Church History

Many LDS women and men experience pain and anguish because of fears regarding future eternal relationships. This is understandable as there has been little official discourse on how plural marriage ordinances, which are still performed in our temples when a spouse is deceased, or sealing cancellations, granted or not, will practically affect our relationships with our spouses (and possibly ex-spouses) and children in the eternities.

The blessings of eternal marriage and family relationships dominates LDS Church discourse, but uncertainty abounds regarding the specifics of how these will look and function in a future full of unknowns rather than absolutes. The pain this vacuum of teachings has caused is what Carol Lynn Pearson hopes to describe and exorcise in The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy.

As one of Mormonism’s self-described “wise-woman elders,” Carol Lynn Pearson promises that she will help make things “right.” Her calming words may be comforting to readers who could use an empathetic guide through the sometimes muddy, messy quagmire ambiguities in our theology about polygamy.

The book is a skillfully crafted vehicle to convey a particular message by weaving specific stories, arguments, and observations together to win the hearts and minds of its audience. Pearson is an accomplished poet, memoirist, playwright, and reporter. And when she uses these skills, she draws readers in. The path she lays seems simple, rational, and traversable.

When the author navigates into the unfamiliar territory of nineteenth-century history and speculative theology, readers might consider pausing and critically evaluating her assessments. By misrepresenting history and positing projected doctrine, Pearson plants seeds of unnecessary fear and resentment rather than paving a path for open dialog and hoped-for changes.

The Message

Pearson describes polygamy as “Joseph’s extravagant reinvention of marriage.” “I am,” the author explains, “personally persuaded that The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy exists today from error, that plural marriage never was—is not now—and never will be ordained of God.”

To support and justify this reaction, seven objections to polygamy are repeatedly mentioned and explored throughout the text. Of these, two state obvious problems with the earthly practice of plural marriage between the 1840s and 1890, and two more are associated with current LDS Church policies:

1. The history of the establishment of polygamy by Joseph Smith is messy.
2. Earthly polygamy is unfair to women.
3. Widows who have been sealed to their deceased husbands are treated differently than widowers who were sealed to their deceased wives.
4. Cancellations of sealings have not always paralleled individual desires or legal marital decrees.

If these were the only complaints listed, then it is likely that most readers could find much to disagree about with the author. However, three additional concerns seem to dominate the discussion:

1. Polygamy is required in the celestial kingdom.
2. Child-to-parent sealings may be unfair in eternity.
3. Eternal polygamy would be undesirable to all women.

The common theme intrinsic to these last three complaints is that they make assumptions regarding the unknown dynamics of eternity.

Polygamy is required in the celestial kingdom

No presiding Church leader has ever declared that plural marriage is required for exaltation for all people irrespective of when and where they lived on earth. The belief that every man will be required to practice polygamy in the future or that every woman will have to share her husband in eternity is not only doctrinally unsupported but also mathematically perplexing. It is not—and never has been—a doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Child-to-Parent Sealings may be Unfair in Eternity

Peterson repeatedly expresses concern involving child-to-parent sealings and how those could result in eternal injustice: “Children who are born into a marriage between a sealed widow and a new husband, though these children are raised by their biological father, are understood to be destined to live eternally in the spiritual kingdom of a man they have never known.” This declaration speaks of doctrines that “are understood”; however, they are not. Neither are we told what the “spiritual kingdom” represents or exactly how the described arrangement is an eternal problem.

Many members are confused regarding the dynamics of eternal families. It is true that we sing: “Families can be together forever, in Heavenly Father’s plan.” What is less known is that the “togetherness” of the husband and wife in eternity is different from the “togetherness” of children and their mortal parents in that realm.

A husband and wife who are sealed by proper authority and live worthily become an eternal couple who can be like our Heavenly Parents, together forever, in eternity. As a resurrected exalted couple, they are promised a “continuation of the seeds” (D&C 132:19) or spirit offspring in the eternities. Those spirit offspring can progress to become exalted couples who can thereafter have spirit offspring. The process creates endless generations of exalted parents and children who can “be together forever” as part of “Heavenly Father’s plan.”

Today, Primary children may sing “Families Can Be Together Forever” with full expectation that if the children experience a nuclear family arrangement in their homes, it could somehow exist in heaven with mortal parents ruling over their offspring. The eternal reality, however, is that the children are more aptly singing about premortal family associations that they have forgotten—each living as “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.”

Part of the value of understanding the expanded “families are forever” dynamic (so that it includes our eternal family) is that it gives place for so many who do not now live in a nuclear family and might never have such an opportunity in mortality. Children of divorce, single parent families, gay and lesbian Church members, can take comfort in this forever family concept.

Questions regarding the relationships of mortal parents and their sealed children in the next life have existed for over a century. The confusion apparently traces back to the early days of the Church. Joseph Smith encouraged parents and children to be sealed to one another, but did not provide many details concerning the eternal ramifications of those sealings. Brigham Young commented, “The ordinance of sealing must be performed here … woman to man, and children to parents, etc., until the chain of generation is made perfect in the sealing ordinances back to father Adam.”

Without question, being part of the chain back to Adam is important. Less clear is what happens to specific sealed child-to-parent relationships in the chain after we die. Some early members and leaders evidently believed that earthly familial relationships in the chain would govern our relationships in heaven.

Two ideas soon popped up that cannot be traced to Joseph Smith. A few early Saints assumed that the more wives or offspring they had, either biologically or through adoption ordinances, the greater would be their eternal glory. Another problem involved thinking that being sealed to Joseph Smith or another leader would give them an eternal advantage over being sealed to their biological parents.

After the resurrection, where physical age differences do not seem to exist, we’ll rejoin our heavenly family and Heavenly Parents. Brigham Young explained:

When the resurrection takes place and we are glorified and perfected we shall find we are all brothers and sisters of one parentage. Why we now govern our children is because we are fallen, and the Lord Almighty put that affection on us so that they might cling to the earth and we to our children. … Every man and woman will find they are brothers and sisters, connected as much as father and son is.

As resurrected beings, memories of the ages and eons of pre-mortality will be joined by the remembrances of the decades we spent on earth. Mortal experiences will never be forgotten and gratitude will always be felt to those spirits who served us in mortality. Precisely how the relationships in the chain will continue to affect us in eternity, if they affect us at all, has not been revealed.

Joseph Smith taught that regarding exalted beings, “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory” (D&C 130:2). We are promised that in that realm we’ll be with our loved ones including our righteous parents and children, even if we do not now understand the details.

We know our positions as children in God’s heavenly family are eternal, and we know we must be sealed as part of the genealogical chain back to Adam. It also appears that our precise position in that chain is less important, and perhaps unimportant, in the eternities where exalted beings resume their position as sons and daughters of Heavenly Parents and progress to fulfill their “divine nature and destiny.”

The worries expressed about children born in the covenant to a father they did not know simply create fears that are unjustified. It is true that if a divorced woman who was sealed to her former husband remarries, the children of her later marriage are born in the covenant of the first marriage. Being born in the covenant entitles children to an eternal parentage, depending on their faithfulness. This does not necessarily mean that specific child-to-parent sealings on earth combine to create distinct, eternal “spiritual kingdoms.”

Eternal Polygamy Would Be Undesirable for All Women

It is clear that early polygamists believed that polygamy in some form would exist in the celestial kingdom. Joseph’s revelations declare that sealings performed by proper authority, whether monogamous or polygamous, would persist after death (D&C 132:19).

We do not know the dynamics of eternal marriage, and we know even less about the dynamics of eternal plural marriage. Any fears associated with eternal polygamy are based upon assumptions that we cannot test for validity. To fear eternal polygamy is to fear future circumstances that we cannot accurately describe or even know to exist.

So the fears (and ghosts) of eternal polygamy are fears of the unknown, or xenophobia. In some ways these fears are manifestations of doubt that God is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).

Pearson advances the idea that women will be forever victimized by eternal polygamy. Overall, the logic involves circular reasoning because it is not based upon verifiable truths but rather assumptions that build upon each other.

This line of reasoning undermines the thesis of the book. If God never does or never did condone polygamy, then polygamy will be a non-issue in the eternities.

Opportunity Lost

Instead of fear and victimization, what alternate messages might have been a more effective focus? Pearson’s discussion of eternal polygamy could have reached higher, stretched wider, and delved deeper as it sought to depict and understand everlasting ramifications. The discussion need not have ignored the frustrations earthly polygamy has wrought. Neither would it have been necessary to don rose-colored glasses when reviewing the behavior of nineteenth-century polygamists.

Instead of focusing upon what we don’t know and speculating on offenses that may or may not be real, the book might have pointed out what we do know. God’s plan is a “great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8, 16) and not a plan of eternal coercion or endless submission and suffering. Specific fears about relationships in the next life could be contextualized within promises that exalted beings “shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isa. 35:10).

Brigham Young emphasized the importance of agency in choosing our eternal mates: “If a woman is sealed to me and she wants to be divorced, she has a right to and I am under no obligation. Is not that agency all round? We have the privilege of being sealed or released.”

According to modern revelation, we can presume that during the millennium communication between the spirit world and temples on earth will be greatly facilitated allowing both releasings and proxy sealings, so every worthy being is happy with their eternal marital situation (and, I believe, regarding the question of whether or not to participate in any eternal matrimonial arrangement).

Is it possible that a wife, even a plural wife, could feel abused if she attains this celestial glory? President Henry B. Eyring addressed this concern:

A prophet of God once offered me counsel that gives me peace. I was worried that the choices of others might make it impossible for our family to be together forever. He said, “You are worrying about the wrong problem. You just live worthy of the celestial kingdom, and the family arrangements will be more wonderful than you can imagine.

To all of those whose personal experience or whose marriage and children—or absence thereof—cast a shadow over their hopes, I offer my witness: Heavenly Father knows and loves you as His spirit child. While you were with Him and His Beloved Son before this life, They placed in your heart the hope you have of eternal life. With the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ working and with the Holy Spirit guiding, you can feel now and will feel in the world to come the family love your Father and His Beloved Son want so much for you to receive.

Pearson has opened the door to a discussion about things that have likely haunted some LDS women since the 1840s when plural marriage was first introduced. Through further discussion, comforting clarity where clarity is possible, might be shared. Where details remain unknown, we can seek faith to trust a loving God and His promises to each one of us.

Part of this article was previously published in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.