SALT LAKE CITY – Wilford Woodruff dropped to his knees in prayer. It was September 1890 and the federal government was threatening to seize church property and prosecute Mormons unless they stopped plural marriage.
Woodruff, a polygamist and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had a revelation and declared a manifesto: The faithful were to obey federal law and cease the practice.
It was read at the church’s fall conference and approved unanimously. The vote, Woodruff noted in his diary, “created a sensation throughout the whole United States.”
No manifestos were on the agenda last weekend when 100,000 Mormons gathered for their twice-a-year General Conference in Salt Lake City. Millions more worldwide watched broadcasts in 85 languages.
But polygamy continues to make headlines, and the church can’t seem to shake perceptions that it endorses the practice, no matter what happened 116 years ago.
Since 2001, several self-described Mormon fundamentalists have been charged with crimes tied to polygamy.
The latest and most prominent is Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who is jailed in southern Utah on charges of being an accomplice to rape by arranging the marriage of a minor to an older man.
“Almost 10 years ago or so, literally, it was not a big deal,” said Jan Shipps, professor emeritus of history and religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, who has written about Mormons.
“Now it has suddenly emerged into the public domain and (the church) has to find a way to talk about it again,” she said.
The issue is “really aggravating” to the church, said D. Michael Quinn, former history professor at church-owned Brigham Young University.
“The fact remains that these people who have extra wives call themselves Mormon. They believe in the Book of Mormon,” he said. “So it’s inevitable that this linkage is going to be there.”
The roughly 10,000 members of Jeffs’ sect, who mostly live along the Utah-Arizona border, are among an estimated 37,000 fundamentalists in Western states who believe plural marriage is essential for their exaltation in heaven. Jeffs is said to have more than 40 wives.
Many fundamentalists claim Mormon church founder Joseph Smith as their original prophet and use the Book of Mormon as the cornerstone of their faith.
Mormon officials, however, say even a few shared traits don’t put the fundamentalists in the same category as members of the Salt Lake City-based church. “Warren Jeffs is not a Mormon,” the church’s Web site declares.
“Catholics, Protestants, Methodists, Jehovah Witnesses, Lutherans, evangelicals and a host of other faiths believe in Jesus and claim the Bible as their own, yet all consider themselves separate and distinct faiths,” said Kim Farah, a Mormon church spokeswoman.
“The same is true for all religious groups who believe in Joseph Smith and use the Book of Mormon.”
Retired BYU history professor Thomas Alexander, a Woodruff biographer, said there’s nothing Mormons can do about how others identify themselves.
“The only thing we can try to do is differentiate ourselves, and that’s extremely difficult to do,” he said.
It’s difficult because polygamy didn’t quickly end with Woodruff’s manifesto in 1890, scholars say.
In fact, the practice continued secretly among some Mormons into the 20th century. When exposed in 1904, the manifesto was restated and the church began excommunicating members who violated it.
Nonetheless, polygamy has not been removed from the church’s Doctrine and Covenants, which describe Mormonism’s bedrock tenets.
Mormons believe in continuing revelations, meaning church doctrine can change. Woodruff’s manifesto, Farah notes, came long after original doctrine was written.
“Asking why the church does not still believe in polygamy because it appears in its scriptures is like asking Christians to explain why they discontinued stoning people for adultery,” the church spokeswoman said.
“It appears in the scriptures but has been superseded by later revelation,” she said.
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