Don Bradly finally showed up! He requested that we first discuss faith, before going to the topic of how historians approach history in our second conversation, and then digging into the actual sources in our third conversation. This was a great beginning.
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Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for and against Mormon polygamy. I am, I am so happy that you are here. We’ve had some great episodes lately and I want to again, remind people, invite people to please share this podcast and let people know to consider listening from the beginning so they can understand the journey we’ve taken the scriptural case we’ve laid out and how we’ve gotten where we today. I also want to, again, so profoundly thank people who have been willing to donate to this podcast. It is so incredibly helpful. Most of the donations that come in, I actually put back into the podcast. It’s been wonderful to be able to see the audience growing, be able to spread this message. So please consider a donation since it really is helpful for all of us to be able to get, get this information out there to the people who need it. I am so excited to finally be able to bring you this discussion today. The first of hopefully many discussions with Don Bradley, for those who have been following this topic you. He doesn’t need any introduction. We’ll talk a little bit more about who he is in the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon Polygamy. Welcome to this episode. I hope that all of the sound and video works. All right, we’re using a different um format this time, but I am happy to finally be here for my first conversation with Don Bradley. This has been a very long time in the making. So, um I think for most of my, Don probably needs very little introduction, but I do know Don, I’ll just share what I know about you and then you can fill in any details. I miss Don did his undergrad in history at BYU and his master’s at Utah State, I believe and did a thesis in early Mormonism. What was it specifically? It was,
[02:10] Don Bradley: my master’s thesis was called American Proto Zionism in the Book of Lehi. So it was actually about early American, early 19th century attempts to gather the Jews to the United States and how that provided a context in which the book of Mormon was first understood.
[02:29] Michelle: OK. OK. Thank you for Yeah. II, I guess, I guess I now know why I didn’t remember that title. So anyway, I know that since, well, I guess before you did your masters, you were the research assistant for Brian Hales to, to do his um like you did the, the groundwork, you did the historical work for his, um, books, Joseph Smith’s polygamy, his trilogy.
[02:51] Don Bradley: I gathered most of the sources. Yeah.
[02:54] Michelle: Right. Ok. And then I believe since then you’ve written a book called The 116 pages. Am I getting the title? Right on. That.
[03:01] Don Bradley: Lost 116 pages. Reconstructing the Book of Mormons Missing Stories. So, yeah. So that’s about what we can know from the historical record about what was in the last 116 pages of the book of Mormon.
[03:14] Michelle: Fascinating. OK. And so that’s all wonderful. I guess most of my audience would know the reason Don Bradley is here is because he is, well, I guess you’re the self described foremost researcher on Joseph’s polygamy. And so since you are the one who did most of the research find, gathered the sources for Brian Hales. So, um so I, I know you’re considered quite an expert on the historical research, but my understanding, well, as Don and I have spoken several times and tried to kind of um decide what we, what we could discuss. Don expressed that for this conversation. He wanted to talk about faith about navigating faith kind of regarding this topic. Am I introducing that? All right, Don, did I do that correctly?
[03:58] Don Bradley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[04:00] Michelle: OK. Go ahead. I’m sorry. And if I left after the introduction, go ahead and share that as well.
[04:05] Don Bradley: Yeah. Thank you so much. So, yeah. Um so I uh I understand that when people have faith, questions and doubts, those are often triggered by all different things, things that people wrestle with. And I understand that polygamy is one of them. And I know this because it’s been one in my own wrestling, right? And so I first encountered faith questions about a variety of things. As a teenager when I was 17, went through a kind of faith crisis, which is really painful to me at that time. And then later on in my adult, yeah, go
[04:47] Michelle: ahead. Now for you, polygamy wasn’t part of that, right? We’ve heard your story on different platforms, but polygamy wasn’t really central to that as much as just
[04:55] Don Bradley: polygamy wasn’t part of my polygamy wasn’t central to my initial faith crisis when I was a teenager. It actually did play a substantial role in my more serious faith crisis as an adult that led to me leaving the church and maybe um maybe I can come back to that. OK, a little bit later. So, uh yeah, it, it, it was one of my issues. Uh I, so I actually formally left the church at that time. I left the church for five years. I put in a letter resigning my church membership and polygamy was one of the issues involved in my leaving. And then, uh you know, later I found my way back to the church. I uh was, I found more things in history that were more positive. And I reconsidered the spiritual experiences that I had and on my way back, um so I,
[05:55] Michelle: when you, when you struggled, and when you left, was that primarily um questions about the existence of God or just questions about the veracity of the book of Mormon and, and Joseph Smith, like, how, you know, where were you on that spectrum?
[06:09] Don Bradley: So at the time that I left, I had lost faith in everything. Really. I lost faith in the re I’d lost faith in the restoration first. And then I lost belief in God as well. And it wasn’t until that point that I decided that I would leave the church when I, when I really didn’t believe in any of it. Um And so, uh so I know that, you know, a lot of, I know what it’s like to go through questions about faith. And I know a lot of the, the pain that’s involved, obviously, every person’s journey is unique, right? And the questions that they face and the, the how they wrestle with those. Um But because I know that no p polygamy itself is a big topic for a lot of people. Since in a future episode or two, we’re planning on talking about like, why is it that I think that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. And I know that I, I’ve heard arguments, I haven’t heard you make these arguments Michelle, but I have heard others in conversation, make arguments that if Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, then he couldn’t have been a true prophet because polygamy is wrong. And so since in future episodes, I want to address, why do I think that Justice Smith practiced polygamy? Why do I think that the evidence points that way? I, I’m not about trying to uh produce faith crisis for people quite the opposite. Right. I, I know how painful that is. And so I don’t want to, you know, contribute to those kinds of struggles for people. So I’d like to, that’s why I asked to maybe talk more about faith issues surrounding polygamy first in this episode. And then later on, we can get into the nitty gritty of the historical sources.
[08:06] Michelle: OK. OK. So if I can um tell me if I’m restating your, your concerns or your position adequately and accurately, so you feel like you, the last thing you want to do is challenge people’s faith is lead people into um you know, their faith deconstructing or being lost. And so you, you don’t want to do that, but polygamy is one of the issues that tends to do that. So you’re in the, I like the awkward position of arguing in favor of Joseph’s polygamy based on the evidence, but not wanting that to affect people’s face negatively. Have I restated that? All right. Yes.
[08:46] Don Bradley: Thank you. OK.
[08:48] Michelle: And so what, and I kind of just talk about as we were trying to do, um, decide what Don wanted to come on and talk about was, um, talking about kind of navigating faith in these different models and these different perspectives. So, I’ll let you go ahead and share some of your thoughts, dawn of, of what you wanted to share and then maybe I can share some of my thoughts.
[09:08] Don Bradley: Ok, please. Yeah, I’d love to have this be a conversation. Um, could I start with talking just about some of my own personal history when it comes to this subject?
[09:18] Michelle: Ok. Yeah, I think, I think people are probably somewhat familiar with it. But yeah, you go ahead because not every level will
[09:23] Don Bradley: be. Yeah. So um I first, I mean, growing up as a latter day saint, um my parents were converts. So I don’t have any like pioneer heritage there. There aren’t, you know, Mormon polygamists in my family tree, right? I’m a second generation latter day saint. But um I remember we lived out in the so-called mission field, right? We weren’t in Utah. Uh My dad was the bishop in South Bend, Indiana. And um I was a well informed LDS kid and yeah, I listened at church and so on. So one Sunday we had someone call on the phone to ask questions of the bishop because he wanted to know more about the church. And I’m 12 years old and I said to the guy, oh, well, you, you could, you could ask your questions to me, obviously, I had great confidence in myself at 12, right? And so he asked me a series of questions and um one of the questions, I think I largely answered his questions correctly. But one of the questions that he asked me was um something about Joseph Smith uh prac he, the guy had been also talking to the reorganized church. He was investigating the LDS church and the R LDS church at the same time. And so some of his questions were geared to that. And so he asked me some question about Joseph Smith and polygamy. And I remember distinctly what my answer was. My answer was. Well, that wasn’t Joseph Smith. That was Brigham Young.
[10:53] Michelle: Oh OK. So you grew up thinking Brigham Young started polygamy. I grew up
[10:58] Don Bradley: thinking that Brigham Young started polygamy, not Joseph Smith. I had never heard that Joseph Smith had practiced polygamy. I, when I was hearing about polygamy as a child, I was always hearing about Brigham Young having so many wives, right? And so um somewhere around that time, my mom was actually teaching early morning seminary there in South Bound. And in the curriculum, she got to some part in the, the church history manual for the students about early Mormon polygamy. And she struggled with it mightily, it just did not fit for her with, you know, as she, when she had joined the church, it made all the sense in the world to have you know, your, your spouse for eternity to have your Children c to, for eternity. She cared so much for family. Right. But then the idea that wait a minute, you know, um, it’s not just you and your husband, it’s you and your husband and these other women, right? That he’s, he’s divided between you and these other women that really, that she struggled with that so much that she, I don’t know how she got this information, but she called up um, a BYU professor somehow she got the number for Larry Porter at BYU who then taught church history and talked to him. And she, she told me later that he had said to her, we don’t know how this all works out. He, he seemed sympathetic to what she was saying. We don’t know how this all works out, but whatever it is, that’s for our good or something like that. Right. But she just, she could never believe that this is how things would be in the slush to kingdom was that it would be polygamy to her. It was just so obvious it would be monogamy. Right? And so I, I did not hear that. Just the idea that Joseph Smith had practiced polygamy until I was 15. I was in my teacher’s Corum and our teacher’s CHM instructor was a doctor who he did a lot of reading. And so he was reading a biography of Joseph Smith. And um I think it was Joseph Smith the first Mormon by Donna Hill. And, um, he, he was saying something to our teachers chm about Joseph Smith and his conflict with Emma over polygamy and how difficult it was. And I piped up and I said, Joseph Smith didn’t practice poly me. That was Brigham Young. And he said, no, Joseph Smith started it. He said, go home and read DNC 132.
[13:34] Michelle: Ok. I was gonna ask, where did you think 132 came from?
[13:37] Don Bradley: I, I went home and read 132 and I saw that, you know, it was, it’s addressed up front to Joseph Smith. Then it’s saying, you know, Abraham Isaac, Jacob Moses David Solomon, you know, had four wives. And then it’s saying, you know, like to, it’s somewhat vague at parts, but it’s saying for Emma to receive all those who have been given to my servant Joseph. And so I thought, well, ok, I guess, you know, just Smith did practice polygamy. I, I was mistaken. And um you know, later in my teenage years, I started really, a couple years later I started actually doing church history research, going to the church archives. I actually encountered like the um at the library and stuff. I actually had encountered literature from Mormon fundamentalists, right? The modern day polygamous. And so that got me researching more into the history of polygamy and wanting to understand, you know, like I is this ear early early brethren quote unquote, right? Like early LDS leaders had taught that some of them that polygamy was essential to our exaltation. And so I wanted to know is, is that true? Right? I had a big, I had some real doctrinal questions and it was doctrinal questions like that. That initially got me looking into the historical questions. I, I became a historian of, of Mormonism, but I started out not with an interest in history, but with an interest in doctrine, right? Trying to understand what’s, what’s true about God, what’s true about the celestial kingdom? You know, so polygamy was just one of those various questions that I had. And then um you know, so, so like I did have a faith crisis as a teenager, but that was centered on, I had actually discovered this book that Bh Roberts had written as a sort of devil’s advocate case against the historicity of the book of Mormon called Study of the Book of Mormon. And that threw me for a loop. Um So that was what led to that teenage faith crisis. Then when I was in my twenties, like mid twenties, I started finding other things in my research that raise questions that I didn’t have answers for, right? Uh a whole variety of questions. So, so one thing I like to say is that like when we read someone else’s book on some aspect of church history, they have made sense of everything for us, whether they’ve done it well or not, they’ve made sense of things for us intellectually and spiritually. But when you’re doing your own church history research, of course, it falls on you to make sense of things intellectually and spiritually. And so I was, I had trouble making sense of some of these things, particularly spiritually that I was finding in my research. Um And so I, um so I, I stopped believing in stages, kind of, I, I would stop believing in this thing that just in the time and then this other thing and, you know, this other thing would be called into question, you know, well, maybe the book of Abraham doesn’t match the papyri, maybe the book of Abraham is not historical and then, you know, something else would be called into question. And so when I, by the time that I left the church officially, um I had amassed, you know, a number of problem areas. And so I, when I wrote my letter, resigning my church membership, I, I listed several of these, I, I put several of what I saw as the big ones and one of those was just as Miss polygamy. So I, I wrote that, um you know, I, I wrote about what I saw as like moral problems with his polygamy and just briefly, right, because I was sort of doing a bullet points thing in this letter. But I, I was actually trying to close the door on coming back to the church. I thought, well, someday I might, you know, want to come back to the church. And I don’t think I should, I don’t think it’s true. So I’m gonna try to shut that door by sort of bearing my anti testimony in this letter. Right. And so polygamy, polygamy was one of those things.
[17:51] Michelle: May I just ask you a question? I’m curious to know why, um, why Brigham’s polygamy seemed ok to you. And Joseph Smith’s polygamy seemed like a deal breaker or was part of your list of the deal breakers? Like I’d like to understand that a little better because they’re both the same church, you know,
[18:11] Don Bradley: the same church. So I think that it was multiple things. I, I mean, in my experience, a lot more people struggle with the idea that Joseph practiced polygamy than the idea that Brigham did. Um And I think that is partly because when people, um a lot of people have the idea that, well, Joseph Smith had polygamy revealed to him, but maybe he didn’t really practice it. He, he either didn’t practice it or maybe he, he had women sealed to him, but he didn’t have sex with them or whatever. But then rig, you know, clearly, fully practices that he’s got a bunch of wives, got a bunch of descendants through polygamy, right? And so I think that people often are skeptical that like, well, isn’t it convenient that the guy who starts the religion and has these revelations, has a revelation that gives him a bunch of women. And so, um, it seems, you know, that the sort of natural take on that is a, is a cynical one. Right. That, well, you know, hm, how convenient. You know, and I think I, I had some of that and also, um, the, the documents that we have talking about Joe Smith and Pom, it’s very messy. Right? Because you’ve got like, with, with, obviously I’m, I’m this, this would get into things that we’re gonna talk about more in future episodes. But like, you know, the, the reports about Joseph Smith and Fannie Alger, apparently the family says, er, Fannie Ulger, um like, it’s, it was even ambiguous in the sources, what the nature of the relationship was, right? So, so a number of people thought that it was adulterous while other people thought that it was polygamous. You know, some
[20:01] Michelle: people think it wasn’t either. I just throw some people think it’s not. Right.
[20:05] Don Bradley: Well, I mean, for people, right, for people who think that there was a relationship like a full relationship. So, um the, um, with Brigham it’s like it’s fairly cut and dried that he practiced polygamy. But with Joseph, the waters are muddier about, you know, like the reported relationships. What was the nature of the relationships with Brigham? We don’t have for instance, like polyandry, whereas in Joseph’s marriages, we have reported polyandry, right?
[20:44] Michelle: We have Brigham’s own teaching of trading up.
[20:47] Don Bradley: We have Brigham’s teaching of trading up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
[20:51] Michelle: And we have, and we have Brigham giving away very, very young. We have the, um,
[20:57] Don Bradley: there are absolutely ethical problems with Brigham’s polygamy. And in fact, Brigham’s polygamy looks far more authoritarian and patriarchal than what’s reported about Joseph. Right. Um But it, it does seem like because Joseph is a more foundational figure, he’s the founder of the church that if people think that Joseph went astray on this or Joseph’s behavior was problematic, then it tends to raise more foundational questions about the restoration altogether. OK. I want to dig in and, and that’s, and that’s where I was, is what I’m saying. I was, do
[21:42] Michelle: you mind if we pause on this point? Because I think it’s actually a really crucial, like it’s something that, that I think there’s a lot of discussion about and, and, and I would like to kind of drill down in it. So, um it’s interesting because on the one hand, I hear people say, um, well, if people start saying that Brigham Young started polygamy instead of Joseph Smith that destroys faith and causes people to leave the church. And, and I’ve heard, I’ve heard several people say that, you know, and I find that to be a really interesting perspective that doesn’t make much sense to me, right? Because what I’m hearing, like, I think you and um the guys at word radio, talked quite a bit about that, you know, and what I’m hearing is, but the kind of the idea is if people thought that it was just Brigham Young, that was a polygamist that didn’t destroy their faith, it was finding out that Joseph Smith was a polygamist that destroyed their faith. So that’s what I’m hearing you say. So I’m wanting to understand why you think that was the case a little more. You know, I understand why I understand why coming to believe this about Joseph Smith destroys faith. I’m wanting to understand better why it was ok if when it was Brigham Young, right? And then because then I feel like when we’re getting back to saying, hey, it actually was Brigham Young was ok over here and it didn’t destroy faith. But all of a sudden over here, there’s talking about how that will destroy faith while at the same time kind of ignoring the massive amount of faith that has been destroyed by the Joseph Smith polygamy narrative. Like I think that has been one of the huge things that has led most people that that’s at least been, I would say like the book of Abraham and polygamy are two huge components and people losing there, you know, having to deconstruct all of their faith about the restoration that starts in usually polygamy. So did, do you get what I’m saying? Like if it was like, why was it OK over here before your faith transition before you knew it was Joseph. Why were you ok with Brigham Young as the second prophet in the restoration, as we believe it? The one who had all of the keys and passed them on, you know, because that’s some of the pushback I get is that if, if I say that polygamy is wrong, then how can the church be anything? How can there be anything right in the church? And so I’m wanting to understand why you weren’t bothered by the idea of Brigham Young. Did you just not know as much about it? Did you not know that he and John Taylor and many others thought that it was absolutely essential for salvation. That that if the church ever l left polygamy, they would be an apostasy. Like, were you just less familiar with it? Do you think
[24:06] Don Bradley: so? I think that um you know, when we’re bothered by something that’s an emotion, right? And I think that often we don’t necessarily even understand the roots of our own emotions. Why does one thing bother us on another? Not if I were to look at to try to understand why wasn’t I so bothered, right? That Brigham Young practiced polygamy. I mean, for one thing, I was just raised with that narrative all the time. I mean, the name Brigham Young is practically synonymous with polygamy. And if you were to ask, you know, 100 non Mormons, you know, what’s the first word that pops to mind with polygamy. I mean, a lot of them might say Utah or something, but a lot of them and some might say just Mormon or whatever, a lot of them would say polygamy or wives or something. You know, Brigham Young is really known for this. And so I, I grew up with that such a consistent narrative about Brimm Young, whereas it was only later on that, I heard that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, right? So, so, so that Brigham Young was a polygamist, was just kind of a given, it was just understood. And then um since Brigham Young was not the founder of the faith, right? He didn’t start the church, he didn’t, he wasn’t the key figure in getting the restoration off the ground. Then you know what he does, I think in, in some ways does come under less scrutiny than what Joseph Smith does, right? Because people are naturally, I think more skeptical of someone who is putting forward more extraordinary claims. So if you’re starting a religion, right? And you’re saying I had these visions, God told me to do this. Um That’s a big deal, obviously, you know, and so if someone seems to be making self serving claims along as part of those religious claims, then it can raise more questions about the whole enterprise of what they’re doing. Well, is this person starting this religion in order to, you know, get, get what they want in this way or that way?
[26:23] Michelle: Ok. So, so can I ask then? Because it’s interesting to hear you describe this? Because I and many others that I’ve heard from, just like Limy and Brigham Young went together for you like polygamy and Mormonism went together for me and Joseph Smith was the founder of the religion. And Joseph Smith dictated 132 and Joseph Smith, like I, I just knew my whole life that Joseph Smith restored polygamy, right? Like that wasn’t a question for me just the same way. It wasn’t for you with Brigham Young and maybe that’s just a difference of being descended from polygamous and raised in Utah or, you know, like, like that wasn’t a question. And um so what I’m hearing you say is Brigham Young kind of gets a pass and, and since it was Joseph that originated it, um he doesn’t get the same pass. So what I’m hearing also in you describing that is that you just naturally assumed that polygamy was wrong. Like if Joseph had these revelations, they were self serving and Brigham did this really wrong thing, but he was just second in line. So, and I just knew it. So it didn’t bother me. I,
[27:26] Don Bradley: I, I didn’t, I didn’t assume up front that it was wrong. It, it always sounded, it sounded weird to me when I heard about it as a kid, like Burman had a bunch of wives. It sounded weird. I it didn’t sound anything like what, what went on in my mind. Right. I was a little romantic. I, I fell in love with a girl the first day of second grade, a girl in my class. Right. I didn’t fall in love with five girls. I fell in love with one girl. Right. So, so the idea of polygamy sounded strange to me, but I don’t think that I put it in the box of like, oh, II, I don’t think I put it in the box at the time of, oh, this is morally wrong. I just found it strange when I found out that when I, when I was pointed to DNC 132 I just assumed it was right. I was a very devout latter day saint kid. And so I assumed, well, if Joseph Smith had a revelation on this, it must have been right. It was only later, uh, over the course of several years as I studied it and looked into it that I thought, ah, II, I just became more skeptical and I wondered, you know, was this, what were the things that he was doing on the up and up? Was, was this out of sincere religious motives or was there some other motive behind it?
[28:48] Michelle: Sure. And, and just, I know we’re jumping ahead in the story. So I want to let you get back to it. Thanks for letting me talk like I understand this better. Where do you land on that? Now, in terms of like both Brigham’s and Joseph’s polygamy and now that you are more informed about the ages of some of the girls, some of the tactics used at least our narrative about Joseph than what we know about Brigham Young. Where are you in terms of, is this um print a true eternal celestial principle from God that they were enacting as prophets of God in righteousness or, or somewhere else on the spectrum of understanding that.
[29:27] Don Bradley: Yeah, so I’ve held a range of positions across time, right? So as I mentioned, um when I was a teenager and then I, you know, I was pointed to Dan C 132 read through dancing 132. I just assumed this, this was right, you know, because this was a revelation. And then, as I delved into it later, I found that, you know, Brigham Young and John Taylor and Wilfred Rodorf and, you know, other early apostles and so on had taught that polygamy was essential to exaltation or at least sometimes taught that. And I, so I started to wonder if that was true, you know, maybe polygamy was essential uh for maybe, maybe this is, I thought maybe this was how people live in the celestial kingdom. This is the celestial way. And then, um you know, then came to more skepticism, right? Like I said about Joseph’s polygamy that like, like I wasn’t skeptical that he practiced uh, but I was skeptical that it was right. You know, and that, that he was doing it out of sincere motives. And so I started to see, um, the, I, I started looking at Mormon polygamy and thinking about inequality, right. That, you know, how, how one sided it was that had first occurred to me back when I was a teenager. Right. But I hadn’t maybe wrestled with it as fully as I, I hadn’t wrestled with it nearly as fully as I did later. I started looking at the accounts of how Joseph proposed to various women and it seemed often very heavy handed that the women had the sense that their salvation depended on this. The salvation of others depended on this. Um, there was a lot of time pressure put on them. Um, there were other, the, the fact that Emma appeared to not know about it until after the fact, like, bothered me immensely. Um, just that she, you know, um, there were enormous ethical problems here, right? That she, obviously she’s going to feel betrayed right in this situation and how should she feel if not betrayed? Right. I, and so, um, I had real problems with how it was practiced and like I said, I saw that it was, I, I looked at how Mormon polygamy had been done and I thought this looks inherently patriarchal. It looks like it’s, it’s about the man and not about the women that it seemed Andro centric, right? So, um the, the idea that was off the rationale that was so often given for polygamy, the major rationale seemed to be that people used was, well, it, it produces a larger family kingdom, right? The man will have more Children, right? More wives and Children. As if, as if a the man is the only one here who matters. The women don’t matter because women don’t have more Children than polygamy, right? Um The man is the one who matters. So it’s about his glory, it’s about him being more highly exalted. Well, Jesus said he, that exalts himself shall be a base and he that a bases himself shall be exalted. So we’re not supposed to be trying to exalt ourselves. We’re trained is supposed to be fumbling ourselves and serving God and serving others. And so I, I just had all kinds of problems with what I was seeing as the rationale for polygamy. And the idea that like our eternal progression is really based primarily on like it’s quantitative, it’s about the numbers, right? Like, you know, it’s about who has the biggest kingdom and the greatest numbers and that repulsed me, right? And, and still does. And so, um I moved into this space of really questioning, like I said, the sincerity of Joseph Smith’s polygamy and thinking, yeah, this isn’t. I, I just, I thought Mormon polygamy if, if, if there was some way to practice poly polygamy or a non monogamous relationship, ethically. This wasn’t it that this was what, what the early Mormons had done was very patriarchal. It was very one sided. It wasn’t, um it wasn’t the way that it,
[34:15] Michelle: it wasn’t, it didn’t feel godly.
[34:18] Don Bradley: And so when I, um so yeah, so, so I left the church and it was while I was outside of the church that I got asked by Brian Hill whom I had known from other research stuff several years earlier to do research on Justin myth and polygamy. So he was, he wanted to do a book. Um at the time, he was just thinking one book, he had, we had no idea either of us what we were getting into how many sources there were any of that, that it would be a long project. So he wanted to, you know, gather together every source that had ever been written. Um Well, let’s see, e every source had ever been cited in anything that had ever been written on Justice Smith and polygamy and then see what other sources could be found. And so he, he was a doctor as you know, I know, you know, Brian. Um And so he didn’t have time to do that research. And so he hired me and so for two years, this was my job. So I spent a lot of time at the LDS church archives. I went also to the BYU archives, the U of U Utah State, Utah State Historical Society and there’s research out at the Huntington Library. Um, I went back to
[35:27] Michelle: university
[35:28] Don Bradley: twice. This was 2007, 2008. And so was the
[35:32] Michelle: Joseph Smith papers
[35:34] Don Bradley: under way? Ok.
[35:36] Michelle: Sorry, I didn, I just want to know if you have that as a
[35:39] Don Bradley: stage, but it was going on. Yeah. And so, um, so the whole time that I was doing that research, I thought that Joseph Smith was a scoundrel. I, I was outside the church. I actually thought that Joseph Smith polygamy was about sex. Ryan was coming first from a very different vantage point. He, he was literally singing with the choir, right? He was in the Mormon Tabernacle choir. And so he and I would meet every, I think it was Wednesday evening in the basement of the conference center after choir practice and I would report my week’s findings and give him photocopies and so on. And so, yeah, I was doing that research while I was outside the church and thought, you know, um Joseph Smith’s polygamy had been about sex. He and I really had very different views on Joseph Smith’s polygamy, right? So he was viewing it at the time of the research, right? He was viewing it as well. Joseph Smith is doing all of this just strictly out of obedience to God, right? And I was seeing it as it was libido, right? And so, um but the the research went extremely well um you know, we gathered all the what I believe, at least at the time where all the known sources and found some new ones. And I, um no, it was subsequent to that, that I came back to the church. So can
[37:11] Michelle: I ask you a question about your research before we get back to you coming back to the church? So I know that you said you have very different perspectives on Joseph, But um you had the exact same perspective on the narrative, just different perspectives on the motives. Like you thought the same things happened, you just viewed them differently, right? So I’m curious,
[37:30] Don Bradley: I don’t, I don’t know that I’d say the exact same perspective. But I think what you’re getting at is we both thought that Joseph Smith did actually practice polygamy. Yes,
[37:38] Michelle: like the details you have, you have the details in common. You both thought he did this thing, he did this thing because of this source. It shows he did this thing. It’s just a matter of what was his reason and motivation for doing it, right? Like the question of was Fannie Alger an affair or was it a polygamist marriage, for example. So the question I have is as you were doing all of this research, because there are other people that have been doing a lot of research. Like for example, the prices their first book came out in tw in 2000. So was that something you researched as you were looking. Did you, did you look at their sources because, because it’s not that it’s like, like, so you did read the prices, books and compile their sources as well and get them to bring because I haven’t. Ok. Ok. So tell me what you thought about, about, um, a lot of their research and their sources because I don’t see them being quoted in Brian’s
[38:30] Don Bradley: books. Oh, well, they’re not quoted source.
[38:34] Michelle: I mean, the sources.
[38:36] Don Bradley: Ok. Ok. Um, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, we did look up their sources. I, I don’t know what altogether, what was and wasn’t used or wasn’t quoted in the books. Um, but all, all the, the aim was to use all the sources in everything that had been written on Justice Smith and polygamy to gather those all up. So, um, the way that it used
[39:03] Michelle: include, did that include things that said Joseph didn’t pursue polygamy. Like, for example, Emma’s dozen plus testimonies that she gave throughout her life or Joseph Smith the third’s, um, consistent testimonies and work on this. You know, he wrote several articles. I can’t remember what the old kind of scholarly journal was that he was writing it. But there were many things that were being, you know, like Mark Twain. And I mean, there were, there are lots of different sources that said that Joseph wasn’t A PM and then it started with bringing me in. So I’m wondering if you included that aspect of that body of research as
[39:36] Don Bradley: well. So let me, let me tell you more of how my process with Brian worked and that might answer your question more fully. So I was the archive rat, right? I was the one who almost always went to the archives and looked up the original sources, Brian, what he would usually do is he would pull together the secondary literature. So he would find the things that people had written about the subjects of Justice Smith and polygamy. Then he would create a master list of all the primary sources that needed to be collected together and then I would go collect them. So there were some exceptions to this where I would just identify the various sources. But in general, Ryan would figure out what sources to look up. So
[40:28] Michelle: OK, so you were, you were, he was directing what you needed to go find to some extent,
[40:33] Don Bradley: he was directing what sources to find to su right now. Now, some of the impetus for that came from me because I would go into the archives and I would just look up the names of various people who were supposed to have been taught polygamy or, or been involved in polygamy and navoo and I would look for their journals or collections, letters or whatever. Um So some of that was coming from me directly and some of it was coming from Brian’s reading of the secondary sources. I remember distinctly, I mean, I, I don’t think I read the prices were from cover to cover, but I definitely read in parts of them. Right. And I definitely remember Brian putting sources from the prices, books on the master list of sources to find. So, so in terms of, were all of, were all of the denials uh that Justice Smith practiced polygamy, collected. I per perhaps not. I don’t, I don’t know that would depend on what, what was on the master list.
[41:43] Michelle: OK. OK. So, yeah, I just, I find it like, like this is helpful to me because I really think with, you know, what we’ve learned about how the brain works and how perception works. It’s very difficult to find what you’re not looking for. Right? And so, so it’s um so I just wanted to clarify that like um there is a body of work on this other side, but I didn’t see like, I think um Brian Hills and others have said to me that Emma only issued the one denial at the end of her life, which is just not true at all, right? And so, and, and so there’s a and that’s only one piece of a whole lot of evidence. And so that’s why I think that’s a useful recognition to have is that like Ryan was Brian. Brian wasn’t saying, hey, let’s go look at this and see what we find. And you know, Brian had a a theory and I would say stronger than a theory. He had definitely a perspective that he was seeking to make sense of it. Like, like Brian’s view is Joseph was a polygamist and polygamy came from God and Joseph was supposed to practice polygamy. So, right, and he did practice polygamy. So let’s find all of the sources and then, and then see where they take us within that parameter if that makes sense.
[43:00] Don Bradley: So yeah, now, necessarily in looking through all the secondary literature, he found a variety of different vantage points, right, from different authors, including the prices and others. Um But yeah, I know exactly what you’re saying about how we tend to see what we’re looking for. We, we humans also tend to raise more questions about sources that don’t fit our narrative than we do about sources that do fit our narrative. I saw that in Brian, but over time, I also came to see it in myself during the research which I, I didn’t expect. I thought, oh, I can see Brian’s bias here. Well, then eventually I started seeing, well, OK, I just have the opposite bias, right? Like, like it’s not like it’s not like I’m not biased. So, so let me give, for instance, so um if there were sources that said things that seemed uncomfortable. So, so one area that Brian has written a lot about is what he refers to as sexual polyandry. So, of course, it’s, well, known that the sources on Joseph Smith and polygamy in NUS say that some of the women that he married were already legally married to other men. And so then questions arise. Well, what’s the nature of these relationships? Is this just like Brigham Young’s idea you cited earlier of sort of like marrying up where a woman leaves one man and goes to another man? Or is this like a mirror image of polygyny? right? Where instead of like a one man having multiple wives, this woman has multiple husbands at the same time and is having real relationships with all of them. And so that um the idea of sexual polyandry um was one that Brian was particularly skeptical of. So when there were sources that would say just to practice sexual polyandry, he would have me give extra scrutiny to those sources and say, well, who was the person who said this? What was their angle? Where were they coming from? And at the time, I just thought just Smith was a scoundrel. And so I thought in my head, I didn’t say this. I thought in my head, oh, come on, Brian, like, you know, you just have to accept like that, this is what happened, you know, and then I would actually look into some of those sources and find, you know, what this person did have an angle, you know, and there, there, there, there would be some reason to maybe be skeptical of the narrative that they’re giving. So why didn’t I question that? And I realized, well, it’s because I had my own bias. You see what I’m saying? So, I, I, it was easy, it was easy to see, it’s easy to see somebody else’s bias.
[45:45] Michelle: Definitely 100%. And I, and I, I cop to that as well. Absolutely. I do wanna, um I do wanna ask when you say there are sources that say that Joseph practiced sexual polyandry. Can you clarify that for me is what you mean? Like we have marriage dates claiming that someone was married in the state. And then when we do historical work, we learn that they were already married to someone else. Oh, surprise and also pregnant or were the women saying or other sources saying I was married to this man and I was pregnant with his child? But then Joseph married me like, like how, what, what is, what is the evidence for the sexually?
[46:21] Don Bradley: So the a good example of this would be Joseph Ellis Johnson. So in 1850 Joseph Ellis Johnson in a meeting of the CHM of the 12 says, so he was like a brother of Benjamin F Johnson and some of the other, the big early Mormon Johnson family. Um Joseph Ellis Johnson meets with the 12 and he says that Joseph had and this is his 19th century terminology frigged his mother-in-law um Mary Heron Snyder. Um and Mary Heron Snyder was the legal wife of John Snyder. And so Brian was skeptical that Joseph actually had a sexual relationship with this woman who was legally married to this other man. And so, uh he had me look in more detail about this source. It was quoted by um Quinn D, Michael Quinn and his notes at Yale on his collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale. So when we were finally able to, it took a lot of work to get a copy of these meeting minutes. And when we were finally able to find a copy, it turned out that Joseph Ellis Johnson was actually on trial before the 12 himself for marrying a woman who was already married to Lorenzo Snow. Polygamous. Oh, actually, he didn’t even fully marry her. He just, there wasn’t a ceremony. He just had a sort of common law polygamous marriage with her and had gotten her pregnant. Uh Even though she was separated from Lorenzo Snow, it was a complicated messy story, right? But it was in that context that Joseph E Johnson said, well, Joseph II, I was there in the house when Joseph slept with my mother in law. So of course, the fact that Joseph Ellis Johnson is saying this in this context doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true, but it does raise more questions of is he saying this because he’s trying to get himself off the hook for his own behavior. Do you see what I’m saying? And so 100% so Brian had. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Brian had been skeptical of this. And initially I thought, well, like Brian, why are you being so skeptical of the source? The guy says he was there in the house and he is the son in law of Mary, her Snyder, right? Then you look at the context. OK. Well, there is some reason to, to question this. So I came to see that I had my own set of biases. And so I actually came to think that it was good that there were multiple people involved here in this research who had different biases. So, so I, I actually believe very strongly that it’s good that not everybody sees things the same way, right? And, and part because we do have different biases, right? And so um people having different biases contributes to a larger conversation. It’s like in the sciences, scientists do not agree with one another. They often disagree very strongly with one another, right? And they um the it’s their, their disagreements actually help us to help it out. We put different hypotheses in competition with one another and made the best one win. Eventually, the hope is that if we have an open dialogue, if we’re open minded, if we use good methodology, then eventually the the truth tends to rise to the tongue, right? And so I, I know that, you know, Brian, he um definitely comes in for a lot of criticism, I mean, certainly, um ex Mormons, I know, criticized him a great deal because he’s defending Joseph Smith’s polygamy where they see it as this justice polygamy was evilly motivated and abusive and so on. And then I, um I, I would imagine it comes in for criticism from various angles. I, and like I said, I, I was able to see where he had biases and then later eventually see, oh, I have them too. Right. But I, I have a great appreciation for the fact that, you know, the sources that Brian found that he had me dig out, he’s put them on the internet, you know. Um And so he’s done a great service to anyone with from coming from any vantage point. And Joseph Smith and Polygamy has access to many hundreds of sources that otherwise wouldn’t be available. So I, I would want to give for that like a giant hat tip to Brian for that, you know, and, and he was, he was wonderful as an employer to me. Just, just a really great guy.
[51:18] Michelle: Yeah. So I just so, you know, I completely agree with you. I think that like Brian Hall has helped us move this um body of knowledge forward immensely. And his website is a huge um resource that I think everybody should utilize. I really appreciate it. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, the um the trial notes that you found where Johnson was on trial. Where did you end up finding those? And how did you get access to them? So how can we find them?
[51:47] Don Bradley: They’re at the University of Utah? Um, ok. I can’t remember which collection they’re in. Um And I can’t remember if they’re on Brian’s website I just found is on brand’s website that might have. That’s, I don’t remember that being there specifically. So, here, here’s what happened. So it was in 10 minutes of a meeting of the 12, but the church has different categories of restricted documents. So um I had requested several restricted documents when I was at, when I was doing this research, I from the church archives and, and I’ve said before that I got access to all of them. I guess this, I guess that’s not true. I guess this is the one that I didn’t get access to. Um But what happened is um documents at the church archives. People tend to think documents that are restricted because they have something embarrassing in them. The church doesn’t want to let them out for that reason. That was not my experience. Hey, so I requested several restricted sources and I was given access to them. And when I learned why they were restricted documents are restricted based on category. And so the some of the most common categories for restriction would be sacred, for instance. OK. So if something has temple content, even if it has patriarchal blessing material in it, that’s considered to be sacred. And so that’s off limits unless you get permission. Right? And so I most of the documents that I requested on just Smith and polygamy that were restricted were restricted because the document also had temple content in it. And all I had to do was assure the church archive staff. No, no, no really. I, you know, I don’t want to use the, I’m not gonna publish the temple content. I just wanna know the stuff about Joseph Smith and his poor wives and they gave me permission, right to look at these documents. So, but another hold on, another category is private. OK. So private includes disciplinary records because as far as the church is concerned and and Delanie Tokes has said this publicly years ago, as far as the church is concerned, the dead are still alive. They’re just in a different place. They’re in the spirit world. And so we don’t want to take their sins and kind of make them public knowledge, right? And so
[54:17] Michelle: um I just, I’m sorry, I have to speak to the huge irony of what we’re doing with Joseph Smith, right? As we say that. So anyway, continue on that. That’s, that’s amazing when you know Joseph told one story his whole life and now we’re telling a completely different story about him, but keep going, go ahead. Sorry. So,
[54:35] Don Bradley: so Joseph Ellis Johnson made the statement in the context of a disciplinary council so that automatically makes a restricted document under the private category. So the church archive staff felt like they couldn’t share it with us. So I actually looked at the CD ROM collection that they had of that showed the same minutes, but this one was blacked out. It’s actually on the CD ROM set that the church put out, they black out the part about this trial. So I was trying to look at the image from the opposite side of the page to see how much the ink bled through to see if I could read it. And, and I couldn’t man. But ultimately, someone at the church archives discovered that there was a copy of it at the U and sent me there to get that copy. And so even though they felt like they couldn’t share their own copy because of that restriction, they were helpful in finding another copy. And so that’s how we were able to get hold of that. And so I, um you know, like I said, I, I did all this research thinking, you know, just Smith wasn’t a prophet. I think he was ill motivated. It was subsequent to this. It was about two years after I finished the research for Brian or a year and a half or so that I came back to the church. And I have heard it said from some people, people that I came back to the church because of my research on Justice Smith and polygamy. That sounds nuts to me. No, that’s not true. Like I came back, I had done that research, that research didn’t stop me from coming back to the church. Right. So, I, I did other research about the first vision about what we can know about the last 116 pages. And I started finding really cool things that were inspiring to me that put Joseph Smith in a much more positive light than I have been seeing him in before. So, so just sort of in a nutshell. One of the big things for me was I was doing research on the first vision and this was, I was doing a paper for a class on Joseph Smith biography and autobiography that Philip Barlow taught in my master’s program. And um I, I was looking at different accounts of the first vision where Justice Smith gave little hints that maybe the first vision was a more expanded experience than we think of it as we think. Well, he’s there. He’s this boy in this grove of trees and the father and the son come down to this grove of trees and the whole experience just happens in this little grove and then they go back up to heaven and he stays there. Well, Joseph says things in different accounts like my mind was taken away from the objects which surrounded me. Well, that doesn’t sound like he’s not experiencing just being there in the grove, right? He’s experiencing something different. He says on another account, when I came, at the end of the experience, when I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back gazing into heaven. Well, again, this sounds like an altered state or something more than just. And I’m sitting there in the grove of seeing all these things happen in this natural space. Then there’s a, a sermon he gave Navoo where he talks about the first vision. And along with talking about the first vision, he says, any man who has gazed into heaven for five minutes knows there are three grand personages there who hold the keys of power. Why is he talking about seeing into heaven when he’s talking about the first vision? And I started to think from various accounts that actually the first vision included what they, what’s called a heavenly ascent where like Paul talks about being caught up to the third heaven, right? And he sees and hears things that he can’t tell other people. Um This is how the book of Mormon starts. Leigh has a first vision calling him as a prophet. A pillar of fire comes down. This is the presence of God comes down to him. Well, this is what Joseph uses this language. In his 1st 1st vision account. In 1832 a pillar of fire came down. This is the presence of God. But then Leigh is lifted up to heaven where he sees God sitting on his throne surrounded by numberless angels. In one of his accounts, Joseph talks about there were innumerable angels that he’s experiencing. I started thinking, well, maybe the first vision is, you know, God comes down to Joseph, then to Joseph to meet him on his level. Then God lifts Joseph up to God’s level in heaven. He has this heavenly ascent like Leigh and I started thinking, well, that’s like the whole plan of redemption, right? You know, God book more on title page, Jesus of the Christ, the eternal God, right? God in Christ comes down to our level, right? He’s made flash for us, lifts up to lift us up to his level. The first vision is encapsulating this beautiful plan of redemption. I started, I was seeing that and I was seeing a number of other things that were very powerful and inspiring for me and I started to reconsider what I had thought about Joseph Smith. I started to think more seriously about the restoration again, the possibility that it was actually legit, right? And I, I had spiritual experiences before that I had dismissed. And so I started to reconsider those I ended up and I’ve talked at this about this as you know, at length on other podcasts. So I, so that, that’s just my nutshell here, right? So I, I came back to the church, right? I was rebaptized uh beautiful experience being like re re accepted. And um like I I am so happy that I did this, you know, I, but Michelle, when I came back to the church, I still thought Joseph Smith’s polygamy was sexually motivated. I didn’t think it was, I didn’t think it was consciously sexually motivated. I thought it must have been subconsciously sexually motivated. I thought he was sincere as a prophet, but there’s something wrong here. He must have been, you know, subconsciously, like,
[1:00:34] Michelle: got mixed together motivation
[1:00:36] Don Bradley: mixed up here, right? And so, and, and I, as I was thinking about it, I thought, well, sort of like what good came out of Justice Smith’s polygamy. It just, you know, there was a lot of heartbreak, there’s a lot of faith crisis. And so I started really thinking like, well, maybe this was a big mistake. This is after I’m back in the church, right? Um And so I started trying to wrestle with issues of, you know, well, can uh what kind of mistakes can a prophet make and still be a prophet and so on? And I, I want to come back to that because that’s a big thing for me. And that’s one of the things that I really wanted to talk about in this episode. But um so I’ll come back to that much more fully in a minute. And my, my views on Joseph and polygamy and his motives and so on have like their influx because I’m open to new information. I’m open to new perspectives, right? Um What we have as, you know, in history, we don’t have direct access to the past. What we have are models that we create mental models to try to piece everything together in the ways that make the most sense in the ways that explain the greatest amount of the data in the, the simplest, most straightforward possible way. And so, um I, I came to think later that actually justice polygamy had more sincere religious motives that because I, you know, as you know, I, I found the things about how the, the first of the first few women. Uh Well, I would now argue actually, that’s the first three women who are reported to have been nuvo poor wives of Joseph Smith were pregnant at the time that he married them. Um And that was not what I had expected, you know, and I, I found a source where from the 18 fifties, um George Buchanan says that Joseph Smith taught not to have for men not to have sex with their wives during pregnancy. In which case, Joseph Smith himself marrying pregnant women, what seemed to be not about sex but about something else. So I came to think he had more theological motives that maybe, um this is about in part like adopting the Children who would be born in these marriages, adopting them into certain covenant promises. Maybe he feels like certain things are being brought somehow through the veil with these spirits coming from the preexistence into this world. Um, I, I looked at, started looking at who the women were that he married. I mean, the first two of these women that I’m talking about Zina Huntington and Crescentia Huntington sisters. They, um, their family, they were supposed to have had an encounter with one of the three knee fights. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Leitner had, had, you know, uh, four Ws in thereafter, had, had powerful spiritual experiences and so on. And I thought, well, the women he’s supposed to have married often were really spiritually deep themselves. And so maybe in some way, he’s trying to sort of ally himself with these women who have got these spiritual experiences and this has something to do with his own prophetic process or something. So I, when it comes to a a and I’ve had questions about, you know, I, I talked earlier about so what I’m saying is my sense of justice Smith’s motives is in flux and I’m open on that. And I’ve also, I mentioned earlier that, you know, like if um and there are plainly the way that early latter day saints were doing polygamy was very one sided. It’s very patriarchal. Well, there are people trying to live something like polygamy now, you know, it’s, it’s like, like um like polyamory, right? Where people are trying to come up with some sort of equitable way of living polygamy. And so, or, or non monogamy as they would call it. And so, you know, I if there is, if there are like ethical and more equitable ways of doing it, this still this is not what we, this is not what I see. When I look at like the um the way that early latter day saints were practicing polygamy, I see all kinds of ethical problems there. And so, yeah,
[1:05:11] Michelle: OK, I have so many questions. So first of all, thank you for sharing your journey and your story. That’s so um impractical and good to understand. And I think it is good for people to hear that you um with full knowledge of what you believe to be Joseph’s polygamy came back to the church. I think that’s if I’m hearing correctly, that’s part of what you want to share is this does not have to break your faith. This is not a deal breaker for faith. There are plenty of reasons to believe. Ok. So I appreciate that. And I think that’s, and I do want to talk about kind of navigating faith with a different model as well, you know. But um I guess with my questions about so, so first of all the questions about polyandry and your way of kind of exploring that if Joseph was trying to align, you know, I know you’re just throwing out possibilities of what it might be. So these women, when you found out that they were pregnant when they married him, um can you tell me that how you discover like again, I want to make the point that the women weren’t saying when I was after I had married. So and so and I was pregnant this many months pregnant with his child. I married Joseph for it. Right? Wasn’t it that you found whatever affidavit that was written that they may or may not not have signed in 69 or, or you know, a testimony that was given kind of on their behalf that they were to some degree a party to maybe and then you also found the dates when they had Children and dates when they married other people, right? So,
[1:06:38] Don Bradley: um right. So this will get to questions that we’ll explore in the next episode of questions of how do we do history, right? Like, like what, what does, what is history as a discipline? Right? What is history in terms of like piecing things together and how do we do it? And, and so, yeah, you’re right. I, I mean, what we’re dealing with here is we do have historical sources where people say things, but then we’re also tasked to line up the circle data in order to create a chronology that those people themselves are not creating for us because they’re giving us a snippet here and a snippet there. So we’re the ones that have to put it in order and then we’re the ones that have to look and see what are the patterns and what they’re telling us. And so as I’ll talk about in the next episode, much of history is just getting the events in the right order, right? Once we have the events in the right order, the cause and effect relationships just emerge, the patterns emerge, we can watch the Dominoes fall. So yeah, that, that would be something that I’d love to talk about in detail in, in our next conversation. Yeah.
[1:07:47] Michelle: Ok. Thank you. So, yeah, we’ll go into that next time. And then my other question on what you were talking about with Joseph, marrying the pregnant women and coming up with the, he said that, does that give you pause at all for their husbands, the fathers of these Children? Like,
[1:08:01] Don Bradley: yes. Ok. Yes. So here’s something this is, it’s, this is all complex and it’s all me. And so I have heard the argument that if Joseph Smith was not having sex with the women, he’s polyandrous sealed to then then see no problem there. Right. There’s, there’s no ethical problem. I still think that’s very ethically problematic if I found out I’m not married right now. But if I were and I found out that Russell M Nelson had secretly had himself sealed to my wife for eternity so that I was only gonna be with her for this life and he was gonna have her forever. I’d be flipping furious. That would not be ok with me. And so I don’t I, I’m not saying that’s not ethically problematic or gee, this sounds great. No, no, no, no, no, no. But I am just trying to see like when we look at the, I, I’m just trying to figure out what the historical sources are saying. I’m not saying, gee gee, this sounds just right. Gee, this sounds so ethical and perfect. You’re looking
[1:09:15] Michelle: at the sources and then taking what the sources say and saying, how do I make the best sense of this for my own faith? Navigation is, is what I’m hearing. So I’m not,
[1:09:23] Don Bradley: well, first I’m trying to make sense of them historically, just like what, what, what is it that happened? What, what is Joseph Smith thinking? What’s happening? Then secondarily, what are the people involved? Thinking and then after that sort of like, well, then obviously, questions arise. What do I think? What do I think about what happened? Ethically, spiritually, theologically personally? But that’s sort of that, that’s like the last layer because obviously, I, I if I’m trying to make judgments on what personal judgments on what happened, and I don’t have a good idea of what happened, then my judgments are gonna be off. And so first step and the one that I placed the most emphasis on as a historian is just getting the events in the right order and trying to figure out create the best model for what happened.
[1:10:17] Michelle: And I know this goes into part two as well, but that part even itself is tricky, right? Because for example, and I won’t remember the Johnson guy’s first name. What was his name that was on trial? Joseph
[1:10:27] Don Bradley: Joseph Ellis Johnson. Yeah,
[1:10:29] Michelle: Joseph Ellis Johnson. So Joseph Ellis Johnson, you could take his testimony and build into the timeline and the chronology. Oh, Joseph Smith with his mother, with Joseph Joseph Johnson’s mother in law. Right? Or you can look at it and go, what’s the motivation of this source? How trustworthy and reliable is it, is it backed up by other things? Is it more like, like, so even while we’re building our chronology, we are rating validity of sources, right? We are making decisions. So I just wanted to throw that in. I know we
[1:10:58] Don Bradley: decisions about how much weight to give or not to give to a given source,
[1:11:05] Michelle: right? OK. And so at this point, where are you on Joseph’s polygamy? Are you because I, I have heard you talking about sort of profits can be really messed up, they can do terrible things and still be prophets, you know. So are you kind of feeling like he was like, like, I think Brian I’ve heard him say and I don’t, I’m not, don’t want to imply that you guys share the same perspective on any everything, but I’ve heard him say that um if he could go back and give Joseph advice, he would tell him to do polygamy very differently. You know. So I think that Brian thinks that polygamy was definitely of God and was commanded, but Joseph did it clumsily in some instances. Is that kind of your perspective as well?
[1:11:42] Don Bradley: I would probably lean more of that direction at this point. Um I definitely think that, mm again, my, my primary effort is really to understand, to try to understand what justice Smith was doing and why he was doing it. And so while I do have personal judgments, I mostly keep those more in the background because I am a historian and my job as a historian is primarily to try to figure out what happened. Um And so I want to, to a great extent, put my personal perspectives aside or at least in the background so that I can try to figure out the past without personal lenses getting in the way, right? Because ultimately, uh for me as a historian, it doesn’t matter what I think when I’m looking at what it doesn’t matter how I feel about polygamy when I’m looking at the sources, right? What matters? I agree with that, what actually happened. And so that’s what I most want to get at is what happened. And so I, I’ve come to think that Joseph’s motives were much more than sex, even though I had thought when I came, even when I came back to the church, that subconsciously this was the primary motivation I’ve come to think he had more theological spiritual prophetic motives for this and trying to understand that will be the subject of some f some projects that I’m working on that I’d eventually plan to publish, right? And see how they play out as I pursue those ideas. Um But I don’t feel the need to say that what Joseph Smith did was necessarily right? Or the best way to do things.
[1:13:33] Michelle: OK. So I am curious to know. Um so, and, and, and we can come back to all of these, like I love circling around on all of these topics. Um How do you see the, the, the model that Joseph Smith was honest. And Brigham Young polygamy started with other leaders, Brigham Young and others. How do you see that as more destructive to faith? Then the model that Joseph Smith was um originated polygamy and, and betrayed Emma and was lying about it, you know, because even if even, even though Brigham, if, even if we have the model that Brigham started polygamy, he wasn’t doing the same kind of shenanigans of going behind his wife’s back and lying publicly. Well, I mean, a lot of them did lie, you know, like who was it? Was it Joseph F Smith or someone else that in England read out of section 101, the original section 101 and then to deny polygamy. So we know that there was still but, but II, I guess that’s my first question is why do you see the Brigham Young model as more destructive to faith than the Joseph Smith
[1:14:39] Don Bradley: model. So, OK, so let me comment on that. And then I’d like to pivot back to kind of where I see us where we were a minute ago and then pivot back to that this question again. So I would actually say, I don’t, I don’t know that it’s more challenging to faith. I think it’s challenging to faith in a different way. And so maybe a way to get at that would be to talk about how I see the my own wrestles with because my own wrestles with the question was, was Joseph, right? In practicing polygamy thinking, Joseph practiced polygamy. But then at times having thought, but he was totally wrong in doing so then how did I sort of manage that? And how do I think other people might manage that vantage point? And then I think that talking about, well, what if it’s, what if we see it as Brigham Young who started polygamy? Then how would we manage that in terms of faith? So, um I, so at, at present, I do think that Joseph has, I think Joseph practiced polygamy and that he did it out of like that. I, I mean, we’re, he was human and all humans have mixes of motives that’s just part of being a human being. Um The reason you do this podcast probably is not one single reason, but a set of reasons. Right. And so I think it would be wrong to try to see Joseph Smith as he’s just a very simple person who just has one single motive for everything he does or something that, that’s not how humans work. But I think that Joseph does have, I see him now as having spiritual motives, that polygamy in some way might be sort of part of his prophetic practice and so on while also seeing ethical issues with his polygamy. But because when I came back to the church, I saw Joseph’s polygamy as sexually motivated, at least unconsciously. Um I had to wrestle a lot with questions about, well, how could that be, how could he be like a prophet if you know, he, he made this mistake? Right? And so, um, you know, one of the things that I see in this regard, you know, like, um a couple years ago when uh in Sunday school, we were going through Genesis, I remember I was in gospel doctrine one time and the, the class members were talking about was it? I can’t remember, maybe it was like Isaac and Rebecca and giving like the, like the deception that happens with like the birthright
[1:17:37] Michelle: and all
[1:17:38] Don Bradley: this. And people kept trying to justify the actions that were taken and say, well, this, it wasn’t really deceptive because of this and I was plainly deceptive, right? But they’re saying it’s not really accepted because of this and that and eventually I just, the steam was rising from my ears, kind of, you know, I wasn’t really mad but I was like, frustrated. Like, and so I raised my hand and I gave this long comment, right? And then like, well, you know, when we look in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, you know, we’ve got no uh comes off the ship and gets drunk. And then when his, you know, son uncover, you know, sees him naked, he curses his grandson, which doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. You know, and then with servitude slavery, right? And then, you know, you’ve got um Abraham, you know, his, his family is like anything but a picture of domestic tranquility, right? And you’ve got polygamy because of polygamy. Right. Right. And um then you’ve got, you know, Isaac and Rebecca doing these, you know, this major
[1:18:44] Michelle: to Judah and Judah and Tamar is the best of the whole thing.
[1:18:48] Don Bradley: Right. Exactly. Like, like this, I remember reading that story as a teenager and just being baffled, you know, the whole thing. And so, so Jacob’s sons are just an absolute mess how, you know, they, they, they, they
[1:19:03] Michelle: commit genocide as well. They have multiple genocides. Right.
[1:19:07] Don Bradley: Right. Right. Right. Right. And, and even even a hero figure like Joseph, Joseph was a total snot who thinks his brothers should or less than him. And, you know, iii, I don’t know, I mean, the, the David and Solomon. Solomon, the wisest man in the world. And what does he do with that? Well, he, he marries the wives of all these foreign gods and sets up idols in God’s temple that God had him build. And you go even down into the New Testament, right? Peter denies Christ three times, right after saying, I will never deny you, you know, and the apostles look during Jesus lifetime, at least like a bunch of clowns, you know, and like the Bible is not trying to show, it’s not a book of heroes, it’s not a book of Hes, it’s not a book of exemplars trying to show us. These people were so perfect. They were so great. Be just like Abraham just be just like Solomon. No, no, no, no, no, no. There is all of them. There, there’s a protagonist, there is an exemplar in the Bible. It’s not any of those guys, it’s Christ, he’s our exemplar there. The protagonist of the Bible is God. It’s not trying to show us be like all these flawed human beings. It’s actually showing us human beings are flawed. Your your your model should be something higher.
[1:20:27] Michelle: So, so just like I don’t wanna derail you. I, I guess as you’re describing this, I kind of think maybe it’s me more useful to view the Bible as a book, not of Heroes, but a book of Patterns, right? A book that shows us like when I see Peter deny Christ three times. I see Joseph giving the manuscript paper away. I see. Right. That was a, that was a faith promoting experience for Joseph actually, because the repentance was so bitter of that just like Peter, that it would never happen again. And I find those patterns in my life too and, and you see patterns of God commands marriage between one man and one woman. And whether we follow Lammi pattern or Abraham and Sarah’s desire to have a child that resulted in their polygamy, right? That was not commanded by God or heaven forbid Jacob’s awful polygamy as being tricked by his deceptive and horrible father-in-law, right? We see, wow, when you diverge from the commandments given to God horrors await like horrors ensue, it’s not a good pattern, right? So I, that’s what I guess I think and, and Abraham also sets the pattern of repentance and, and desire to serve God and right. So I guess I hear what you’re saying. I just want to be careful of sort of um saying the danger. I hear what you’re saying personally of like, look, all of these guys are flawed is kind of like, it doesn’t matter. God uses anyone and we can all be flawed or we don’t have to like, like I just read a speech by Hiram Smith. It was recorded, I think in Levi is that Levi by Richard’s book where where Hiram says that God would not allow prophets to sin too deeply. He would, you know, I, I can’t remember the wording. I’ll have to look that up again. And there is something to me where I’m, I’m, I’m president to compare Joseph Smith to say Juda and tomorrow, right? Like we, we people use these models to say, look, God wouldn’t, I mean, people who are very pro polygamy will say to me, God wouldn’t have his son born through a line that did these awful corrupt things. And like, like you have you read about Judah and tomorrow or about all of the mass genocides and all of the terrible things that happened through like every one of us has horrors in our line somewhere. We’re not accountable for those, right? But at the same time when we’re so when we’re talking about the genealogy, sure. But when we’re talking about the individual, I, I see Peter denying Christ three times the same as Joseph giving away the manuscript, not the same as breaking your wife’s heart and lying consistently and excommunicating people for the same thing that you’re doing in secret. And you, you know, like, I think there’s a whole different level there of, of a pattern of learning and repentance versus just sin if that makes sense. But, but I didn’t mean to derail you. I just wanted to express why I kind of why that’s a challenge for me to view it that way.
[1:23:19] Don Bradley: Sure. Um I, I mean, so, so the, the gist of what I was pointing out is that, you know, that the Bible is not meant to be a book of exemplars. It has an exemplar in it and we have someone who’s chosen to be our exemplar and that’s Christ. It’s not just because God chose, I mean, God chose Abraham. God chose the house of Israel. But when we look at the specific lives of, you know, Abraham Isaac Jacob Jacob’s sons, right? They’re a mess. And I think that actually this does play into the New Testament narrative of grace, right? That we we as human beings, we are flawed. And that this is I, I know, I don’t think it’s an accident that the Bible shows us the flaws of the various prota human protagonists. I think that’s actually part of the design of the Bible is that it’s supposed to show us that human beings are imperfect. And so we have a perfect exemplar in Christ and we have grace through Christ. And so when I look at prophets, I don’t see or people chosen by God, I don’t see like a necessity for them to be to some standard of perfection.
[1:24:53] Michelle: I see a necessity for a trajectory like like Joseph in Egypt was different from his brothers. And, and I know that we can view him as a young snot, maybe, you know, but maybe he was also someone who was having these experiences from God trying to understand what they meant. And not necessarily trying to offend his older brothers and you know, just trying to say I had this dream which he had, you know, but then as he goes to Egypt, we look at his humility and his faithfulness and his continued faith and his, his trajectory that he was on was always one like he did learn extreme humility in Egypt, right? But then he was elevated. But it’s, it’s like, and the Lord chose him. The the challenge I have is if we say, you know, God can like, like here’s the thing. If we see problems with polygamy, we have to decide who the problem is with, right? What is the problem with Joseph? Did he do something wrong? Was the problem with Brigham Young at all? You know, I’m not saying it’s just Brigham Young, but that cabal of polygamous, did they do something wrong? Or is the problem with God? And God tells Joseph and God continued to choose Joseph even as Joseph was doing these things. And God’s like, I’m OK with it. Well, that raises huge problems like as a woman who reads Jacob two and sees how, why God condensed polygamy. We take verse 30 out of context and leave alone that God condemns polygamy because of what it does to God’s daughters. God cares about women and the experiences of women and girls which polygamy affects girls the same way because I’m not comfortable calling a 14 year old, a woman you know, and so if we are saying, yeah, Joseph wasn’t perfect, but, you know, prophets aren’t perfect that raises problems for me with God if that makes sense. Like I’m sorry, if God is ok with this, then I’m not ok with God. If, if, if I’m Emma and what Joseph was doing is true and yet he’s still the prophet and God’s still talking to him, then what am I? Who am I? Why doesn’t God care about me? Right? Does that make sense? So I’m not trying to destroy your model. I’m trying to explain why it, why it doesn’t work for me. Why it’s and, and I also want to clarify, I don’t come. I, I believed Joseph was a polygamist my whole life. I had my own ways of it. I, I was fine with it when I say I was fine with it. I mean, I had dealt, I, that’s a complicated thing to say. I assumed that the reason Joseph was killed was because he lost his spiritual production because he dabbled in polygamy. That was kind of my perspective on it, right? So it’s not that I, that I have to save my faith somehow by blaming brigay. It’s not that at all. It’s I got into the research and was like, wow, this is different than I thought. But so I, so I wanted to clarify that just to say this is why I find that explanation of faith to be challenging because it says it’s God’s fault and God will just use anyone, right? And, and so if so, if there’s some guy that’s tormenting you and torturing you and doing horrible things to you, well, he might be God’s prophet because, you know, prophets aren’t perfect. That’s my challenge.
[1:27:52] Don Bradley: So, so when you did think, when you first had started this podcast, the first year ish of this podcast, when you were thinking polygamy is not right. Polygamy is not a God. But Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. How did you square those two that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but he taught and practiced something that wasn’t of
[1:28:22] Michelle: God. Yeah. So I just, just quickly, just to go back further. I, I was raised believing polygamy was of God and it was a beautiful thing that we just didn’t understand. I didn’t have the normal problems, you know, very naive. And then I went on my path of learning that polygamy was not of God. As I studied Joseph Smith. It looked to me like he wasn’t doing the same thing that Brigham Young was doing. I knew it wasn’t the same, but I also knew he dabbled in it and I couldn’t get away from that. I couldn’t escape. There were certain pieces that I was like, I can’t get past this. He did, he was messing around with this to what extent I don’t know. And, and that’s what I thought. I thought that’s why I, I had had a conversation with somebody who, but also dabbled in it and told me that like his experience was that he lost his spiritual protection. And that’s why he was allowed to be excommunicated. Right? So that was like, oh, that worked. Ok. I think Joseph Smith lost his spiritual protection and that’s why he was allowed to be killed. So that’s how I, I thought polygamy was wrong. Joseph was a prophet. He got mixed up and messed up in this and, and I didn’t consider him a fallen prophet. I would have never used that word. I just thought, you know, I mean, it wasn’t that certainly investigated. I mean, I hadn’t thought through every detail of it, but that was my, that was my perspective on it.
[1:29:38] Don Bradley: So, so what I’m trying to lay out, I think would align with that, that I’m not saying that this is how entirely how I see it at the moment, right? Because like I said, I see, I now see more spiritual motives. I’m more open to uh uh in that regard. But like, like I said, when I came back to the church, I was taking the view that the polygamy was wrong. It was a mistake. So then how do I square that with Joseph Smith being a
[1:30:06] Michelle: prophet? Part
[1:30:08] Don Bradley: of how I see that is by looking at um a larger pattern of scripture where God does use very flawed people, even when I might prefer otherwise, right? Like I might want God to use people who would just be shining examples. So that’s very complicated. And I can just look at the various figures in the scriptures and be like, hey, I, I can follow that guy’s example and I’m safe and that’s this, take me somewhere that, that what we actually see in scripture and in human history is just a lot of human messiness, right? And this God God to some extent or other works with that. So, so whatever the degree of Joseph Smith’s life mistakes was or wasn’t Joseph Smith is a flawed human being that God is using. He’s not some semi perfect God, right? Like and, and so Justice Smith’s own revelations acknowledge this, right? I mean, he he gets called to repentance so many times, right? And told he’s he’s forgiven for this or that it’s acknowledging that he made mistakes. So, so again, what, what whatever the degree of his mistakes, whether one sees him having practiced polygamy and that being a mistake or not, like Justice Smith is human, there’s messing us. So for me looking at the, the scriptural record, particularly the Bible, right? That I, I fit that in, right? Like like Joseph Smith. So um Justice Smith, oh OK. Here’s a narrative. Hey, uh a young man sees God and he could ask God for anything, but what he asks him for is wisdom and God gives him wisdom. Who is that young man.
[1:31:59] Michelle: Well, Sam, I’m Solomon. Right.
[1:32:02] Don Bradley: Solomon. It’s Joseph Smith as well. Oh, Joseph Smith. Right. Right. It’s, it’s both of them. And so, um, Joseph Smith in that way is sort of like a latter day Solomon. Right. He, he, he asked God, he sees God, he asked God for wisdom. God gives him wisdom with the biblical. Solomon goes on to make massive mistakes far beyond anything that Joseph Smith does. Justice Smith doesn’t set up idols to worship in the temple or, you know, whatever false gods. Um And so I look at Solomon’s the guy that God gave wisdom to that he allowed to build his house for him for the first time, build, build Israel’s temple. And so for me, at least looking at that kind of backdrop, I’m able to say, hey, Joseph Smith could have made massive mistakes too because God uses people, even people who make big mistakes. And so, um I, I don’t fully know why, right? But that’s, that’s how I, that’s how I see that. Um
[1:33:08] Michelle: And, and so I want to, I want to move on to this. I just want to like so my concern there because I think that what polygamy really hits that is people’s faith in God. And so that’s my concern with that perspective is I think it minimizes God like I do struggle like Samuel, the prophet and his sons and the horrible things they were doing. I don’t like that story. At all. I grapple with that. I don’t know the answers. I don’t look at David and Solomon as heroes at all. Right. So, yes, it’s just for me, I’d rather um um for me since I don’t even like that model, I don’t wanna fit Joseph Smith into that model. Right. I’d rather just like, go forget God. Like that’s not my God. Right. That, that does this kind of stuff and is fine with it. So, so I appreciate, I, I just wanted to like, like we can continue that kind of challenge. I’m just, I appreciate that that model works for you. I wanted to express why it’s a challenge for me. But
[1:33:59] Don Bradley: OK. OK. So, so I mean, the, the Hebrew Bible does describe, I think you used the word genocide earlier, um describes the people of Israel going out and wiping out other groups of people, right? And so um mm it looks to me like God’s level of toleration for his people’s, these chosen people’s errors is high.
[1:34:28] Michelle: OK? And I would interpret that very differently. But yeah, but go ahead.
[1:34:33] Don Bradley: Yeah. So um I, I guess um something that I see and I think we talked about this once briefly on the phone or something related is that I do see people sometimes making arguments that like if, if Joseph Smith did such and such, then he couldn’t have been a prophet, right? He wasn’t a prophet. And like, um so I remember seeing um Stephen Robinson who was a by professor wrote like believing Christ and so on about Christ. He wrote something once arguing against an idea that Blake Osler came up with. So Blake Osler came up with this idea. He was trying to explain Blake Osler was trying to explain. Well, why does the Book of Mormon have language in it? From Joseph Smith’s time? From the revivals? Why does it use the, the, the 1611 King James version of the Bible? Why does it have things that seem out of place in the ancient world? And he came up with that, he calls an expansion theory of the book of Mormon that when God reveals things and like in ancient text, he kind of updates it in some ways to the modern world. And so Stephen Robinson was critiquing that idea was criticizing that and saying that can’t be. And Stephen Robinson said, if the book of Mormon has anything in it that’s not ancient, then it’s false. Yeah. And so I look at an argument like that and I think if you’re trying to defend the restoration, why would you ever make an argument whose conclusion is then it’s false? Right? And so I remember um I think back before I was born, like, I don’t know, Hugh Nibley wrote something about like I think um somebody had discovered a document relating to justice Smith’s 1826 hearing for glass looking where he was put on trial basically for using a Sears stone. Um, it was considered to be against the law surprisingly. Right. And Hugh Nly wrote, if this were true, it would be the most damning evidence so far against the prophet Joseph Smith. Well, then it was found that the, the document was genuine. The trial, the hearing actually did occur. Right? And I’ve seen other kinds of arguments like this. I remember Brian making an argument that if Joseph Smith engaged in sexual polyandry, it would have been adultery and he would have been a false or fallen prophet. And I just don’t like arguments that conclude with therefore, Joseph Smith would not be a prophet or the restoration wouldn’t be true. I just think those arguments are a bad idea because then you have like, maybe let’s take Stephen Robinson’s argument, then the book of Mormon would be false. Well, then all that a critic needs to do is argue that there’s something in the book of Mormon that’s not ancient. And they’ve made, they’ve used a lot, they’ve enlisted a latter day saint, they quote the latter day saint and they enlist the latter day saint to argue. See it’s not true, right? And so I, I hesitate with sort of dichotomous arguments to say, well, if Joseph Smith practiced P me, if Joseph Smith did this and his me, then he wasn’t a prophet because I’m not trying to convince people. Jo Smith wasn’t a prophet, I think Joseph Smith was a prophet, right? And so even if Joseph Smith made various mistakes, that’s how I would see it is that he was a prophet who made mistakes rather than, right, that he wasn’t a prophet. And so one of the things that I um thought a lot about is that like, um what is it that latter day saints are required to believe? And what are they not required to believe with regard to polygamy, with regard to other things? Right? When I was a teenager, I encountered this book, it was an anthropological look at Mormonism by a non Mormon. It was called uh The Roots of Modern Mormonism. And I just opened up this book, I’m thumbing through it and he said something about how Mormonism has a do it yourself theology. I did not know what he was talking about. He I, I re read this and reread this. He was talking about like Mormons aren’t really required to believe this or that. And they sort of come up with their own theological understanding on their own. And I was like, I was thinking about like how I read like Bruce Arma Cony’s Mormon doctrine. He lays down the law, right? Well, this is the way it is. You have to believe this all true saints through all the edges of eternity. I believe this true doctrine, you know, and so on. And years later, I um I decided that I wanted to learn more about Catholicism. And my, my adoptive dad had grown up Catholic. And so I took Catholic catechism classes, what it, what Catholics call R CIA classes to learn about Catholicism. And on the very first day of class, Michelle, they gave us this book titled the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I was told contained all the required beliefs for salvation, everything that you had to believe to be saved. It’s this thick, it’s like 3.5 inches or four inches thick. It has thousands of specific doctrinal beliefs. They’re called dogmas dog. The dogma actually means a required belief, something you have to believe, to be saved. And I was told that if you didn’t believe all these things that even if you were a cat in good standing, you were de facto ex spiritually excommunicated from the faith by not believing this. And I thought, well, then there are no real Catholics because basically how many people could, how many people even know about all these beliefs and could hold them all in their heads. You know, I, I just so then I suddenly understood what this anthropologist had been saying years earlier that Mormonism has a kind of do it yourself. Theology. I just came to realize a lot of these saints actually have considerable freedom of belief. If you look at the number of belief, questions in the temple recommend interview, I think it’s like the Father, Son and Ghost. What
[1:40:41] Michelle: three main ones. Right. Jo Smith and the restoration and the current leadership.
[1:40:46] Don Bradley: Right. Right. And then that’s it. And the rest of it is about how you live your life. And so Mormons are what they call orthoptics, meaning it’s about your practice, your behavior rather than orthodox. It being about, you know, your beliefs. And so when I, uh I went on a mission, when I was on my mission, one of the guys we taught was he was coming from a Catholic background and he accepted everything, everything that we said, except in the lesson on the great apostasy, he could not accept that the Catholics had lost the authority. He thought that the latter day saints had the authority, but he also thought the Catholics still had the authority both. And so we talked to our mission president, can we baptize this guy because he wanted to be baptized? And the mission president laughed and said we have members in Japan who still worship their ancestors, go ahead and baptize them, right? And so there is considerable latitude for belief as a latter day saint, nowhere in the temple recommend interview. Is there a question? Do you believe polygamy is a true doctrine or, or you know, do you believe that in the next life you’ll have to live in a polygamous marriage or, you know, um it’s not in the articles of faith, right? It’s um
[1:42:02] Michelle: and Joseph Smith himself taught against creeds. Joseph Smith like that guy that was quoting, that was probably quoting Joseph Smith. That, no, we’re not a gospel of creeds. We weren’t meant to be.
[1:42:13] Don Bradley: Yeah. Exactly. And so as far as I’m concerned, Latter Day Saints don’t have to believe that polygamy was right. They, they can believe that it was right. They can believe that it was wrong. They can hold, there’s a whole spectrum of beliefs that they might hold about polygamy. Right. And, or about marriage or the ideal form of marriage that it’s not a requirement for salvation. It’s not a requirement to be to join the church. It’s not a requirement to take the sacrament. It’s not a requirement to get a temple recommend. And so I see this as being something very open where people, they’re able to re to arrive at their own views, they’re able to revise those views as their life experience changes and they learn new things and that’s, that’s fine. That’s ok.
[1:43:04] Michelle: I love that. And I think that should be, yeah. And really in a way, our faith is so much more real and vibrant and strong when it’s between us and God because we’ve been forced to wrestle, right? Like if, if it all were just and if it, if the whitewashed version we had been given were true, many like, like yes, less faith would have deconstructed. But really the goal isn’t for faith to deconstruct. It’s for faith to reconstruct in a more profound connected way, like I would say that having learned more fruits rather than the whitewashed fantasy, my faith is much more profound and I know God much better than I did before.
[1:43:48] Don Bradley: And that’s, that’s exactly as well. Yes. Ok.
[1:43:52] Michelle: And I think that that’s part of why God, you know, the fact is God’s in charge. So wherever the mess ups happen, God allowed them. Right? And the question is why, and for me, I just keep coming to the back to the, to the answer because it’s not actually about an institution, it’s about the individual, right? So it’s not that the church needs to be something other. It’s what am I? Where does God want me to be? What does God know um will be in my best good, the best good of those around me. Where can I be of most use to God? And where will my life be blessed most? And, and that’s where I want to be. And then how can I best serve God wherever God has planted me has told me to be right? So for me, that’s where it comes down to. And whether, whether polygamy was right, which II, I thoroughly reject that at this point, even though that was my belief, whether it was Joseph Smith or whether it was Brigham Young, the question is where does God want me? Because because really the buck stops with God. God could have done it differently. God could have said no we’re not messing around with David and Solomon. No, we’re not messing around with Brigham Young or whoever it may be. Right. And so anyway, so that’s part of my way of navigating it. Like, in a way when you said everyone has mixed motives. I do think there’s truth to that, but I do think that it’s possible to have at your core. I just want to do what God wants me to do. And I, I know I’ve been given the chance to answer that question with my podcast when I’ve had to consider what I took it down if I, you, you know, and really my answer is just I want to do whatever God wants me to do. So that’s what my answer would be. And I do think that was Joseph Smith’s answer too. I, I tend to think that really his answer was I want to do what God wants me to do now. That doesn’t mean that any of us are perfect and that, but I do think that could be a central motivator anyway. I spoke for a
[1:45:37] Don Bradley: while. So, yeah. No, IIWI. I loved everything that you said, everything that you said. And I think, and I agree my view of Justice Smith and, and, and I, I come from a past of having deeply questioned his motives and for a while seeing them as bad, but the more that I’ve pieced together things not primarily on polygamy, that’s part of it, right. But just in his life in general, what is he, what does it look like? He’s trying to do? I see him as deeply spiritually motivated, right? He does. He wants to follow God’s will. I see indications that he’s actually even looking at the world around him for signs of divine providence to help him understand what God wants him to do. And then I think that’s what a charlatan do. That is an opportunist doesn’t care what the universe wants him to do. He doesn’t care what God wants him to do. He only cares what he wants, right? But that’s not what I see in Joseph Smith at all. I see a deep religious sincerity in him and, and I, and, and so I, I very much resonate with what you were saying about Joseph Smith and that like each of us, like, you know, we need to have our own spiritual motives, we need to have our own relationship with God and whatever happened. And, and you know, in this episode, even in the next episode, my aim is not gonna be to convince people that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. My aim is gonna be for us to have a good conversation, a dialogue, right? Where maybe we built some bridges of understanding. I do wanna explain why do I think, right? My approach is that Justice Smith did practice polygamy. But with the caveat that I think he did practice polygamy, right? Like whether Joseph started polygamy or whether we see or whether Brighams heard polygamy or whoever started pom, I think the same kinds of considerations would apply that this was not a surprise to g that God has an overall providential view. So just like God knew that the Jews in ancient Israel were going to re reject Jesus, just like God knew that the man that he chose to build the temple Solomon, right? Was going to pollute that very same temple, just like God knew that the house of Israel that he was choosing way back, you know, uh 3500 years ago or whatever it was like, was um flawed. These were flawed, human beings. He would have known what Justice Smith’s flaws would be. He would have known what Brigham Young’s flaws would be. God’s not surprised by any of this. There’s a larger picture that God understands. So then the question comes down to us individually. What are we supposed to be doing with our lives within the framework of this larger plan?
[1:48:26] Michelle: I love it. OK, Dawn, I have loved this conversation. Should we wrap it up here and then, and OK, this, I, I hope that you guys all found this as enjoyable as I did. I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me and I think that the um the listeners will be very eager to hear our next installment where we are going to talk more about the work of historians and getting into the historical models and, um, hopefully some of the evidence and we’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see where that conversation takes us. But thank you so much for being here and I look forward to talking again. Another huge thank you to Don Bradley for coming and having this conversation. It has been tricky to try to pin him down. So I’m really thankful that he was willing to come. I know that he wanted to start on faith and that was maybe not the conversation some people wanted to hear, but I thought it turned into an excellent conversation and sets a good foundation for our continuing conversations going forward. So I am really excited to continue this dialogue and I invite you to all come along with us. We’ll see you next time.
