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| You're welcome Mary... |
Recently, the LDS Church published a series of essays on polygamy in the early days of the Church.
They are frank and especially well-done. You can find them under Gospel Topics at LDS.org.
In response, the mainstream media had a heyday with headlines including:
"The Mormon church finally acknowledges founder Joseph Smith’s polygamy" (Washington Post)
"Mormon leaders admit church founder Joseph Smith practiced polygamy" (Fox News)
"Mormon church admits polygamous past" (The Keene Sentinel)
"Mormon church admits founder Joseph Smith had about 40 wives" (Yahoo News)
Well, okay...
First, the Church has always recognized it's polygamous past, plural marriage even has it's own section in the Doctrine & Covenants written by Joseph Smith. There are multiple books, histories and stories I've heard about on the topic for decades. Contrary to what the headlines insinuate, this isn't new.
Nonetheless, the anti-mormon crowd have reacted like it is fresh red meat in a lion's den. Derogatory references and snarling, snide insults abound. Typically they imagine the worst possible motive a man can have and project them onto the prophet Joseph Smith, and then bank on them as if they're proven.
One of the names which kept coming up more often than others on comment threads, was Adam Lightner.
The narrative goes something like this, "Poor Adam Lightner, whose wife was stolen by Joseph Smith while sent away on a mission by Joseph himself...." (this is a very polite summary of how they actually put it).
There is at least one second-hand book written on the topic "confirming" the story.
Needless to say this sounded both unjust and harsh. Could Joseph really have done that? So I decided to investigate.
I have learned over the years, to go straight to the source ~ as in not books written by the "experts" but to the original source documents themselves. This is not always fun or convenient, and oftentimes the material is long and dry. But the consistent pattern of discrepancies between the original source and the re-manufactured modern versions of the same story are a bit astonishing. Because you can almost always bank on finding a very different story than the one being told today.
Why does this happen?
Maybe because someone was willing to twist and slant the story significantly to cater to a prejudice and forward their own agendas. Or perhaps, because there is good money to be made selling the unsavory stories to a pre-disposed audience.
How do they get away with it? I'm wondering if it isn't because most anti-mormons willingly accept any bad news they hear and aren't terribly motivated to check it out. And truthfully, most faithful LDS don't take the time to check it out either.
I found Mary Rollins LIghtner's auto-biography. I wanted to hear what she had to say about her own story. Not only did I read it, I read it three times (it's not long). It was delightful, natural, early Americana and fascinating. I linked her name to the auto-biography online if you would like to read it too.
My first thought was WHY would any anti-mormon or bitter ex-mormon EVER want to steer you towards this particular story? Mary innocently offers proof that Joseph Smith is a prophet, without intending to do it and makes a really good case of it. Hers is a story of great faith.
Here are some inconvenient truths from Mary Lightner's own words:
A) She was married to Adam and they were together until 1885 (when Adam died) and they had 10 children together. There was no interruption of their civil marriage of 40+ years (never divorced nor separated).
B) Adam refused baptism from early on and did not ever become a member of the Mormon church even though Mary begged him to.
C) Adam and Mary traveled all over and spent a bulk of their time in the East and did not live around the Saints a lot.
D) Adam thought favorably of Joseph and other leaders and even lost his property rather than side with the persecution while they were in Missouri.
Here's the difficult part of the story we have to spend time on, or we easily fall for the urban legend version:
Joseph Smith and Mary were sealed in 1842 for eternity...but not time. This is important to understand because it is not the same temple marriage you and I are familiar with today. Marriage for eternity without being married for time (now), is also known as a spiritual marriage. Up until a few decades ago, you could even do the opposite, be married in the temple for time, but not eternity. However that practice has also stopped (they found people tended not progress and make it eternal later on).
Back then, they had both sealings for eternity (a.k.a. spiritual marriages) as well as sealings for time (civil) and eternity. This is probably new for a lot of us since we no longer practice eternity only marriages.
Why does this matter? When we marry in the temple today, it is for "time and eternity." It is both for now, and after we die. Today, temple marriage is a civilly binding contract and we don't typically need a second trip to city hall. "Time" is specifically mentioned because Mormons consider time as a convention of earth life. The measure of time as we know it here does not exist in eternity. The spiritual marriage contract (or sealed for eternity) literally is valid for the other side of the veil and did not form or interrupt a civl marriage now, which is "until death do we part." Even though it was not a common practice even then, and we don't do it today, the time span of the two marriage contracts do not overlap. In Adam's case, his life and civil marriage was uninterrupted physically and legally.
This practice is not one I entirely understand, and even wonder if it was part of an early learning curve (which the Church essays wonder too). Still, it is a mistake to put dead people on trial or assume people's motives. They are not able to defend themselves or put snippets of information back into context. There are circumstances, culture, thought processes, conversations and events we are not privy to.
Adam and Mary's story is quite a bit different than what is popularly passed around.
In fact, we experience something quite similar in real life frequently. How many times have you thought you knew the whole story, and after finding out a few more facts realized your impression was completely wrong? If you have kids close in age and sibling rivalry, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Or perhaps, you thankfully got the chance to tell your side of the story and completely changed someone else's perspective?
President Joseph Fielding Smith always urged new bishops he ordained to get both sides of the story. "Everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect," he said.
I found in my own life it always, always pays to do the same and not immediately buy into the first version of the story I hear, both for folks around me and folks from the past.
You're welcome Mary. Thank you so much for recording your life. It probably seemed pretty ordinary to you, but it is truly fascinating.
