The above is a line from an LDS Hymn, just so you know…

A follow up to my previous post: I continued my new wave of research into polygamy and Mormon church history for the remainder of this week, but didn’t really learn any new information beyond the first couple of days. A lot of the things I learned should really make me angry, but strangely enough, it doesn’t. I mean, yeah it’s fucked up stuff. But I look at it now and think, “Ok, it’s fucked up, so I don’t have to worry about it or fear that my soul is in mortal peril if I can’t accept it.” It just doesn’t matter. I was going to give some example of the things I’ve learned but I just don’t even feel the need to go into all of it, plus all that hyper-linking is a lot of work. If anyone really wants to know, write a comment and I’ll send you some links.


Well, I will include one interesting thing I found. An autobiographical sketch of William Morely Black, my great-great grandfather who I mentioned previously, has been put online by one of his (doubtless) thousands of descendents. I think I’ve read it before. There is a probably a copy of this somewhere in my mother’s genealogical files. In any case, I heard the story numerous times when I was growing up. Briefly, William Black was a sheriff in Illinois in the 1840s, but left his job to go to California to look for gold. Their wagon train stopped in Salt Lake City on the way, and William was so impressed by the Mormons he determined to become one of them. He stayed in Utah, while the prospecting team went to California without him. He later accepted the doctrine of plural marriage and eventually had six wives. His autobiography contains the following quote near the end:

“I know that God lives, and that Joseph Smith was and is a true prophet and I know that his life's labors were approved by the Father, and Joseph has received a crown of glory as a reward for his faithfulness…
…Feeling grateful to my Heavenly Father for his leading me to a knowledge of the Gospel of his Son which had brought to me an ordination to the patriarchal priesthood and by it I have received the blessings of wives and a numerous posterity…I am humbly proud and thankful for these blessings.”

Just when I feel I’m so over the LDS church, I go and read something like that, and feel the deep sincerity and humility of his testimony, and realize I can’t dismiss it all so easily. The church’s history after all, is my history, in a very literal sense. Nominally I am still a member, although I’m pretty certain I will never be an active church member again and many times have felt I should either withdraw my membership, or put myself up for excommunication. I can never quite make that leap however.

Needless to say perhaps, the church and my feelings about it is a complex issue. So ironically, even after my week of new discoveries, I have ended up at more or less the same place I started. In other words, not knowing what to think about The Church and my relationship to it, I will simply choose not to.

* * *

I think I needed to have this experience this week. Unfortunately, it means I have done nothing on my coursework for several days now. I’m still ahead of the game, but much less so now. As long as I submit my assignment by April first I’ll still be in good shape. Besides the transcription exercise, I have to write a 750 word essay discussing “the importance of phonological rules,” and give three examples. All I can think of is something like, “Phonological rules are um, important, ‘cause like, without them, we wouldn’t um, know how to like, stay stuff? And stuff like that?” Think the professor will accept that? Me neither.

Polygamists incarcerated after passage of the Edmunds-Tucker act. According to the University
Of Utah digital collections, William Morely Black is the one on the right, with a white beard.