By Randy Astle Randy Astle is a writer and filmmaker in New York City. He has written numerous articles, and is nearly finished with a book on Mormon film. A TRIP TO SALT LAKE CITY Released during the Smoot Senate hearing, A Trip to Salt Lake City (1905) was both the first Mormon fiction …
Tag: polygamy
The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men
Review Essay by Stephen Carter Stephen Carter is the director of publications for the Sunstone Education Foundation. What is it that bothers mainstream Mormons about polygamy? Carol Lynn Pearson asked this question in a 2014 online survey and received more than 8,000 responses, 51 percent of them from active Mormons. Often the respondents …
The Bigamist
By Eric Freeze Eric Freeze is author of the short story collection Dominant Traits (2012) and a collection of creative nonfiction Hemingway on a Bike (2014). He has published stories, essays, and translations in numerous periodicals. He teaches creative writing at Wabash College and lives in Crawfordsville, Indiana and Nice, France. Sandra had …
“A Brother in the Pale-face”: White Mormons and Indigenous Polygamies
By Amanda Hendrix-Komoto Amanda Hendrix-Komoto has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Undressing Mahana: The Development of Mormon Modesty Culture and the Display of Polynesian Bodies,” forthcoming in Out of Obscurity: Mormonism after 1945 from Oxford University Press. When Mormons adopted polygamy in the mid-nineteenth century, …
“The Custom of his Nation”: William McCary and the Racialization of Plural Marriage
By Angela Pulley Hudson Angela Pulley Hudson is the author of Real Native Genius: How an Ex-slave and a White Mormon became Famous Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). She is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and can be reached at aphudson@tamu.edu. When envisioning Mormon polygamists, people of color …
How Warren Jeffs Maintains His Hold Over the FLDS
By Ken Driggs Ken Driggs is an attorney living in Atlanta, Georgia. He specializes in criminal defense and has a graduate degree in legal history. He has visited and written about Fundamentalist Mormons since 1988. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” …
How Does Our Polygamous History Affect Our Marriages?
By Natasha Helfer Parker Natasha Helfer Parker is a licensed clinical marriage & family therapist and certified sex therapist with almost 20 years experience working primarily with Latter-day Saints. She can be contacted at natashaparker.org. Question: Mormons believe that if we are sealed together as husband and wife—and if we honor our covenants—we will …
Background and Fallout of My 1985 Article: “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904”
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is the award-winning author of many articles and books on Mormon history including Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature, 1998) and the upcoming The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power (Signature, 2016). Prologue I was recently asked1 to describe the background of the 97-page …
Plural Marriage Among Early Latter-day Saints
By George D. Smith George D. Smith is the award-winning author of Nauvoo Polygamy “. . . but We Called It Celestial Marriage” (Signature Books, 2011). On 22 October 2014, the LDS Church published its most frank essay on the 19th-century origins of Mormon plural marriage, practiced in secret among nearly 200 families in …
The Excommunication of Charles William Kingston
By Charles Elden Kingston CHARLES ELDEN KINGSTON became interested in history while serving a mission in Salt Lake City at the Church History Library. He is the great-grandson of Charles William Kingston. Or download the audio file here: The Excommunication of Charles William Kingston The stories of church founders are never complete …