marry whom I say, you can’t marry whom you want. You Can’t be with your family. You have to see, that’s what monogamy is. Monogamy is like, no, no, no, no, don’t you dare love your husband. We’re taking you away and making sure that you can only be the wife of a man with who has one wife and she can only have one husband and so we’re going to, we’re gonna come in with our marshals like the US did, or we’re gonna come in with, with something and we’re gonna try to prevent it, um. All the way back to ancient Athens, um, Thucydides had two wives, and, and they were like, we think you have too much political power and your wife stood up in form and spoke and, and your mistress went to the home and, and we think this is too much political power for you. So we’re gonna banish you and we’re gonna make a new rule that um your wife has to stay home and you can only have one of them. And that was the very first law on monogamy because they were trying to get rid of the political power of a polygamist and I’m just like, So I’m just, that that’s that’s where I see monogamy. I see monogamy where political power tells a woman she can’t marry the man of her choice.
[32:43] Michelle: OK, so let me, so let’s break it down just a little bit. So I understand what you’re saying about the government coming into polygamous communities and enforcing monogamy. Like I, like, OK, point taken. But let’s separate it out to say when we are talking about what is of God, right? You’re saying like the so so let me see if I get this right, like saying to a woman. That a man is taken, so she can’t choose him is misogynistic and is unfair. Is that kind of what you’re saying? Like, I think
[33:12] Benjamin Schaffer: it’s unfair to the first and the and the man. They want, they want to have a family. They want to do all these things that we talked about the scriptures being a good thing, which is marriage, as far as I can tell.Building families, having love, raising children in the gospel, all that sort of thing. Hey, and you’re saying, no, you’re not allowed. Why, why is she why is she forbidden? So the thing I,
[33:32] Michelle: so you’re kind of lumping things together. I’m just wanting to talk about the principle of saying
[33:40] Benjamin Schaffer: I think and I think, I guess. OK,
[33:41] Michelle: I guess I’m talking about the force of the state breaking apart. Like I like if we’re talking about polygamy and the idea that a woman can’t just choose any man that she wants because some men Taken that that idea you’re saying is misogynistic and is unfair. A lot of people say this to me, like, how selfish are you when there are all of these single women to say, no, you can’t have my husband, he’s taken, right? Is that kind of what you’re saying? Largely,
[34:06] Benjamin Schaffer: I think that almost marriage, this is a particularly sensitive one. But in all family dynamics, in all economic dynamics, there’s always the, there’s either selfishness or selflessness. And I do think this does play into the selfishness side of it is that Oh, I don’t want to provide for more than one wife. I mean, that’s a lot of work. Why would I want another one? You know, um, so there’s a lot of men who are very anti-polygamy because it just sounds like too much work. I can’t have that much love. I can’t have that much resources, I can’t have that much time. There’s plenty of women who might feel the same way. Look, my husband has only got enough time for me, and I do not want to have to share that time or share my space with anyone else. But, but all those arguments go way beyond just marriage. It’s also with children. I mean, you’ve got a lot of children. That divides your time and resources thinner and differently than it would be if you had an only child. It just does. That’s just a fact of life, you know. And it is true that sometimes that that comes with challenges, but it also comes with blessings. It also comes with rewards, you know. And so which of your children would we want to get rid of if we weren’t just monogamous about marriage, we were monogamous about children. And if I were to come to your family and you must, you must kick out all but one child. You can only have one. Person in this type of relationship in your family. Otherwise it’s bad. So, if I were to do that, you would, you like, I’m not gonna choose between my children. I’m not gonna choose between my wives or my children or my aunts and uncles, or my brothers and sisters, or any relationship. The difference is, is that you’re treating marriage relationships. More differently in many ways than a lot of others I am and I’m saying this, it is different because it’s sexual, but it’s also I’m using these other um relationships as an analogy to kind of explain where I’m coming from here.
[35:46] Michelle: It’s a covenantal relationship established by God between one man and one woman, and I always do have to object when people compare wives to children because women are not children. Children are born as in, grow up and move out. Husband and wife are meant to be side by side as equals, different but equals, right? to raise their children. That’s the pattern I believe God established that I think polygamy really twists into this hierarchical, um.
[36:15] Benjamin Schaffer: This is a very, very different, this is a very, very fundamental question. I don’t view any ceiling. Um, as being equal. It’s it’s hierarchical. I do see it all as hierarchical. Yes, wives to husbands from husbands to their patriarchal head through the law of adoption through the entire kingdom building process is very, very hierarchical in my view. I mean this is like the relationship between Jesus and his father. Are they equal? Well, sort of, but Jesus never says I’m equal to the Father and you should worship me like you worship the Father. No, he says, all the glory be to God. He always refers to the father and things like that. And I, I view all of these relationships in somewhat in that context. So, no, uh, it is true that this is a very fundamental difference. I don’t view any covenant, any covenant, including marriage as being like the meeting of the minds of two equal partners. I think that that kind of undermines the whole concept, I think, of a covenant. If I was merely the exact same equal partner with my spouse in a, in a marriage. Then it couldn’t have an exalting effect, which I think is the whole doctrine of healing. The whole point is, is that I’m connected to my patriarchal head, and she’s connected to her patriarchal head. And sort of like a human chain. Um, we grab each other, link ourselves, linking our generations, linking our priesthood authority, linking our covenant relationships, and that, that, that those links go all the way back up to God the Father and all the way down to us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be tethered. To that divine union, that divine covenant, and we’d just be out on our own. And that’s why I use the human chain analogy, like if someone’s being washed away by a flood, everyone says, grab hold of my hand, and you grab each other’s wrists and you make this human chain, you reach out into the flood and you grab that person on the end. That does no good at all if there’s no one on shore hanging on, right? And I view this idea of this equal partnership marriage thing. Um, where you’ve got, um, oh, it’s just two different heads of the family. We’re all equal, we don’t have this hierarchical relationship as being like two people out there in the flood, being like, oh no, we don’t need to grab on to the hand of anyone who’s gonna bring us back to God. We’ll just, we’ll just be over here and they’re gonna get washed away. And that’s why, um, that’s why I believe that certain covenants or bonds don’t exist beyond death. Why? Because they’re not connected beyond death to the source of eternity, God. That’s why you have to be connected to the covenant.
[38:39] Michelle: To use your analogy, especially how God establishes it, I see if we want to use the standing on the shore and holding hands, like. The man’s holding this hand. The woman’s holding this hand. They’re also holding each other’s hand. And when we have God and the woman and the man in a partnership, it’s a, it’s, it’s a pretty solid and right, you’re not because what you described is why you gets. What did you say?
[39:03] Benjamin Schaffer: You do need God in the partnership.
[39:04] Michelle: I said that, yeah, I think God holding hands with, I, I, I like knowing I’m connected to God. Brigham Young’s and the polygamist doctrine is that woman is. The the man is the woman’s go. Her husband is her God. That’s taught quite clearly that she hearkens to her priesthood head as he hearkens to God, right? And that was in for a long time. And that’s making a change, which I think, which I completely disagree with. I think that’s very, very flawed because I know my connection to God, right? And also, that’s where we get like Brigham Young’s trading up doctrine, where if you can find a man of a higher priesthood to take you as a wife, you can. Like you don’t even need a divorce you can leave your husband and go trade up to a higher authority, right? Because because I anyway, so I think, I think that’s very strange to when just as you said, Jesus covenants with us, each of us individually, which you said is a polygamist covenant. I, you know, but I do agree that. as covenants with each of us individually or at least is connected to each of us. I just don’t think it’s a sexual sexual.
[40:05] Benjamin Schaffer: So in other words, you’re totally comfortable being a polyandros so long as you recognize that sex is not happening with you in Jesus. Sex is with you and your husband. Right, you’re all married to him. He’s part of your marriage covenant. It’s just that he’s the nonsexual partner, right?
[40:19] Michelle: No, the marriage covenant that is compared to the bride and the groom is Jesus with the church, and there’s one church, and if you are not one, you’re not mine. But OK, let me ask you this question. But
[40:31] Benjamin Schaffer: I mean, if he’s, if he’s a part of your marriage, if God is God’s a part of your marriage, you’re either in a hierarchical covenant or an equal covenant. Are you equal to God?
[40:41] Michelle: No, I am covenanted to God and my husband is covenanted to God, and my husband and I are covenanted to each other under God. So
[40:49] Benjamin Schaffer: you’re both the plural spouses of God. Not that you have two husbands, but that you’re both the spouse of God.
[40:56] Michelle: My husband is not in a homosexual relationship with God, and I’m not in a sexual relationship with God. God, God created the marriage covenant between Adam and Eve, between the man and the woman under God, right? So we’re both connected to God and God makes us connected to one another, individually, as, as, as, as a partnership of one on one. But I do have a couple of questions I wanted to ask you, and then you go ahead and ask me questions. So, with Brigham Young’s doctrines, which of what things that Brigham Young taught or what of Brigham Young’s doctrines do you not agree with? Or would you disavow or take issue with?
[41:35] Benjamin Schaffer: Right? Um, I think the main things that I, there’s a lot of things I would disagree with Brigham on. I think we could debate, which brings up an interesting point. In a lot of religions, a lot of churches, there’s this idea that you do not question your leaders, that you’re supposed to be in or out, that you have to do what they say. Um, this is something I found issue with in the mainstreamious church. I wasn’t comfortable with. I believe that debate, open debate, robust debate. Is necessary. It’s important. It’s valuable. We should have that completely agree. And so like in my church, for example, in Christ Church, uh, I’ve disagreed with people. I have raised my hand in our solemn assembly in our general conference while the president of the church was speaking and said, actually, I think you’re wrong about that. I think what you mean is this, but your implication is wrong because it could imply this thing, and I think that’s false doctrine. And I corrected him from the congregation in the middle of conference. And he said that’s
[42:28] Michelle: why you’re only a 70 and not an actual, and
[42:32] Benjamin Schaffer: he says, he says, you know what, thank you, Brother Benjamin, you’ve got a good point there. And he, you know, worked it in because that’s something that we believe we can do. We should be able to talk about these things. We have to be able to debate them. So I think that there’d be a lot of times when Brigham Man and I would be sitting around and we would disagree vehemently, especially about policies, especially about um methods. OK. I think that uh there were a lot of things that were very, very difficult that he was, he was faced with that I don’t know if I would have done better because I wasn’t there. And I don’t know if I, and, and maybe it’s because hindsight’s 20/20. And I’m like, actually, I can totally see a better option. Is it, or is it strength of character that I actually would have done better than him, had it been placed in the circumstances with the same knowledge? I don’t know, honestly. Um, I do know one thing. I am a pacifist. I have long been a pacifist. My family comes from a long line of pacifists. Before they were Mormon, they were members of the Church of the Brethren, the Bavarian Church of the Brethren. That’s one of the, uh, it’s similar to the Amish or the Mennonite traditions, it’s Anna Baptist tradition. And uh pacifism is like one of the first and most fundamental articles of faith in those churches, and we brought that with us right into Mormonism. And, uh, John Taylor, for example, was a vegetarian and a pacifist. This is one of the reasons why he did not, uh, do more to fight the marshals and things like that. It was because he did not believe in opposing violence with violence. He believed in turning the other cheek in, in the past. Pacifistic understanding of that. And I, I feel very strongly about that as well. So one of the major things I would have had a big difference with him on is, is that there were many instances where he took a really just a, he called it the lion of the Lord, right? And stuff like that. He was a bit bellicose. He was always talking about like, oh, we should fight to the last man and I look, I don’t even like onward Christian soldiers being in the hymnbook. Um, I had
[44:18] Michelle: very violent rhetoric, except I
[44:20] Benjamin Schaffer: don’t like the rhetoric. I’m a pacifist. I’m, I’m, I’m literally an avowed pacifist because I’ve taken a vow of pacifism. When I was struggling with, oh my gosh, does the church have it, um, to go all the way back to that, I explored not only every branch of Mormonism. I also explained explored, um, um, Varana Buddhism. Well, all the Yans of Buddhism, the, um, Theravada, um, or Hinyana Buddhism, Mayana Buddhism, and, and Varana Buddhism. And at the time I took a vow of nonviolence, and I mean, and, and I remember when I was when I was 18, you have to register for the selective Service, right? You’re at the time, at least you were supposed to fill out a postcard at the from the post office to register with Selective Service, and I wrote conscientious objector in all caps across the form when I sent it in. And I, I could have just, I could have just not sent a form, but I was like, no, I want them to know. I will not be, I, I do not believe it’s it it is right for man to kill man. I won’t do this. Um, and so this that’s been a strong thing for me, so I’m sure I would have disagreed with him on all kinds of stuff that ended up. Being encouraging partly because I think it’s unaffective. I think if the Saints had been far more John Taylor’s viewpoint or John Taylor. Been able to actually preach more of this, I think that we would have been far better off if we had simply said we are passively resisting we’re not going to comply. We don’t believe in your authority to destroy our faith. We’re simply going to live our lives and we’re not gonna allow you to do this violence to us, you know, but instead turning the other cheek for a lot of those, uh, pioneer saints really just meant submitting to a lot of abuse, I think. And I think it would be a lot better for them to say, no, we’re not going to be model prisoners. Because we don’t recognize your authority to imprison us. They should have, you know what I mean? They should have, they should have they should have marched every single man, woman and child in the entire territory into the statehouse and said we are guilty of polygamy. If you want to arrest us all, go ahead. If you’re, if, but we do not recognize your authority to do this, and we know you cannot house and feed every single person in this entire territory. So you’re gonna back off.
[46:29] Michelle: And a polygamous only a small percentage, but yeah, I
[46:33] Benjamin Schaffer: I would have done sit-ins, man, but this is hindsight being 2020, OK. I would have done sit-ins. I would have staged, uh, I, I mean, I would have had us all like lay down in the roads in front of them and say, oh, so you wanna, you wanna wipe us out. Drive over us, us with your carriage. See if you can get your because I’m not, not going to just go where you tell me to because you do not have the authority to destroy my people, you know, that’s the way
[46:58] Michelle: they should have done sits against Brigham Young or you mean against the federal.
[47:04] Benjamin Schaffer: Most of the, most of the complaints against Brigham Young are violent rhetoric, and I, and I’m saying if I had been Brigham Young with my hindsight, I would have been the greatest pacifist voice in the world. I would have been like, Oh, Johnson’s army thinks they’re coming, huh? Well, we don’t recognize that men with guns are an army with legitimate government power. We think that you’re a bunch of thugs. We’re gonna make sure the whole world knows that you’re a bunch of thugs and murderers, and we are not going to comply.
[47:30] Michelle: OK, so if we go to some specifics, because I think this is an interesting question. I’m so I’m assuming that with Adam got, like, so with, with polygamy, you very much side with Orson Pratt and you believe his, um, scriptural justifications for it because
[47:45] Benjamin Schaffer: that’s some stuff written in this year a few times, right? I mean, his rules of rules of family or whatever, it’s it’s all a little bit weird. Some of that, you know, I don’t think that everyone has to follow that like it’s scripture. But, uh, do I believe in polygamy? Yes. I mean, in general,
[48:01] Michelle: I think
[48:01] Benjamin Schaffer: Orson
[48:02] Michelle: Pratt’s defense of it. OK. OK. And so, but, but when it comes to Adam God, it’s, I’m guessing you would side with Brigham Young, not Orson Pratt.
[48:10] Benjamin Schaffer: Ah, here’s an interesting point. I think, and I know you’re not gonna like this, but I think I side with Joseph Smith on the Adam God doctrine. You mentioned the Jose Smith Papers Project, for example, and Joseph Smith clearly directly teaches Adam God in there besides the fact that you’ve got things like Section 27 in 1830, you’ve got Joseph Smith preaching Adam God. I see it lots of places in Joseph Smith. Uh,
[48:33] Michelle: so who was out of step with Joseph Smith? Was it Brigham Young or Orson Pratt, who was out of step with Joseph Smith on Adamar?
[48:40] Benjamin Schaffer: Both a little bit more Orson Pratt than Brigham Young.
[48:44] Michelle: OK, so you, does
[48:46] Benjamin Schaffer: everybody have their own interpretation slightly, yes. I consider myself more of a Joseph Smith, Adam God believer than a Brigham Young Adam God believer because I think that he, he took it to some strange places intentionally to make his point. But I think he was a bit exaggerating some things and, and maybe more offensive. Brigham Young was. Brigham Young was taking it a step further in some ways than Justice Smith did that people found offensive. So for example, Brigham Young emphatically stating over and over and over again that the Adam God doctrine means that. Jesus Christ was conceived through sexual means.
[49:24] Michelle: That is too much to say that
[49:27] Benjamin Schaffer: that Mary had to have had sex with God. I can see why people find this shocking. That’s why he said it. He was frustrated that people were rejecting very simple, straightforward things like the idea that we are children of God or descendants of God, or that God is our Father. He was found it frustrating, I, I assume, and he was a very emphatic preacher. And so he went ahead and jumped into full offense mode plenty of times. And I understand a lot of people find that deeply offensive because he’s talking about God being a sexual being, that God Engages
[50:01] Michelle: I call it divine incest is my way to describe it.
[50:05] Benjamin Schaffer: I really,
[50:05] Michelle: why is that incest, right? If God is because
[50:09] Benjamin Schaffer: they’re both the same. I mean, like we’re all children of God. Like if I marry anyone on this planet, I. I mean, if I have sex with any human, I’m they’re a child of God, that divine incest? No, no,
[50:20] Michelle: that God had sex with Mary, claiming that God would
[50:24] Benjamin Schaffer: be more divine incest than me marrying another human? I mean,
[50:28] Michelle: I thought that was pretty clear, but That that’s anyway we don’t have to go into it. I didn’t, I didn’t, I thought it would be more clear. So, OK, so you. So, so you, so for you, Joseph Smith,
[50:40] Benjamin Schaffer: God’s a human. Mary’s a human. They both come from the same divine origin. They, they’re humans. That doesn’t make it incest.
[50:49] Michelle: So God in the Adam God theory, God is not the creator.
[50:53] Benjamin Schaffer: Well, of course he is, yeah, I mean, the whole point of Adam is that he’s the beginning of all men, right? So our stor, right?
[51:01] Michelle: God is the father of us all, right? OK, so, so, OK, but so in section, so the places that Joseph Smith taught at section 27 and where else? Where did,
[51:13] Benjamin Schaffer: where did he mention? I wanna say that there’s a mention in 107, you know, I could probably pull up some stuff. There’s personally, I think there’s tons of Adam God references throughout the scriptures. One of my favorites is actually in the New Testament, Luke chapter 3, the last verse, don’t remember what number that is, um, it just says directly, Adam is the son of God. Is the way that Luke decides to end the genealogy, the concept of the genealogy like why is it that that Jesus’s genealogy is mentioned, right? It’s, it’s it’s a way for Jesus to claim divinity, to claim the throne of David, to claim these things, right? So they, they give a genealogy and he makes a point that his genealogy isn’t some untethered thing from some created being. He wants to make a point. Adam is the son of God. We are one family with God. And I’m just like, man, you don’t get much more direct about Adam God teachings than that. The idea that we are literally descended from God. We’re not just his pets, right? God didn’t just make a statue of a monkey and be like, be alive little monkey, and made a little statue. be alive little human and then God is this, this creature outside time and space who’s not human. He’s not a monkey. He’s not a man. He’s not anything. No, God’s a human is is Jo Smith called this the great mystery, right? Uh, you go to Kingfo at Discourse, which is canonized in my sect as well. You go to the King’s
[52:28] Michelle: canonizing sect, OK,
[52:30] Benjamin Schaffer: yeah, and, and, and you know, and that’s all Adam God stuff. The whole the whole thing is basically just Adam God the whole. So let me,
[52:38] Michelle: let me jump back to Luke 3. So for you, when it says Adam was the son of God, that’s the same as saying Adam is God.
[52:45] Benjamin Schaffer: Sure. And in fact, I think that even the Pharisees said the same thing of Jesus when he said, I am the son of man, or I am the son of Adam. They said, what, you make yourself equal to God? That was, that was their great blasphemy. They were so angry at Jesus for going around saying, I am the son of man, and they’re like, you make yourself equal with God if you claim to be the son of God. Um,
[53:03] Michelle: because they thought he was claiming to be the Messiah,
[53:11] Benjamin Schaffer: right, and Jesus is God. Well, yes, but, and God. What do we call him? We usually call the Son of God, which is the same thing as to say that he is God.
[53:17] Michelle: Yes. Because we believe that like the idea of the Godhead includes Jesus and God, right? So there’s a difference because you’re not saying that Adam is the son of God, you’re saying Adam is Jesus’s father. Adam is God the Father.
[53:32] Benjamin Schaffer: So that Adam is also the son of God. This is the plurality of God’s concept that’s pretty popular in Mormonism. Once again, sorry, I’m going back to patriarchal hierarchies, uh, which you didn’t seem to like when we were talking about in terms of marriage. Um, does God have a father? Of course he does. There’s no son in this world who does not have a father. There’s no father in this world who does not have a child. That’s what makes you a father. That’s what makes you a son. So,
[54:00] Michelle: so
[54:01] Benjamin Schaffer: if
[54:01] Michelle: Jesus’s
[54:01] Benjamin Schaffer: father is the father, then he has to be a son as well.
[54:06] Michelle: OK, so Adam being the son of God means that Adam has got the Father, that Adam is God, God the Father, but Adam as God did not have literal intercourse with Mary. Is that, am I understanding where you are on that?
[54:20] Benjamin Schaffer: Oh, no, I, I just think that it’s highly blasphemous to make a big point about this. The scriptures are silent on exactly how they had sex. I don’t know why this upsets people so much. Um, but you know, in vitro, by the power of the Holy Ghost, or who knows what else that means, um, is all we’re really given in the scriptures, uh, and and,
[54:40] Michelle: and this is you don’t think that Brigham was wrong about it. You
[54:42] Benjamin Schaffer: think I don’t think Brigham was wrong about us being of one family with God. No,
[54:46] Michelle: I
[54:46] Benjamin Schaffer: think
[54:46] Michelle: we are. I’m
[54:46] Benjamin Schaffer: saying,
[54:47] Michelle: I’m saying you don’t think Brigham was wrong about the literal conception. You just think he shouldn’t have taught it. He shouldn’t have said it. What’s wrong you’re asking you
[54:56] Benjamin Schaffer: because you’re trying to put this in the context of what would I disagree with Brig. I’m mostly saying I disagree with him on his, on his method. I, if I had been president of the church at the time somehow, I’m sure I would have come across very differently. I’m not saying that, uh, that I’m not saying that, uh, I don’t think God is a sexual being. I do think that God had children. That’s why we’re here because we are the children of God. So that implied, uh, life, life presupposes sex. I’m afraid for all of our type of creature. I mean, I know there’s such thing as asexual reproduction, but generally speaking, for mammals, um, Life implies sex and so, and God created all life. God created this, uh, God created us and how do I think that happened? Well, I think that we, but I do think that there’s a point that you don’t necessarily put this in front of the child. Um, I’m not really in favor of telling a child with a, a weak understanding about the cabbage patch or the stork. I think that that’s too far. In the euphemism range, but I also don’t think that throwing it in front of a congregation and be like, deal with it, believe it or you’re going to hell, it would have been my method, OK, if I had, um,
[56:10] Michelle: OK, I find it interesting because in in Mormonism, as I’m sure you know, like, um, Joseph F. Smith, Bruce R. McConkie vehemently disagreed with Brigham Young about Adam God doctrine. But
[56:25] Benjamin Schaffer: they, but they did, you know,
[56:26] Michelle: but they did completely agree with him on the literal, on literal intercourse and literal conception of Jesus between God the Father and Mary. Well, I think I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize those were different things. I thought that was Adam God doctrine, and that’s the part I find offensive. So
[56:42] Benjamin Schaffer: OK. Well, I guess here’s the thing though, is I, I do believe that it is important. Even Catholics who believe Jesus was a celibate and that he was conceived without sex, for example, I think it is still important that we do agree that Jesus was actually the Son of God. If he was, if he was just the son of Joseph, gets pretty dicey, you know,
[57:04] Michelle: there’s a problem. OK, OK, so divine origin, but
[57:07] Benjamin Schaffer: to have a divine origin in order to have a divine nature.
[57:11] Michelle: Yeah, OK, so divine origin, but the, so for you, the, OK, so Adam God is divine, is, is what I would call divine incest. I know you took issue with that, but is,
[57:21] Benjamin Schaffer: yeah, I don’t see how that’s incest unless everything, I mean, you know.
[57:24] Michelle: OK, so it was literal conception, but it just doesn’t need to be taught over the pulpit. OK, so do I have that?
[57:31] Benjamin Schaffer: Yeah, you’re asking about what I would disagree with Brigha on and, and, and so, uh, probably what you’re trying to do is find something that I would disagree with Brigham on that’s really, really, and I, I, I generally support Brigham, John Taylor, Wilfred Wardruff, Joseph F, most of these guys’ teachings, I, I generally support them. They’re part of the church, I accept.
[57:52] Michelle: So yeah, I’m trying to, the LDS Church has disavowed. All of Brigham’s doctrines that I that I consider, right? Yeah, so I just I’m trying to see, so so I’m trying to see where we would be, except, I mean, and we have like President Hinckley, as I said, condemned the polygamy, but it’s the only one we still are holding on to, um, theoretically, right? yeah.
[58:14] Benjamin Schaffer: In sort of practice, but only if people have extra divorces or extra deaths, right, which is why I was joking about like, what does the church just loves death and divorce or something because they, you know, um, but, uh, but no, when you, when you look at it, OK, so one of the biggies that people blame Brigham Young for that I still think of Joseph Smith and you and I disagree on that, but like plural marriage, yes, I accept it. Adam God definitely accept it. consecration, the united order, accept it. Um, gathering, literal gathering, our church practices that as well. We believe in literally gathering to one place where we can live consecration and plural marriage.
[58:48] Michelle: um, can I ask where your gathering place is?
[58:51] Benjamin Schaffer: Yeah, it’s in, it’s in Nevada. In central Nevada. We’ve got a temple there and a big gathering place. We also have church meetings in Spanish Fork every Sunday. So feel free to stop by any time.
[59:02] Michelle: What would happen if I came to one of your church meetings you could
[59:05] Benjamin Schaffer: come to church and just be at church. It’s not as different as you’d think, probably. Um, OK, we don’t have, um, multiple wives here every week. We don’t talk about it very often, frankly. It’s the thing outsiders want to talk about. Outsiderss want to talk about polygamy because it seems so scandalous because it’s outside their normal experience. Uh, but really, again, it, it, the, the gospel is this symphony of doctrines, all of this stuff going on, and polygamy is this one little detail that I don’t think is, I don’t see it as radical, I don’t see it as that weird, but even in our polygamist church, it’s not like you would see polygamy very often. Uh, how many people, how many families have more than one wife at a time in the family right now? Like, if I can’t count anybody who’s died, whose spouse, who was plurally married but now spouse has died, or they were plurally married, but now a spouse has divorced them, or, um, if I can’t count anything except people who are currently sitting there on the pew, in church, holding hands with wife in this hand and wife in that hand right now, you know, kind of thing. Um, well, shoot, that’s not very much of our church either. Right, it’s not like
[1:00:14] Michelle: that’s it’s necessary for exaltation. We believe that what was taught by Brigham Young and John Taylor and Joseph S. Smith absolutely all of them.
[1:00:23] Benjamin Schaffer: I’m gonna say yes and because I want to clarify, OK, yes, of course it’s essential for exaltation. But what is it that I’m agreeing is essential to exaltation? Am I saying that this life, this mortal world has to
[1:00:38] Michelle: openhearted toward it, being open to it. Yeah,
[1:00:41] Benjamin Schaffer: well, certainly, because, um, well, for example, the whole idea of Eve and Sarah and Lilith and Mary all being married to the same man, uh, in Brigham Young’s way of discussing this. Uh, there’s the idea that, well, he didn’t marry them all at the same time. If God were this kind of polygamist, he didn’t marry them all at the same time. So when we say that we have to be open to polygamy, we’re not talking about this life, or at least not this life only. We’re talking about the idea that God is an expanding being. God is always creating worlds without ends, right? That also means children without ends. That also means friends without ends. That also means aunts and uncles without uh without end. That also means trees and mountains and worlds without end, but it also means wives without end. There God is not done taking plural wives. Why doesn’t
[1:01:30] Michelle: mean expanding
[1:01:31] Benjamin Schaffer: his
[1:01:32] Michelle: kingdom. When, when I read the scriptures, God created one man and one wife, told them to be together with none else. So why does it, and you keep applying it, comparing it to everything else, so why isn’t husbands without end.
[1:01:46] Benjamin Schaffer: Um, to some extent it is. It, but the one thing that comes up in this patriarchal viewpoint of polygamy is that there’s, that’s why there’s this hierarchy, and that leads into some of the stuff that is often abused and totally misunderstood that you were hinting at, um, or, or at least trying to, or maybe accusing it earlier when you were talking about like um a woman taking another husband. Um, because he’s higher in authority. Right, now again, I’m not talking about, I’m not talking about what I believe is a sexual thing, OK? That’s where we end up getting into a big argument. Um, I’m talking about a theological idea of the nature of God. God’s love is expansive and never ending. There will never be a time when he does not have more love for more people, for more creation, for more. Right? And as he does that, God himself, God as a, as an idea even grows because it’s ever more, ever more creation. And the difference is is that we just don’t view. Um, we view marriage as a great analogy for all kinds of relationships rather than uniquely different from all other kinds of relationships.
[1:02:56] Michelle: See, I view it as as uniquely different from all other relationships, and,
[1:02:59] Benjamin Schaffer: and I think that I think that marriage is a great. I think the reason why marriage is constantly used as an analogy for all of these covenants is because there are certain similarities between all of them.
[1:03:10] Michelle: OK. And to me, see, I think, I think polygamy devalues marriage. And that’s part of the, like, like comparing it to every other relationship. It’s just like everything else, it devalues marriage, right? And so I think that
[1:03:22] Benjamin Schaffer: I think just the opposite. I think monogamy, monogamy is telling, oh, we don’t like marriage. You better stop that marriage business. You’re married too much. Oh, no more marriages for you, you know, we don’t like. Marriages. Let’s get rid of them.
[1:03:35] Michelle: Right? But you have to acknowledge that like, like people who advocate for homosexual marriage say the same thing. You want people to be married, so let us be married, right? So you can, you can use that in any way. I have a definition of marriage that I think is sacred. And when we change the definition of marriage by adding additional wives or adding additional husbands, I think it ceases to be the covenant that God established. But
[1:03:58] Benjamin Schaffer: I, I, I marriage, covenant biblical marriage, like Moses atyanai or Jesus in the church or any of these, those are all polygamous marriages are the prime example that are being used. And so yes, I do believe that biblical marriage matters. Like I, I don’t want to oppose gay marriage legally because I don’t think the church is the government. I don’t think the government is the church. I think separation is a good thing, um, and if their religion, if their homosexual LGBTQ club wants to say this is how we define it, then I think that they should have the legal. Allowance to believe as they believe
[1:04:32] Michelle: the government is,
[1:04:34] Benjamin Schaffer: do you know what I mean? But that’s not the same thing as to say that I think that that qualifies as a marriage. But I also don’t believe that this equal partnership monogamy idea. I don’t believe that’s a marriage either. I don’t think it’s biblical. I don’t think it’s covenantial. I don’t think it’ll exist after death. I think it’s about the same as a gay marriage. Yeah, you can make whatever promise you want about how we’re. We’re gonna be equal gay partners or we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be equal heterosexual partners and I see the same thing. I see people untethered from a covenant with God. And if you don’t make that covenant with God, then you can make whatever promises you want in this life. You can live as you want to live. I believe in freedom, go for it. But I don’t believe that it has an eternal bearing on our, on exaltation, and that’s why I believe, um, yes, OK, so it’s essential to exaltation, but does that mean that Someone who’s totally unmarried is somehow like less favored in the eyes of God. I mean, no, I don’t see it that way at all. I just think that if we want to be like God, we have to be open to becoming like Him. In other words, having infinite love, having infinite forgiveness, having infinite growth, having infinite creation. Sure,
[1:05:33] Michelle: but none of that implies sex with additional partners. But so let me ask you,
[1:05:38] Benjamin Schaffer: so we create.
[1:05:41] Michelle: Your church is the one church with the keys to perform genuine eternal marriages. So only like you’re the president of your church is the one man in authority who holds the keys.
[1:05:54] Benjamin Schaffer: We do believe in the one man doctrine. I do think we view it a little differently than some do. Um, a lot of people want to make keys about excluding. I think keys are about including. Keys are about opening locks. Um, why, why do we use this this term? What is key?
[1:06:11] Michelle: Well, you just, I’m asking you in the context of you saying that that like, like my husband and I won’t be, we’re our marriage isn’t lasting, you know, like we, we’re married, we’ve only ever been married to each other. We have 13 children, but it’s cute that we’re doing it, but it’s not real marriage. So I’m, I’m curious about unless
[1:06:28] Benjamin Schaffer: you’re actually unless God is part of that covenant, yes, and I think the way that happens is hierarchically through things like the endowments where you covenant to obey your husband and he covenants to obey the Father. Um, OK,
[1:06:44] Michelle: OK, um, that’s what I’m assuming, right,
[1:06:44] Benjamin Schaffer: which does happen in our temples. Here’s the thing that’s tricky when it comes to exclusivity though. Not so much. Let me explain to you what I mean. Keys, it’ll take me less than 5 minutes. Keys are meant to unlock things. That’s why we use it as an analogy. Again, these things are all metaphors. A key is not a physical key anyway, uh, it’s a metaphor. So what’s the metaphor for? Well, I would say that the mainstream LDS church and most of our understandings in this generation have been polluted by this idea that a key is something not that liberates but something that locks things up. The idea that it’s exclusive. I have it exclusively have the keys, says the president of the LDS Church. Therefore, you must come to me for permission. So having the keys gives you like administrative authority or administrative control over other people’s lives. This is backwards. I believe this is apostasy. This is, this is not appropriate. When we talk about keys, I think about the scriptures like, and he shall come to liberate the captive. He shall come to set us free, OK? The key is about not about locking up the gates of heaven against men, as Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing, locking up the gates of heaven against men. That’s the interpretation of keys that a lot of people have. I think that yes, we have a keyholder in the branch, but that has nothing to do with stopping anyone from anything. It has to do with the fact that he has unlocked the gate. He and he has the power and the knowledge and the practice to help us do as he is doing, which is to come into the presence of God and learn the things of God, receive revelation, become prophets and prophets prophetesses, kings and queens, priests and priestesses before the throne of God forever. That’s what a key is a key unlocks the gate.
[1:08:19] Michelle: OK, so your president holds the keys and he has unlocked the gate in your temple. So people are all it’s available to all who who come to your temple, like
[1:08:28] Benjamin Schaffer: it’s available, right? Come and partake freely without money and without price, right?
[1:08:34] Michelle: So it’s not exclusive in that you don’t say people can’t come to your temple, but it is exclusive in the terms of it’s available only for those who do come to make the choice to come
[1:08:42] Benjamin Schaffer: to actually do it, and I recognize that that is now, but, but, but what are the what are the litmus tests? The litmus tests aren’t like you have to pay tithing to us for a year and you have to sustain our leaders, the only man on the earth and blah blah blah blah blah. Now requirements are things like, do you feel prepared? Are let’s talk about symbology with you for a while. Let’s talk about ritual experience. Do you, are you well, I mean we mentioned the Washington’s anointings, which is so important to me at the beginning. I don’t want anybody to come into our temple. Not thinking, I am preparing to strip myself of all earthly things, and I recognize that being ritually nude is part of that experience. I don’t want anybody to be surprised by the covenants they’re gonna make. They go in there, they need to go in there prepared. Because they want to have that experience. They want to know what it means to approach the throne of God, because only then will it have any meaning. I’ve, I’ve sat in that temple with men who have been in the presence of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, and I’ve been in that temple with people who don’t even know if they believe if that’s possible. And let me tell you, they had different experiences because those who are prepared to truly sacrifice all things for the greater excellency of Jesus Christ. Have a different spiritual experience with God than the unprepared who simply go, I don’t know, I guess I’ll do a ceremony, although all you’re gonna see is all you’re gonna get is a ceremony.
[1:10:06] Michelle: OK, so let me, let me go through my, my, um, I, I, I think I understand what you’re saying, but yeah, and that makes sense. So so with blood atonement, how do you interpret that or how do you You know, do you agree with Brigham on that? Do you disavow it? or how does it look in your beliefs? I, I don’t,
[1:10:23] Benjamin Schaffer: I do think that he was in a time of much like we are now in many ways. There’s many claimants, there’s many things going on. He wanted to control was a bigger thing for him than it is for me. Right, that’s the same theme. Control is a bigger thing than for him than it is for me. Uh, at the same time, he was less controlling than the church is now than Russell M. Nelson is. Russell. Nelson has a whole church handbook of instructions and rules. Brigham Young supposedly said, let them come, let them partake or reject with. Any of the ceremonies of the temple or any of the things of the gospel, they then whether they should be gods or whether they should be devils is on their heads, right?
[1:10:59] Michelle: So, OK, so blood atonement is something that is only necessary when you need to establish control, and other than that, it’s not necessary, but it is valid when needed.
[1:11:10] Benjamin Schaffer: I think what he was saying is generally lost on us because he turned it into this violent rhetoric. I think the true doctrine of blood atonement is about the fact that it is through the blood of Jesus Christ that we are saved. That is the true the doctrine itself of blood atonement. The there there’s this sideshow over here that everybody wants to freak out about about whether or not Brigham Young is saying violent rhetoric, but the concept of blood. Being covered by the blood of the Lamb, being covered because that’s what a tom means. Aton means covering, to be covered by the blood, to the blood of the sacrifice, and then eventually the blood of Jesus Christ. And how is it that we are reconciled to God? That’s the doctrine. Then there’s this over here about did Brigham Young misapply it? Did Brigham Young misapply the doctrine of the atonement to justify violence? Yeah, yeah, I can see that interpretation, and I think that’s it. I’m not that worried about doing any of that.
[1:12:03] Michelle: OK, so let me just add this one part. Sorry, I, I wanted to hear that last part, what you’re saying, but Brigham Young wasn’t just talking about, because he was explicitly saying repeatedly, and that was repeated by the others that were teaching it, that the blood of Jesus Christ is not sufficient and someone’s blood needs to be spilled themselves. And so it’s not just talking about the atonement through blood of Jesus Christ. It’s, it’s, it’s saying that is not sufficient. So that’s what I’m curious about. Do you say he was wrong on that?
[1:12:31] Benjamin Schaffer: This is the whole works versus Grace argument that I think is worth having, and I think that he had some interesting things to contribute to that discussion if we took him in the proper context. He’s generally not accepted in that proper context. The general context is how do we receive the blood of Christ? Is it, is this free grace so all sufficient that we need not even know the name of Jesus Christ? We need not even exercise any faith in him whatsoever, or are we saved by faith? Or what does our faith lead us to works which are baptism and things like that? Well, when. He also had the context about execution. Execution at the time was by hanging, where their blood was not shed. And it says explicitly in the Bible multiple times that we are not to strangle our meat. Uh, we’re not to be strangled. That, that is a shameful thing. There’s some weird stuff in there, OK?
[1:13:22] Michelle: Bringing the cows to butcher or the deers to butcher them. I think it was firing squad because he said that their blood needed to be spilled on the ground. So. So
[1:13:32] Benjamin Schaffer: the debate, the debate that they were having, if you want to get to the context of Brigham Young, wasn’t about whether or not we should execute people who are murderers. No one in America, as far as I’m aware, was saying murderers should go free. Heck, even. Pacifists weren’t
[1:13:46] Michelle: really he wasn’t talking about murders. He was talking about adulterers and many others. Kimball and both of
[1:13:51] Benjamin Schaffer: them
[1:13:51] Michelle: like just sinners. It was sinners. Like you sinners would, would want to come and have your bloodshed. He definitely said it about adulterers, which he didn’t include himself as that, even if he married another man’s wife, which, which even Brian Hill because
[1:14:05] Benjamin Schaffer: again, the definition of adultery to Brigham Young would be, people were not in a people who broke a covenant relationship. Not people who entered a covenant relationship. Entering a covenant relationship doesn’t make you. Entering a covenant relationship with God doesn’t make you an adulterer. Breaking your covenant relationship with God is what makes you an adulterer.
[1:14:22] Michelle: Well, if you were already married in a covenant relationship to another man, but, but Brigham had higher keys, so you went in without divorce instead married Brigham. There it’s hard to find a biblical definition where that wouldn’t be adultery. But in any case, but if, but he was talking about if his wife slept with someone else was one example, that’s the thing
[1:14:40] Benjamin Schaffer: that it would be better for them to have a javelin thrown through their heart, that is a biblical story. There’s a biblical story about the sons of Aaron and prostitutes and the javelin being thrown through them both, right? So this is literally in Exodus, um. That he’s referring to, he’s deliberately and directly referring to a biblical story. He’s not, I believe, saying that we should all kill each other. If you do take it that way, please don’t, because that would be the wrong way to take it. That would be false doctrine, and I’m against it. Please don’t.
[1:15:14] Michelle: So he was saying he had the authority. Well, and, and his like, that people need, well, he talked about it a lot. Do you love your neighbor enough to shed their blood if they You know, if they need, if it needs to be said in your mind. So you would say that you, you don’t want to come, this is what I’m hearing, and you can tell me if I’m, you don’t want to come out and say Brigham Young was wrong on that, but you’re kind of like, ah, Brigham Young was kind of wrong about that. But if you don’t necessarily want to say he was wrong. Can we, should we settle it there is that kind of idea?
[1:15:40] Benjamin Schaffer: Again, I see, how about, how about it this way? Instead of being about right or wrong, it’s about communion. Are Brigham Young and I both in the same church? Yes. Are Brigham Young and I both in the same religion? Yes. Are Brigham Young and I both recognizing one another’s priesthood? I believe that would be, yes. Do I think, what do I do with other people who are in communion with me, who I have tension with? Well, I debate with them, I talk to them. I tell them, oh, no, no, no, your perspective on this is wrong. We should think about this in this other way, right? That’s what the whole Talmud ended up being was a bunch of rabbis who all recognized each other as little legitimate Jews. These all these rabbis all said, yes, we’re all Jews, but did they agree on everything? No. The whole point is they disagreed on everything. So they could debate and get to a truth. So I’ll debate all day long about about blood atonement, and I’ll never do it in such a way that tries to place Brigham Young outside the faith. I believe he’s, right? But I’ll debate about it with you like I was just doing, saying, look, it’s about the atonement of Christ, it’s about the blood of the sacrifice. It’s not about that. And then you’re like, well, what about the fact he said that that wasn’t enough? I’m like, well, that’s really about grace and works just to recap our little conversation here, what am I doing? I’m engaging with you the way I would engage with Brigham Young. Where I believe this open and healthy debate is the way that we should approach these gospel topics, not dispositively say this place is so and so outside of the faith or this, right? It’s not about drawing sides because there are no sides. We are all the children of God we’re all Mormons we’re all trying to sort this out. I accept you as part of your religion.
[1:17:12] Michelle: I thought you thought I’m going to hell for sure. Like I’ve been called the spawn of Satan and Satan’s horror. I’ve been called all kinds of things by a lot of people in your camp.
[1:17:20] Benjamin Schaffer: Well, right, I think, and look, here’s the thing, I, and I’ve been impatient and probably rude at times myself, because I think that historical revisionism, of which I believe you’re engaged, is, I think totally counterfactual and And therefore very dangerous. I think that you could drive people away from Mormonism. I think you will make more atheists, bitter, angry atheists. I think you’ll make more bitter angry atheists with your YouTube videos, then you will make believers, especially happy, and I, and is that good? No, I think that’s bad. But that doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re outside the faith. You’re still trying to be faithful. You’re trying to find a way to be and you’re debating on the far end of the of these debates, and I’m, I’ll just debate with you all day long. That’s fine, and you’re still in communion as far as I’m concerned. But I do see a lot of Mormons leaving the faith. A lot of people are just in droves right now. They’re not coming my way either. They’re not joining Christchurch, but like hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the mainstream LS church. In droves and the vast majority of them, almost all of them. A a statistically insignificant number of them are doing anything other than becoming bitter, angry atheists. Very few of them become Christians or they don’t become anything.
[1:18:40] Michelle: Yeah, I agree with you on that. It’s been happening for decades, and I think I, I know several of the reasons why. So, OK, so Blood Atonement, I’m in the same camp as Brigham, whereas I’m wrong, but that, like, Brigham isn’t not the prophet and he’s not out of the faith because he was wrong on Blood Atonement, but he was wrong on Blood atonement, and you would like to engage with him on it if you had that chance. Like, just like with
[1:19:01] Benjamin Schaffer: with Adam. Because in hindsight, if he could see how badly His words have been taken and what they’ve been used to justify and what his words have been used to do. I mean, he was even beginning to see even in his own life. There was plenty of problems. It was like, oh man, this is, this is out of control.
[1:19:18] Michelle: We had mountains
[1:19:21] Benjamin Schaffer: and I was supposedly. I mean, and people disagree on how much Brigham fault about this, because Brigham said things on both sides of his mouth on this too. Brigham said, venge my Lord, I’ve taken a little at one point, sounding like he totally approved, and at other times he said, What you did was wrong and I told you to leave him alone and.
[1:19:38] Michelle: OK, so, OK, so we can, I think we’ve done that one. So now, um, race, let’s talk. So Brigham knew, said in the name of God that he knew sla slavery was a godly principle and was correct, and then also the whole um
[1:19:50] Benjamin Schaffer: you did admit it is in the Bible.
[1:19:54] Michelle: Yes, it is. I do. OK,
[1:19:56] Benjamin Schaffer: so you agree with
[1:19:57] Michelle: Brigham on like the, the inferiority of black people in the pre-mortal existence that they were less valiant.
[1:20:04] Benjamin Schaffer: You know, the, the funny thing is, is actually the strongest statement we have against the theory that you just mentioned is Brigham Young. The, the, the church leaders after Brigham Young all the way up to and even including Spencer W. Kimball at times, they all said what you were just saying, that that they were that they were inferior, that they were less faithful in the pre-existence, all that sort of thing. Brigham Young, actually
[1:20:25] Michelle: not only Bruce McConkie, but he was Bruce McConki
[1:20:28] Benjamin Schaffer: was big into that. Yeah,
[1:20:29] Michelle: he was the he was the one that held on, OK,
[1:20:32] Benjamin Schaffer: but like there was this is more or less the doctrine of the church all the way through. Brigham Young himself actually disavowed that. He said there were none unfaithful in the pre-mortal life. all took sides. That um it doesn’t matter if you were the president of the church and a prophet in the pre-existence or whether or not you were a, uh, he didn’t say the bad N word but he said the Latin N word um or even if you were black, basically, um, you, they, they all took sides for Jesus Christ. um, so Brigham Young actually was not the one who taught that. It was pretty much everyone after him all the way up right into Hold
[1:21:04] Michelle: on, hold on, that’s not true. 1852 we have the 12
[1:21:09] Benjamin Schaffer: he said some very harsh things about how they were inferior. But he did not say that they were neutral in the pre-existence. He did not say that. He said no, they took the side of Christ.
[1:21:20] Michelle: Well, so Brigham Young did teach in no uncertain terms, the inferiority of African Americans. And so, so do you hold to and that they could never have the priesthood until after the very last white person had been given the opportunity till the end of creation. So do you agree with him on that? Or have you disavowed and condemned that?
[1:21:44] Benjamin Schaffer: You know, again, I would engage with him on that more than I would say this place is an outside communion of the faith. Um, I disagree with him on it quite a bit actually. In fact, one of the big things for me with fundamentalism is fundamentalists generally don’t have black priests. Right,
[1:22:03] Michelle: there’s, there’s some generally to teachings. That’s why I’m asking.
[1:22:07] Benjamin Schaffer: Yeah, um, and that was a big hang up for me because I was like, I don’t think I could go fundamentalist. It’s one of the main reasons why I wasn’t that interested in any of the fundamentalist groups when I was having my own journey, uh, was that because I was like, I’m not going there. In fact, I was this close when I found out in the 90s. Or so I was still a kid, but when I found out in the 90s that any member of the church had ever believed in any racist doctrine, I was this close to saying there is no God, there is no church. It’s all BS. I am done.
[1:22:39] Michelle: Oh, interesting. I want to point out you almost became an angry atheist and I had nothing to do with my podcast. So let’s just that. OK, keep going.
[1:22:46] Benjamin Schaffer: One of them was over this doctrine, right? This was a, this was a big no for me, um. I don’t want to be associated with racists at all, OK? And Brigham Young was a racist. And so here I am associating myself with Brigham Young even though he’s a racist, um. I would engage with him because I do believe in doctrines of lineage. I don’t believe that that translates to race.
[1:23:11] Michelle: I do, can you define that?
[1:23:14] Benjamin Schaffer: For example, that the Levites are Levites and the non-Levites are not Levites. The Coens and the non-Cans are not. So there are different gifts and and different gifts and blessings.
[1:23:27] Michelle: OK, OK,
[1:23:28] Benjamin Schaffer: right. Um, this is all over the Doctrine and Covenant even, um, this would be hard to extricate Joseph Smith from.
[1:23:35] Michelle: Um, my goodness,
[1:23:37] Benjamin Schaffer: she got strawberry everything. My daughter is showing me she’s got strawberry bagel with sliced strawberries with strawberry lemonade. So, OK,
[1:23:44] Michelle: so it sounds to me like you don’t ordain black men.
[1:23:49] Benjamin Schaffer: We never have, but no no black man has ever come to us to verify whether or not his lineage entitles him to the priesthood or not. No man has ever ever asked for.
[1:24:00] Michelle: You would do a blessing, a patriarchal blessing to determine whether the lineage entitles him to the priest.
[1:24:05] Benjamin Schaffer: Yeah, and, and so here’s one of the differences too. Um, Brigham Young started this, this is something I definitely disagree with him on. Brigham Young started this idea that everyone has to be ordained. Everyone goes to the temple. Everyone gets ordained. Every man over 18, heck, for Brigham Young, every man over 12 gets ordained an elder or a 70 or an apostle. Sometimes when they’re just babies, right? They ordained everybody. This is why it became so racist, because it was everybody except you. We don’t do that. We don’t ordain everybody. We only only ordain people when there’s been an actual revelation calling them by revelation to be ordained to something. I didn’t get ordained. Um, in my church, because I was just some guy. We don’t ordain every guy. There was a revelation. Thus sayeth the Lord, I shall call my servant Benjamin Schafer to become one of my apostles, and he shall serve in the corner of the 70. That’s how I got ordained. I felt my own personal call. I did feel my own personal call from God, and they got the call from God, and then it happened, but there was no assumption that simply because I was a member, I would be ordained even a deacon or anything.
[1:25:15] Michelle: OK. OK. So just to, to try to encapsulate this quickly because I feel like there’s
[1:25:21] Benjamin Schaffer: some of us but none of you. It’s not about race.
[1:25:24] Michelle: OK, so, but, however, um, Well, racism is, I mean, I’m super uncomfortable having this part of the conversation, right?
[1:25:33] Benjamin Schaffer: Well, we’re two white people talking about black people’s destiny, which, frankly probably isn’t gonna work anyway. No matter what we say it doesn’t really matter. We should get a black person’s opinion.
[1:25:41] Michelle: Well, I’m asking
[1:25:42] Benjamin Schaffer: for your whole race either, you know,
[1:25:45] Michelle: right, right. I’m just asking for where you, where you part ways with Brigham. So it sounds like in general, you kind of, you, you, you believe Brigham’s teachings, you would just maybe apply them differently in some instances, but that Brigham saying that he knows, was Brigham when he said in the name of God that he knows that racism was, I mean, that slavery was of God and that it was good. Was he wrong or was he right? Was he being a false prophet in that moment?
[1:26:11] Benjamin Schaffer: Slavery is almost always wrong. You know what I’ll give you on this one too, almost always wrong. You know I’m gonna give you right here because of the, because of the, uh, uh, this is, this is a softball for you, um, because of the Republican platform. Polygamy is usually wrong too. I’ll admit that I’m a polygamist, but it can be wrong too. In fact, most marriages. A lot of marriages don’t turn out very great because we don’t ask God to enter into uh have our covenant with him. No, we’re following our lusts, we’re following on our ideas. I would say the vast majority of plural marriages and monogamous marriages and marriages, period. A lot of them. Not eternal, not good. Uh, slavery almost always wrong.
[1:26:57] Michelle: When is the almost? Give me what the qualifier is.
[1:27:01] Benjamin Schaffer: He said when he says to his master and treat me not to leave thee, please, please pierce my ear that all may see from the earring I shall wear for the rest of my life. That I am of thy household, for I wish to serve thee.
[1:27:14] Michelle: Then that’s that’s to go.
[1:27:19] Benjamin Schaffer: I want to be
[1:27:20] Michelle: mean he would lose his wife and his children because they were still enslaved but to the master. That’s what the context. Well, he, he was already a slave
[1:27:28] Benjamin Schaffer: wife and children. Everybody pays off their own debts is the only way I saw that.
[1:27:33] Michelle: So, OK, so there is a qualifier where slavery is OK, just like there’s a qualifier where polygamy is OK. So,
[1:27:39] Benjamin Schaffer: by the way, when I think marriage is OK or marriage or at least OK, and slavery is at least OK, you know, the main difference is between marriage and rape, consent, consent where the primary difference is. And so is slavery, slavery is usually the main point, the main problem with slavery is there is no consent. And I think that the biblical talk about slavery is specifically to point out that Serving one another, living together, doing work on the same business or the same farm together is not the sin of slavery. Slavery is not a sin because you worked on the same project together. slavery is a sin because there is no consent. And so when I,
[1:28:20] Michelle: yeah, it’s an imbalance of power one person owns.
[1:28:23] Benjamin Schaffer: And their consensual answer their debts and the Lord always releases them from their debts the year, not just the year of Jubilee but the the sabbatical year. The Lord is gonna release them from those debts, so slavery cannot be permanent, debt cannot be permanent. And if you wish to have an ongoing relationship, it must be consensual. Well, I don’t see anything wrong with those rules, which is what I see in the slavery of the Bible. And so if that’s slavery, then I think that’s probably appropriate because I’ve worked for an employer before and honestly my relationship in modern America with an employer has at times been far closer to actual chattel slavery than what the Bible is talking about because my debts don’t get forgiven every 7 years in this country.
[1:29:03] Michelle: I think that. Hagar is a slave, where they had, they owned her body and soul, including the fruit of her womb they could claim as their own, right? That’s a pretty,
[1:29:14] Benjamin Schaffer: that’s slavery. I don’t know if I’d go that far.
[1:29:18] Michelle: Sarah says, I mean, Sora says, Here is my handmaid, take her that she may bear a child for us, for me. It was going to be her child. Hagar was her slave, and they had sexual access to her, including to claim. Their her child as their own. That was, that’s where both slavery and, um, polygamy and polygamy come from. So my question also is, why is polygamy the highest holiest principle of the gospel that has to be restored and not slavery when they are both intertwined in the same story.
[1:29:52] Benjamin Schaffer: I would say that covenant relationships are the highest and holiest law, and sometimes we mortals will call one of them polygamy, we’ll call another one monogamy, we’ll call
[1:30:03] Michelle: another one Hagar,
[1:30:05] Benjamin Schaffer: we’ll call another one. We’ll call a different one, receiving the law of Mount Sinai, and all of those when they’re covenant relationships are good things and of God. And when they’re not covenant
[1:30:14] Michelle: was Hagar and covenant relationship with with Abraham with Sara and Abraham.
[1:30:20] Benjamin Schaffer: I believe so, yeah.
[1:30:22] Michelle: And yet he just abandoned her. God said, OK, the covenant’s over.
[1:30:27] Benjamin Schaffer: And this is where I would say, look, um, Sarah, or Serai and Hagar having a tiff. And Abraham, not or Abraham not stepping up and and helping uh her during this fight and and allowing his family to be torn apart because of these problems.
[1:30:47] Michelle: Abram was bad in how he handled polygamy.
[1:30:49] Benjamin Schaffer: It didn’t go very well. That was bad.
[1:30:52] Michelle: And but it was, but it was, it was not doing. It was not, it was not engaging in polygamy that caused the bad outcome. It was that Abraham wasn’t assertive enough in how he managed his two wives that led to the bad. Well,
[1:31:07] Benjamin Schaffer: it was also the fact that don’t forget Sarah has a covenant here that she’s trying to fulfill. She’s trying to bring forth this blessed covenant son. She tried to do so with plural
[1:31:18] Michelle: marriage, Hagar,
[1:31:19] Benjamin Schaffer: through Hagar and
[1:31:21] Michelle: it was, it was the concubinage. We should be more, it was, she was a concubine. It was through concubinage, not plural marriage. One of 32 is the wife of the doctrine of many wives and concubines. So Hagar was absolutely a concubine. She was a slave who was like she was every definition of a concubine. That’s what Hagar was.
[1:31:41] Benjamin Schaffer: Yes, but what is a concubine? Is still a little bit tricky here because she’s still, that still makes her a type of wife and what happens when you marry your slave, according to the law of Moses is she’s now free. If you slay with a slave,
[1:31:58] Michelle: she treated her still because Abraham preceded the law of Moses. Some of it,
[1:32:04] Benjamin Schaffer: I believe that I believe just like Joseph Smith was just a restorationist. Right,
[1:32:09] Michelle: right, but, but if we’re going to look at the story of Abraham, which I think sets the example, um, Hagar remained a slave when there was a problem between Saray and Hagar. Abraham recognized Hagar’s identity as Sarai’s slave and said, you deal with her, she’s your slave. Right. And so he, she didn’t enjoy the protection of a wife. She was still a, she was still. Well,
[1:32:32] Benjamin Schaffer: I will admit this is the problem. There was broken covenants happening. I don’t think the covenant was the problem. I think breaking the covenant was the problem. Um, Abraham. Has Abraham and Hagar’s divine covenant was a divine covenant and therefore brought forth Ishmael, who brought forth the Midianites and all of, and, and, and other Arab races and I believe he was part of fulfilling the promise of the covenant promise of Abraham, but They were breaking the covenant. There was these breakdowns because in this world, we’re not always perfect. We don’t always live the Lord’s commandments of perfection. And so there was a conflict. And in that conflict, they got taught a lesson. And that lesson was the angel came and brought her back and reprimanded her mistress, uh, if this is slavery, reprimanded Serai and brought her home.
[1:33:19] Michelle: The angel
[1:33:20] Benjamin Schaffer: reprimanded
[1:33:21] Michelle: Sara
[1:33:21] Benjamin Schaffer: and blessed the child that he would not die, for she like she was afraid.
[1:33:28] Michelle: So they go out and she was kicked out twice. The second time, the angel saved Ishmael’s life and she never went back. And that’s when Abraham’s name was changed to Abraham and Sara’s name was changed to Sarah, and they became the Covenant couple.
[1:33:41] Benjamin Schaffer: So you’re saying you don’t think, you don’t think that Hagar was there. I mean, I, because, because, yeah, from my viewpoint, the whole point of the story is, is that when they learned the meaning of the covenant and they lived in their happy plural family and they learned their lesson to be a good plural family and stop breaking their covenants, they were blessed with the, with the name. He’s not just now he’s Abraham, not just Abraham, because he’s because he is the father of the line of Ishmael and the line of Isaac. Now he is the father of nations because right, so it’s fulfilling, it’s, it’s
[1:34:13] Michelle: repairings Hagar’s new name. What’s Hagar’s new name? Abraham just
[1:34:21] Benjamin Schaffer: because you don’t have something like that in the scripture, just because you don’t, just because you don’t know or I don’t know that she received a new name does not mean that we’re like, I mean, there’s so many people we never mentioned their wife at all by name. You’re right, I don’t know at least I know her name for goods sake, the filled with wonderful powerful women who you never even get to hear their name at all like.
[1:34:44] Michelle: We better get ready to wrap up. I would agree with you that in the story of Abraham and Sarai, it is God teaching us the importance of covenants, and we see them in their best efforts take a misstep trying to bring forth the promised child because you guys like. I think that it was. And then when, when they realized that was a mistake, Hagar never, um, conceived again. She was used as a surrogate, as a slave.
[1:35:12] Benjamin Schaffer: Hagar’s other children aren’t listed. You’re assuming that that means that, does that mean Lehi and Sarah never had any daughters? They definitely never had any daughters because they’re not
[1:35:21] Michelle: named Lehi and Soraya? No, it says that they did. The point I’m making is
[1:35:25] Benjamin Schaffer: Adam had daughters didn’t they? They’re not named.
[1:35:28] Michelle: Hold on, hold on. It is very explicit that Um, Hagar and Ishmael were kicked out. Abraham, Abraham was sad that he, that this is where this led, this mistake that they made, trying their best. And
[1:35:42] Benjamin Schaffer: those two were kicked out.
[1:35:43] Michelle: It was Ishmael who almost died. It was Ishmael who went on to have 12 sons. So it’s very clearly Hagar and Ishmael. There was no covenant. It makes it very clear in both the Book of Mormon and in the New Testament. That that the Bond woman is not part of the covenant that only Sarah is. So these kinds of things that I
[1:36:02] Benjamin Schaffer: disagree very, very fundamentally. Oh,
[1:36:04] Michelle: I, I could show you like you look up Bond woman through the New Testament and see where they’re talking about. We are not the children of the Bond woman. And then also in the Book of Mormon it says look to Abraham, your father and Sarah who bury you, right? It’s very clear that Those two who received the covenant and their one covenant child was was Isaac, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, right? So, but that’s at least that’s my take on it.
[1:36:28] Benjamin Schaffer: Does he get, does he get preeminence over Ishmael? Yeah, I see that all over the place. I get that, but I don’t think Ishmael is just some dog who gets thrown away. Ishmael received promises and blessings and everything, and that’s why the angel was there to proclaim those blessings. And I mean
[1:36:45] Michelle: he’s still a
[1:36:45] Benjamin Schaffer: blessed lineage.
[1:36:47] Michelle: You know that story doesn’t have anything to do with Mormon polygamy. It’s a very strange story to point to, to claim polygamy is of God any more than to slavery is of God.
[1:36:57] Benjamin Schaffer: Which one of us brought up Abraham, but I Yeah, but, but I, I, I mean, I do believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Moses, and These are a bunch of polygamists. I know that some people say Isaac wasn’t. OK, fine. The kid came out that’s still 3 quarters of polygamists of the people who are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses, um, uh, but you know, it’s like there’s a lot of that going on. And look, here’s the, here’s the thing, if If it is true that Abraham was accepted of God, if Abraham is not cast off forever, if he’s not evil, if Abraham isn’t synonymous with the devil in his kingdom, if Abraham has any promise from God. God must be a lot more at least allowing of polygamy than it seems like most people are these days. And at the very least I would hope that people would make enough allowance for that not to target and harm my family. Please don’t throw any of us
[1:37:46] Michelle: in jail. Please do not wives.
[1:37:49] Benjamin Schaffer: Please do not chase off my children,
[1:37:51] Michelle: Benjamin, that’s creating a straw man. Come on, I, you, I would never, but plenty
[1:37:59] Benjamin Schaffer: of
[1:37:59] Michelle: your
[1:38:00] Benjamin Schaffer: listeners
[1:38:00] Michelle: would. No, they would not, not because of any influence, but I will tell you, the way that I am treated by many polygamists or pro-polygamist Mormons is quite appalling. And I have never treated any polygamists that way and never would. I would
[1:38:17] Benjamin Schaffer: never encourage even without you present. Is that I didn’t think you were very sincere because I felt that the overwhelming evidence of the scripture and of history was not in your favor and I felt that you were making, but
[1:38:28] Michelle: that does not. I, I don’t, I thought I want to engage us making the victim. Don’t, don’t make yourself a victim and I won’t make myself a victim. Let’s just have a conversation, please, right, because, so, um.
[1:38:42] Benjamin Schaffer: Oh, go ahead. There’s still a history, OK? There’s a history of conflict between polygamous communities and, and, and the mainstream of this, of this country in the United States of America. Right, right,
[1:38:53] Michelle: but there’s also a history of atrocious behavior by polygamists, specifically to young girls.
[1:39:00] Benjamin Schaffer: And I don’t think that the, that’s I know some baddies, right? We can pull out Leon and I,
[1:39:07] Michelle: I think it’s, I think it’s not so much the exception as it’s, it tends to become the rule to a great extent because when girls are taught polygamy, OK.
[1:39:17] Benjamin Schaffer: I, I fundamentally disagree. I think there’s more monogamous, um, more, more monogamous child molesting, things like that than there are polygamist ones by a long shot. I don’t think it’s any more common in our community than it is in the mainstream. Of course there are bad people who do bad things. There’s, there’s there’s murders, but I do not think that polygamy makes more of them. I think it, I think that our religious community is probably exemplary compared to the general population.
[1:39:43] Michelle: I, I, I would, I will say when I was raising my children, and I think I told you this at the wedding, and when I’m still raising my children, but, um, I didn’t fit in the way I was raising my children without television, without me, you know, wanting to raise them up unto the Lord, I did really have a yearning to be among the polygamous mothers to some extent, because I felt like I had a lot in common with them. So I would never say anything condemning to specific polygamists. I have a Uh, and people won’t believe this, but it actually, I have a lot of love and respect, and that’s been one of the hardest things about this has been alienating people that I would not want to.
[1:40:21] Benjamin Schaffer: It sounds like you are saying that you think that our religion encourages violence and evil.
[1:40:27] Michelle: This, this is what I’m saying. I polygamy necessitates the female marrying age, becoming younger and younger and younger. That is verifiable throughout, including in Mormonism during the Great Reformation. The average age of marrying girls got down to like between 16 and 13. It was terrible and I and
[1:40:48] Benjamin Schaffer: and my church does not allow anyone to enter a marriage under the age of 18.
[1:40:53] Michelle: OK. And so, so these
[1:40:55] Benjamin Schaffer: are sort of for a long time.
[1:40:57] Michelle: OK. So just like you guys are concerned that I’m being operated on by a false spirit that’s leading to bad outcomes, I feel the same way. I am concerned about this, what I consider to be, uh, a false spirit of polygamy that does tend also in many instances to also lead toward blood atonement, to lead toward racism, to lead toward I consider. Right. Well, I, I think it’s the same group of teachings that because it comes from Brigham Young. So that’s why I’m, I’m concerned about it. And I also want I want women in particular, but men as well, because I think both men and women, in my perspective can be victims of polygamy. You know, I know that there are lustful men who use it in that way. In fact, DNC 132, the justification is that a man desires to marry another virgin, you know. But I think in general, people believing that this is required by God leads them to do things that I think has a greater tendency to lead to. Negative outcomes. So that’s why, that’s one of my perspectives, but it’s
[1:41:58] Benjamin Schaffer: nothing that’s my perspective on monogamy in a nutshell.
[1:42:01] Michelle: Right. Sure. So it’s, but it’s nothing personal. Like, I hope you haven’t felt like I’ve been attacking you in this conversation or that that we’re enemies.
[1:42:09] Benjamin Schaffer: But you, but you are, we are trying to figure out what the boundaries are, right? We’re trying to figure out where do we agree with where we disagree with Brigham Young or Justice Smith or any of the rest of them, right?
[1:42:18] Michelle: Is that bad?
[1:42:19] Benjamin Schaffer: No, that’s good. That’s good. It’s debate. We should, we should, we should, we should flush things out. Heck, we’ve been flushing out for over 3 hours. I know.
[1:42:27] Michelle: Well, can I ask you this last question and then you feel free to ask me any follow-ups or final questions. But so one thing talking about this polygamy forcing the birth, the marriage age down for women, it also. That that’s happened throughout. You can we can show that.
[1:42:43] Benjamin Schaffer: It is generally the trends even in any culture that generally it’s more common for a man to marry when, when, when any marriage occurs that the man is older than the woman is more common than the woman being older than the man. I think that’s partly biological fertility considerations.
[1:42:59] Michelle: Sure, but we’re talking about like. Did Brigham Young marry a 13-year-old when he was in his 50s? And, you know, and even according to the stories that I don’t agree with, Joseph Smith married 14 and 15 year olds when he was in his late 30s and 40s, right? So, yeah,
[1:43:15] Benjamin Schaffer: he never got to be 40. They killed him. But
[1:43:17] Michelle: he, so he was in his 30s. OK. So I guess I’m thinking 44, that’s the year, not his age. But so, so my, um, so my question is, like, like, to me, things like, I, I just think creation. Testifies of gods of monogamy, of God’s established. For example, things like the birth rate being 50/50, just slightly higher male than female because slightly more male size. So how do you think about that? Because I’ll tell you what I think about it, but I am curious how you think that fits into polygamy, if God wanted polygamy.
[1:43:50] Benjamin Schaffer: First of all, I think it’s interesting because what you’re trying to say is that everyone should be a polygamist. Well, that’s crazy. Not everyone should be a polygamist. That would be not only is that numerically impossible, I’ll grant you. Why would that even be desirable? It’s like, it’s like my other thing about the whole ordination thing. Why would you want everyone in every congregation to be a minister?
[1:44:10] Michelle: Well, doesn’t God want us all back if polygamy is required for exaltation and even Brigham often taught and the others that it was required just for salvation to not be damned. So if it’s required, so doesn’t God want us all back? So why teach and God’s gonna
[1:44:25] Benjamin Schaffer: get us all back. I’m a university.
[1:44:28] Michelle: But we can look at every principle of the gospel, like the commandments, you know, honesty, morality, like you don’t need, it’s not like God only wants a certain chosen group of His people to be honest.
[1:44:42] Benjamin Schaffer: Oh, sure, right? I know I get what you’re saying there. So what you’re saying is, is polygamy like honesty, that everyone has to practice polygamy. No, but because polygamy is only one expression of covenant. Polygamy is only one expression of love. Polygamy is only one expression of family. Does God want everyone to be loved? Yes. Does God want everyone to be covenant? Yes. Does God want everybody to be covenant in a particular structure or a particular in a particular way. No, of course not. That wouldn’t fit circumstances. That would be. So is it that
[1:45:12] Michelle: that Brigham was wrong and I’m just saying Brigham Young as a stand-in for the entire group teaching these doctrines, Joseph F. Smith, but
[1:45:19] Benjamin Schaffer: you don’t include Joseph Smith in that group, do you?
[1:45:21] Michelle: I absolutely don’t. So Brigham Young, so Brigham Young was wrong that polygamy is required for exaltation, or God intentionally set up a system where only a select few could, could be could be considered to receive exaltation.
[1:45:41] Benjamin Schaffer: This is kind of an identity question, is the way I see this. Um, is polygamy part of it? Yeah, from my perspective it is. But does that mean everyone does it the same way at the same time? This is why Paul said, um, let not the hand say I have no need of the foot, right? We’re all one part of the body of Christ. I view the, the, the, the gospel as one great whole of truth. Is polygamy on the inside of the circle that incorporates all truth? Yes. If you reject any portion of the circle of all things that are part of all truth, I think you put yourself in a situation to be damned. So is it in that sense requirement? Yes. Does that mean everyone does the same thing as everyone else? Absolutely not. There there’s no reason for the head to say to the foot, I have no need of thee. Um, we’re all part of one body of Christ. We’re all part of one community. Does that community have some polygamy in it? Yeah, my community does, and I think we’re part of the covenant people of Mormonism, or the people of, of Judaism even, the God’s covenant people on the earth, the people who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which like I said, I see them as a bunch of polygamists. Um, we’re part of that. So polygamy is in there. And it’s just a fact of life that Jacob Israel, if we are the children of Israel, that we have to recognize that we come from polygamous ancestry. But does that mean that you have to marry anyone in particular? No. Does it mean I have to marry anyone in particular? No. Does it mean I have to, at a particular stage of my life, oh no, I, I turned 35 and I didn’t have 17 wives. I’m, I’m ruined, you know. No, that’s, that’s all silly. Um, and when Brigham Young took it to that extreme, I think he was It’s hyperbole. It’s absolutely ridiculous to a certain extent. Not everyone’s circumstances works out this way. OK, we had a guy, for example, in our church, um, mentally developmentally delayed, I guess you could call it, um, he had, he had, he had problems. He wasn’t really marriage material, OK? He wasn’t able to have a job, he wasn’t able to raise a family. Sure, but he, it was interesting, he was faithful and he was capable of comprehending these things. And there were moments of lucidity with him that were just inspiring. You know, he would go non-vocal for like lengths of time, and then he would stand up and bear testimony that was just incredible. And I remember he died somewhat unexpectedly, but it was partly from his health problems, but somewhat unexpectedly, and he was at the temple with me to do a temple session. Um, About a little less than a month before he he died. And he looked me in the eye in a way he normally didn’t, and he bore his testimony. And that really blew me away. It was like a side of him as, as like, instead of him just being the guy who sits in the back and you’re not sure if he’s even hearing it, he was the guy who stands at the front and, and, and teaches. And I was like, wow, that was interesting, you know. Um, I didn’t expect that from him and then he was suddenly gone. And um after he died. Uh, there were some people who have this question. Well, he never married. Will he be able to become a god? Will he be able to be, you know, uh, after all, the whole idea of exaltation is heavenly parents and this family concept of a heavenly father and heavenly mother. What about him? Can he become like that, or is, or is he forever barred because he, he wasn’t able to marry in this life? And the um president of the church was like, of course he’s not barred. Right? And he said, let me pray about this, and he prayed about it, and he was sealed to 3 women who also never had the chance to marry in this life. OK, OK, so,
[1:49:21] Michelle: so then why in this life?
[1:49:23] Benjamin Schaffer: Is that, is that about sex? No, it’s about something much bigger than sex because all four of those people, the man and the 3 wives that we sealed to him in the temple, were all done by proxy. They were dead.
[1:49:34] Michelle: So right, so I guess I’m just asking then why not just let it be practiced that way
[1:49:43] Benjamin Schaffer: after this life? Well, why would this be any different than in this life?
[1:49:45] Michelle: Well, you’re just saying because in this life causes a lot of problems for a lot of people and causes a lot of pain and suffering. So
[1:49:51] Benjamin Schaffer: there’s a book called um the Ghost, the Ghost of eternal polygamy, right? Um, I’ve read it. I thought it was powerful. I thought it was really interesting. I, I met um Carolyn Pearson. I met Carolyn Pearson at um Sunstone after reading her book. And she was like, oh, you’re interested in my book. Well, that’s so great. And I said, yeah, cause I’m a polygamist and and her countenance just fell. She was like, oh my God. And I was like, yeah, cause I’m a polygamist, and this was really insightful to me to see what people think about this. And she was like, what? And I’m like, yeah, I’m a polygamist, and this was really eye-opening to see these perspectives, you know. And she was like, I don’t know if I, you know, she made it really uncomfortable, kind of like when I met you at the wedding. I’m like, no, this is really fascinating stuff. What do I think about it? Well,
[1:50:41] Michelle: I think my reaction with you in the wedding is because of our personal. I just want to clarify because of our personal interactions online. They haven’t been exactly pleasant, but go ahead, pleasant.
[1:50:49] Benjamin Schaffer: I’m like, what are you doing? You’re a liar, you know, or something. And then you’re like, no, people lied for polygamy, and I’m like, no, they didn’t. Anyway, um, so. When I look at uh at at the polygamy situation there, what I see is a lot of people and a lot of these situations that go bad. I see a lot of See, a lot of people who haven’t really worked through it. It’s like the people who go to the temple unprepared for this ritual experience. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to push somebody into polygamy who didn’t choose it. That would be terrible. That’d be foolish. Besides being terrible, it’s foolish. It’s not gonna work.
[1:51:26] Michelle: What happened? So what happened in early Utah was terrible and foolish. How many
[1:51:30] Benjamin Schaffer: people in many instances, yes. But I think that there were also a lot of great loving people who said, we want. To emulate.
[1:51:38] Michelle: That’s my stors. My, my family did it about as well as it could be done. It still involved massive suffering, incredible, unthinkable poverty,
[1:51:47] Benjamin Schaffer: but you’re blaming polygamy
[1:51:52] Michelle: that caused the suffering, yeah, yeah,
[1:51:54] Benjamin Schaffer: I don’t see that as the cause.
[1:51:56] Michelle: When you have one father with 50 children, it’s pretty
[1:51:58] Benjamin Schaffer: tough. Oh my gosh.
[1:52:00] Michelle: Well, I mean, I’m using that’s fricking young, but he had all of the money because he had all the tithing funds. And I would have loved to ask you about things like the Gardo House and the culture in early Utah, but I think we better wrap it up. This has actually been great though. I’m glad we had the chance to do this.
[1:52:14] Benjamin Schaffer: Yeah, and, and you know, people like Carolyn Pearson and others who really struggled with this. What I see them is they’re in the middle of that grieving process. They haven’t resolved it. They haven’t gained either a testimony or a rejection of that testimony. I worry a little bit about people who feel that Justice Smith wasn’t a polymist, that you’re in an untenable situation with 1 ft on sea and one on shore. If you got a foot on a boat and a foot on the dock, and the ship is leaving the harbor, you are either gonna pick a side and get on the boat or get on the dock, or you’re gonna fall in the water, right? And I worry that when people are trying to have Joseph Smith without dealing with the difficulties, yes, the problems, yes, of polygamy. You’ve got, you’ve got 1 ft on the Joseph Smith boat and 1 ft on the monogamy boat, and those are not gonna end up being compatible long term. And I’ve, and, and this is where Carolyn Pearson is as far as I’m concerned, is that she’s struggling, she wants to have Mormonism. Without its context, without its culture, without its history. She wants to have Mormonism without its scripture. And I feel like you’re trying to do the same thing and the danger there, I think is, is that what it is is it’s like you’re right in the middle of this grieving process. You’re going through, you’re going through denial, then you’re going through um anger, then you’re going through bargaining. You gotta get to the acceptance. Otherwise, you’re gonna always be in this middle place where it’s, it’s, it’s a trauma. It’s a trauma that pulls you apart, pulls your faith apart, pulls your family apart. It makes, it, it causes this terrible suffering. And I feel like. Because the world isn’t always what we want it to be, you’ve gotta, you gotta go through those stages. You gotta bargain, you gotta be angry, you gotta whatever. But in the end, if you don’t come to a place of acceptance, Um, it just leads to more and more suffering, and that’s where I feel like she’s at and that’s where I feel like the people in her book were at. That’s where I feel like people who deny just polygamy are at. You’re bargaining, you’re trying to have Joseph Smith that is polygamy and I just like. Yeah, but that doesn’t come up with historical facts. And so I think that as a fallback, I would advise anybody who doesn’t believe Justin was a polygamist to stop a fallback. Is your fallback, I’m gonna accept Mormonism anyway, even with the polygamy, even though I don’t like it, and I’m gonna find a way to accept and and wrestle with that. It’s OK to wrestle with it, or am I going to leave Mormonism behind over this? And kind of decide now because that’s where it’s gonna end up, I think eventually because I think that it’s an incontrovertible historical fact that Joseph Smith did teach these doctrines with the hierarchy, with the covenant to your husband, with the covenant to Israel, with the covenant to um patriarchal file leadership. All those things are in there, wrestle with it all you want. Let’s wrestle together, Israel. Israel means wrestles with God. It is good for us to wrestle with our testimonies, wrestle with hard questions, and no, there might not be an easy answer, and maybe these, and maybe this is gonna end up with all kinds of messy hurt things that happen in your family or mine. But I believe that the most important thing we can do is just keep wrestling. Keep wrestling with the Lord, and eventually the blessing comes. Poor old polygamist Jacob, poor old polygamist Jacob under the tree with 4 wives, was wrestling with, I’m gonna be in lots of trouble. I, I stole the birthright. I don’t have it, you know, Esau’s gonna come and kill me. I’ve done all these things. What’s the answer? And he just wrestled with the Lord until he finally got the Lord to say, I will make a covenant with thee. Right, he wrestled with God and prevailed.
[1:55:45] Michelle: OK, you give me that last like 10 seconds.
[1:55:49] Benjamin Schaffer: I was saying, well, gee, your earbuds died. Well, that’s what happens when you have a 4 hour long chat, right? But the final, the final point to pass it off to you is that um. Jacob wrestled, and I think that what we need to do is just keep wrestling. We need to wrestle with these things, and I’m not saying that there’s any easy answers or that you’re gonna get some pat answer. That sort of, uh, thinking is what has led a lot of us out of the LDS Church is giving some pat answer and being told that’s good enough, the rest is a mystery. It’s not a mystery. Find out the mysteries, search out all things, wrestle and keep wrestling. And when you find something that makes you think, oh, I’m done with this, don’t give up, keep wrestling with God. That’s I think the message from Jacob.
[1:56:32] Michelle: OK, I like it. So I’m curious because I know that in your mind the history is long since settled. There’s no question to be had. Polygamy is of God. Polygamy is of Joseph Smith.
[1:56:44] Benjamin Schaffer: Joseph Smith. People can say that they don’t believe in polygamy and they still believe in Joseph Smith, and they accept that Jose Smith was a polygamist. I mean, like, Lachlan McKay, um, is an apostle in the community of Christ. Believer, faithful, wonderful man. He doesn’t believe polygamies of God. He does believe Joseph Smith’s a prophet. He does accept the fact that Joseph Smith,
[1:57:06] Michelle: they don’t have much use for the Book of Mormon or for Joseph Smith. You know,
[1:57:09] Benjamin Schaffer: a lot of people get down on them for that, but I don’t know anybody in the community of Christ that doesn’t love the Book of Mormon.
[1:57:15] Michelle: Oh, really? OK. Interesting.
[1:57:17] Benjamin Schaffer: And I know dozens and dozens of people in the community of Christ. They read from it, they preach from it. Some
[1:57:22] Michelle: do. I would agree. I don’t,
[1:57:26] Benjamin Schaffer: I don’t, but I think they’re the exception than the other way around.
[1:57:29] Michelle: Interesting. It’d be fun to do that. It’d be people from the community of Christ, let us know because I know there are some that do, but I know that even John Hammer acknowledged that when people want to hear from the Book of Mormon, his church is not the place to come. And so, so, you know, it’s interesting, but he’s a, isn’t he? No, he’s, uh, I think he’s an apostle of the community of Christ. He’s at least a 70. He’s he’s a Hammer,
[1:57:51] Benjamin Schaffer: yeah, no, he’s a 70,
[1:57:52] Michelle: yeah, 70, yeah.
[1:57:54] Benjamin Schaffer: I’ve heard him the Mormon before.
[1:57:56] Michelle: OK. Well, um, so anyway, this is, this has been really interesting. I would say I agree with you completely and wrestle with God and I would include the scripture. In that wrestle and the spirit of God. And, and, and, um, and I think, I think that it’s, I hear what you’re saying about, um, coming to acceptance, but I do, I do feel deep and abiding acceptance in what I have learned and what I’m continuing to learn everything I have learned since that has confirmed rather than weakened the, you know. So if you would like to, I’ll leave the invitation open. If you would like to come back and discuss more explicitly the scriptures and maybe the history that you find to be compelling, I’d be happy to have another discussion at some point. Right?
[1:58:39] Benjamin Schaffer: I mean, it might be interesting, um, to, you’re hitting me with some of the hard stuff from Brigham Young, some of the worst, most bizarre, most misunderstood things from Brigham Young, you know, um, and, and it, it’s kind of fun to hit back at the, at the opposite end of that, which is like, how about Adam and Eve? Try to explain to me why you would think they were monogamous. When I’m like, this is so like in the King James Version, sure, the King James version has Jesus as unmarried. They, they talk about the women with Jesus, and they don’t even recognize it like Tyndale, for goodness’ sake, Tyndale. When he read, did the very first English translation of the four Gospels, he said Jesus’ wives, right in the Tyndale Bible. Oh, for the women and the wives is literally the same word. It is only a stylistic preference. The difference between the wives of Adam and Eve in the singular is literally a stylistic preference of the translators because in Hebrew, it is literally wives, mothers of all living. It’s like literally a plural word, you know, and some people might have a preference for a mono monotheistic God, but In Genesis 1:1, Elohim is plural, right? Joseph Smith likes to point this one out. Uh sure, you can be a monotheist all you want, but don’t tell me that you can prove it by Genesis 1:1. It’s plural, right there. So you know, proving it is something different and I would say like, I just think that it’s easier to accept all the marriages instead of being super uh like, oh no, these ones but not those ones.
[2:00:16] Michelle: Uh, to me it’s not about accepting or not accepting all the marriages. To me it’s about finding, seeking, discovering, and striving to obey and believe the word of God. It’s about the promises in the Book of Mormon and the warnings in both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants that we are under condemnation for taking lightly the things that we have received and having the Book of Mormon be the strongest book, the, the strongest anti-polygamy book of. Scripture of all of the books of scripture, followed only by the doctrine and covenants. And then the Bible is a distant third. And so I think it’s, I, for me, that’s what it’s about. It’s helping people understand who God truly is, the nature of God. Section 132 is a completely, entirely different God than Jake the Book of Mormon as a whole. Most easily. Understood in Jacob too, but I would say with King Noah, with replike, with Lemhi and his people, with again and again and again, the Book of Mormon is the most anti-polygamy book of scripture there is, and I think, I think we should pay attention to it and believe it. I think we should harken to it. I think
[2:01:18] Benjamin Schaffer: that I would say it is the most easy to interpret as anti-polygamy and certainly the polygamous book of scripture is the Mormon. OK,
[2:01:26] Michelle: well, it’s good to end on a point of agreement. Thank you for coming. And I know that was a cheap trick. I’m, I’m not trying to. I really, I hope you have felt like this was a positive and productive engagement. Well,
[2:01:40] Benjamin Schaffer: and it’s good to get other people’s perspectives, you know, where they’re coming from. To me, monogamy is about trying to tear apart my family. For most monogamists, polygamy is trying to complicate their family, right? It depends on what your default is, what your point of view is, where you’re coming.
[2:01:53] Michelle: Yeah. And to me it’s just about coming to know God, to know who God is, know how God cares about his children, know God what thinks, what our eternal destiny is, how God values his daughters and how God sees women playing into creation. I think those are very important questions too.
[2:02:09] Benjamin Schaffer: They really are. And it paints a very different picture of what is the goal?
[2:02:14] Michelle: What’s
[2:02:14] Benjamin Schaffer: the
[2:02:14] Michelle: right? Are women property to be taken and given and willy-nilly or are women. Children beloved children of God, and God cares about their experiences, sees them and understands them, right? I think that’s a critical question. I
[2:02:27] Benjamin Schaffer: think we agree. I think we should be able to agree on that. Um, I’ll just say thank you for having me on, and, uh, I’ll be happy to share additional uh funny stories later, but it is true that how we view God does affect our lives now. It affects how we live, how we think about things, how we, who we’re with, and I just Um, would say that I believe in a God of expansive love, and I think that that includes plural marriage, but, uh, I’m not even in a plural marriage, really, uh, myself. Uh, I just I just don’t see why I should uh uh push anyone away uh if that were to happen. And it hasn’t happened. I’m not even looking for it to happen. But if it does, I wouldn’t want to be the type of person who would say to anyone, you’re not welcome here.
[2:03:14] Michelle: OK. All right, that’s, I will, I will leave it at that, and I’ll say again thank you for coming, Benjamin, and let me know if you want to have another conversation anytime. I’ve really appreciated this. So thank you everyone for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you for sticking with us. I’m really eager to hear your thoughts on both sides of this question, to hear, um, your answers to some of the things we discussed. It’s always a little hard to be on the spot, so maybe with more thought and more time, people will have other insights to share on both sides of the issue. I want to, again, huge, sincere thank you to Benjamin Schaffer. I, I feel like I made a new friend. I hope that maybe he can feel that way too. I know we are diametrically opposed in our Believes, but I really respect um him coming on and the way that he engaged in this conversation. I really appreciate that. I want to again issue my invitation if there are any other people who would like to come on. I, I’m sure I can’t have everybody necessarily, but I would love to know if there are other people who are deeply committed to, um, plurality, to celestial plural marriage who would like to come on. So I hope that this can keep going. So thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you next time.
