Joseph Smith, the acknowledged founder of the Mormon church also known as The Church of Latter Day Saints, was seen as a man that was loyal to his wife, Emma. That was until now, because Mormon church members have spilled the beans about the true nature of the Founder. According to the church members, Joseph Smith had taken up to 40 wives in his lifetime. Some of the women in his circle were already married and one of them was only 14 years old.
Up until the Mormon church decided that it would embrace transparency and openly talk about the history of the church, people believed that Joseph Mormon was now polygamous, even though his successor, Brigham Young pointed towards the contrary. For the past 2 years, the Mormon church has been continuously publishing essays about the history of the church. Faced with trouble on the internet, actually, the Mormon Church realized that their organization should get ahead of the rumors and come clean about their past. With this in mind, scholars in the service of Mormons were asked to write essays about the history of the Mormons. In consequence, in the 12 essays the Mormon church has already published on their website, we learn about Joseph Smith, the founder of the church and of his unruly practices. In the essays, scholars discuss the priesthood of women, the Mountain Meadows massacre, plural marriage, the ban on blacks in priesthood and the wives of founder Joseph Smith.
From the Mormon essays we learn that Joseph Smith used to take his friend’s wives, underage girls and as many as 40 wives in total during his lifetime. They also state that the founder didn’t engage in sexual activity with all his wives, since many of them were “sealed” to him only for the next life. Nonetheless, the founder was polygamous indeed and his wife Emma supposedly wasn’t very happy about that. Nonetheless, the Mormon church thinks that members of the church as well as any other peers interested have the right to know about the history of the church. The church’s new found transparency beams a positive reflection on it and people, including journalists, are showing appreciation towards the honesty with which the Mormon church acknowledged troubling events of its past. The church emphasized the fact that future generations need to know the truth about their church and understand their history. “We need to be truthful, and we need to understand our history, I believe our history is full of stories of faith and devotion and sacrifice, but these people weren’t perfect.” – said elder Steven E Snow, the church historian and member of its leadership.