Myths
1. Mormons practice polygamy.
This will always be a topic that Mormons will be associated with. In the past, around the time of Joseph Smith, polygamy was in practice. During that time period, polygamy was happening because it was believed that through revelation, God commanded his people to partake of it. When Wilford Woodruff became the fourth president of the church, he released an official statement that disassociated the approval of the church with plural marriage. Nowadays this statement is still true. In fact, the leaders of the LDS church have even said that anyone who practices polygamy will be excommunicated from the church. They do this in order to help maintain the idea that the Mormon’s are no longer associated with the church.
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Callings are basically jobs that individuals are given to help make the church function. The church would not run as smoothly as it does if it didn’t have people who voluntarily step up to the plate. Callings range from the teachers in all the age groups to a family history consultant that helps people work on their family tree. Also, people are allowed to say no to callings without being kicked out of the church. If someone felt that they would be unable to complete a calling, or could not handle the stress, they can decline and the position will be offered to another person. There is no shame in this and people won’t necessarily be judgmental for that, mostly because they would never know. For example, I said no to being the chorus conductor because it would require me to be at church five minutes early. My family has a hard enough time arriving earlier than ten minutes …show more content…
I could have sworn that people gasped and the air turned cold, but I also just don’t handle an overabundance of attention on myself. People all of a sudden grew very hostile of my presence at their church group. I had a couple of people tell me that I was going to hell and some even went far enough to prove this to me by showing me evidence from their scriptures. Weirdly enough, that was my last visit with this group. I wasn’t willing to place myself into a situation where people were going to bash on my
The Difficulties of Mormons and Gentiles Living Together The Mormons and the gentiles found it difficult to get along it was both the Mormons and gentiles fault. When large amounts of Mormons moved to a new settlement e.g. Illinois, the gentiles felt that they were going to take over and rule their area. The gentiles attacked the Mormons to show them who is boss. The Mormons didn't fight back but made a police unit, the Danites this protected the Mormons and tried to keep peace. The gentile's thought that this was an army and attacked the Mormons forcing them to go.
"We are a peculiar people," Elder Bruce R. McConkie once said (McConkie 25). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of a few "odd" Christian religions. Many of its practices have created much persecution and political reaction, polygamy being one of these. It created much social and political persecution of the Mormons. Most of this persecution came from anti-polygamist Christians.
A handsome boy kneels down for prayer beside a tree in his father’s orchard. It is a nice sunny spring day with the warm rays of the radiant sun gently kissing the boy’s face. “God, give me a sign,” he pleads to his heavenly father. He is only 14, yet religion fascinates him. Confused by what Christian faith to believe in, he was not sure whether he wanted to become a Baptist like his parents, or a Methodist, which church’s teachings appealed more to him. A slight cool breeze passes through his chestnut colored hair. In a moment he finds himself paralyzed, unable to move, at the mercy of some evil force. A shadowy mist surrounds him. The boy is afraid and does the only thing he could think of: he prayed, “God save me!” Immediately a pillar of light descends over his head like a crown of gold. A strange calmness overcomes the boy, and the shadows around him recede. To the boy, who questioned God’s existence, this was a sure sign that his heavenly father was still there. That boy was Joseph Smith, who had just experienced the first of a series of visions that he would receive throughout his faithful life. Soon after his first vision, he received another in which he the angel Moroni visited him, who presented him with a map. Smith traveled to a nearby hill where he found several golden tablets, etched with mysterious characters of ancient languages long forgotten. Smith was ordered by the angel to translate the plates into what is now known as the Book of Mormon (from which the Mormons gained their name), the cornerstone of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or simply abbreviated as the LDS Church. (Millet 6-8).
religious persecution from the rest of America, as they were unable to. lead normal lives in Central America. What is the non-Mormons attitude towards Polygamy? Polygamy (in a large proportion of American’s opinions) was seen to be. wrong in the eyes of God.
The church is a hierarchy that is lead by the priesthood. In order to receive the priesthood, one must be male. In The Proclamation, it says about men “By divine design fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families” (lds.org). The word preside means to have authority over something, in this case the family. Since the church is a similitude of the family, almost all the leaders are men. The only general leadership positions held by women are in the individual youth and children organization, and Relief Society, the leading women’s organization in the church. When The Proclamation talks about mothers its say “Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children” (lds.org).To many, this is a negative claim and sits as a point of opposition from feminist groups. Till this day, the gender roles of men and women continue to be debated in the Mormons church, and society.
Polygamy is not something many Americans are accustomed to. Western culture teaches that monogamy, as opposed to polygamy, is the proper, accepted form of marriage. Western culture places that morality into it's people, often from youth.
Polygamy is defined as “a marriage that includes more than two partners.” There are different types of polygamy, these include: polygyny, where a man has multiple wives, polyandry, in which a woman has multiple husbands, and group marriage, where a family consists of multiple husbands and wives. Of these different types of polygamy, polygyny is definitely the most popular of the three. In America, the practice of any form of polygamy is illegal and due to this law, many adherents of the lifestyle stay hidden ("What is Polygamy?"). Polygamy became an issue in the United States in the year 1852 when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS Church, made it so that plural marriage became a part of its religious doctrine. However, due to the storm of controversy that followed this movement, in 1890 the Mormon Church officially abandoned the practice. The Mormon’s who disagreed with the movement broke away from the Mormon Church and became known as Fundamentalist Mormons. Although the practice was almost unheard of in regions such as the Midwest, Northeast and South, in the Western portion of the United States, polygyny marriage is still prevalent. Those who are found to be practicing the belief are fined and sometimes are forced to split up with the rest of their families. For this reason many remain in the dark about their lifestyle, considering the severity of the consequences ("History of Fundamentalist Mormons"). However, recently many families have come out of hiding and proclaimed to the world that they are a practicing polygamist family, raising the question: is it right for the government to tell people who they can and cannot marry?
The Mormon population holds true to their unique religious beliefs. Most Mormons are similar to those who practice Christianity, however there are some differences. Over the past two centuries that Mormonism has been founded by Joseph Smith, this faith has expanded across the United States. Even though the faith has been powerful to many believers it is becoming less frequently practiced. This religion not only practices God and Jesus as separate people but also believes that God is seen in everyone. Since, Mormons are very religious and godlike we have to be competent to these differences when working with this population. There is very little information about how to perform Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a child that is practicing
While polygamy is illegal in America, there are roughly 30,000 to 50,000 people who live in polygamous families. According to an article in the International Business Times, about “forty thousand people in America are self-described Mormon fundamentalist who practice plural marriage and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints remains the largest organized fundamentalist group in the world.” Jeffs grew up in a religious community known as FLDS, a radical branch from Mormonism, but it is not recognized within the mainstream Mormon Church....
Polygamy is considered illegal in the United States, which would make it a deviant practice. That fact is on the bottom burner for me when considering this situation. Forcing someone to theoretically spend the rest of their life with someone not of their choosing is definitely out of the norm in my opinion. On to...
Polyamory, like polygamy, refers to the state of conducting multiple romantic relationships at once; however, there are many distinctions between the terms. The most blatant difference is that polygamy specifies the participants are all married to each other, whereas polyamory encompasses a spectrum of relationships ranging from casual to committed. Furthermore, polygamy has its roots in religious and highly patriarchal systems, such as the Abrahamic faiths or the notorious Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Quite distinctly, the lifestyle we now know as polyamory grew out of the hippies’ free love movement in the 1960s, with considerably different values. In its modern form, it is a secular alternative lifestyle that is gradually gaining in popularity. It is estimated that there are over half a million openly polyamorous families in the United States alone.
A is incorrect. It was impossible for Shakers to have practiced complex marriage due to their practice of celibacy, which made them abstain from marriage (The Shakers).
“Polygamy is defined as a marriage in which a spouse of either gender has more than one mate at the same time. Polygamy is considered a valid form of marriage in many countries and communities around the globe” (Al-Krenawi). However, polygamy is illegal in the United States. Those who practice polygamy in America can only be “legally” married to one spouse; therefore, the subsequent spouses in a polygamist relationship hold a “singl...
Polygamy should be legalized because it’s natural and it promotes individual freedoms. People should have the right to marry who ever they want and to how many people they want. Marriage is a factitious concept and not practice within nature. So, it shouldn't be forced into human civilization and be regulated by the
The people there were all extremely nice and would try to help me understand. They understood and accepted the fact that I wasn’t religious, but was showing interest in their faith. There were not as much people there as I had expected, but that might have been because it was a smaller church. It also wasn’t as racially diverse as I had expected. I thought that because it is the world’s biggest religion, that it