Polygamy and Coercion — Was Consent Real?
Critics argue Joseph Smith used promises of eternal salvation — and threats of spiritual consequences — to coerce consent to plural marriage. This is among the most serious charges. It deserves the most honest answer.
The Specific Claims
The coercion charge takes several specific forms:
The Four Claims
- Claim 1 — Joseph told women their families would be exalted if they married him
- Claim 2 — Joseph claimed an angel with a flaming sword would destroy him if women refused
- Claim 3 — Some women were given 24-hour ultimatums
- Claim 4 — Women who declined faced reputational attacks
The Response
1. Acknowledge What Is True
Some accounts do describe celestial promises being offered as part of the plural marriage discussions. The historical record on this is real and cannot be dismissed. Brian Hales, the most thorough LDS historian of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, acknowledges these accounts while contesting some interpretations. Intellectual honesty requires not minimizing the complexity here.
2. What the Historical Record Actually Shows About Consent
The women who entered plural marriage with Joseph Smith — including those who wrote extensively about it later — overwhelmingly describe their own agency in the process. Eliza R. Snow, one of Joseph’s plural wives and one of the most educated and independent women in early Nauvoo, wrote poetry and hymns celebrating the principle. She was not a passive victim. Helen Mar Kimball, married at 14 (in an eternity-only, non-cohabiting arrangement), later wrote a defense of plural marriage and remained a committed Latter-day Saint her entire life. These women’s own testimony of their experience deserves as much weight as the critics’ reading of it.
3. The “Flaming Sword” Account
The “flaming sword angel” account comes from a small number of secondhand sources written decades after the events. Brian Hales’s research shows the earliest and most direct accounts do not include this element. The critics rely heavily on later, less reliable sources while dismissing the women’s own direct testimonies. Source criticism must be applied consistently — a standard the coercion argument does not meet.
4. The Theological Context
In 1843 Nauvoo, the Saints believed they were living in the restoration of all things described in Acts 3:21. The practice was understood as a sacred covenant with eternal consequences — not a social arrangement subject to 19th-century dating conventions. The framework for understanding consent must account for participants who genuinely believed this was divine revelation with eternal implications. Whether one agrees with that framework, dismissing it entirely misunderstands the historical actors.
5. The D&C 132 Standard
D&C 132:61 explicitly requires the first wife’s consent and specifies conditions. The revelation itself establishes consent as required. Where that standard was violated — and the historical record suggests it sometimes was — those were violations of the revealed law, not fulfillments of it. The law did not authorize coercion. Human weakness is not the same as institutional doctrine.
6. The Comparison That Embarrasses the Argument
Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son. God commanded Nephi to kill Laban. Moses told Pharaoh to let the people go or face death of the firstborn. Every major covenant in scripture comes with extraordinary stakes and pressure. The question is not whether high-stakes covenants involve serious consequences for refusal — they do, throughout scripture. The question is whether Joseph Smith was acting under divine authority. That question is answered by examining the truth claims, not by noting that sacred covenants carry weight.
The Verdict
The coercion charge contains a kernel of historical reality that deserves honest acknowledgment: some women experienced pressure, some accounts describe celestial promises that created spiritual stakes, and the historical situation was complex. What the charge does not establish is that consent was universally absent — the women’s own testimony contradicts that.
What it also does not establish is that Joseph Smith was a predator rather than a prophet attempting to restore a difficult and painful ancient practice. The difference between those readings depends entirely on whether the restoration was real — which is the question the critics need to answer first, not assume.