I am Ryan McKnight. I'm Kara Santa Maria. I am Christopher Smith. Hi, I'm Andrew Torres. This is Naked Mormonism. The Serial Mormon History podcast. We tried to deal with issues on this podcast chronotopically. It's a term, I don't know if I coined it or not.

I would love to take credit for it, but it's basically a serialized history and we progress chronologically,

but episode to episode tends to focus on singular topics. It's a balance to kind of keep things

simple and comprehensible, but also means that a little

context is lost as we shift from topic to topic within the chronological timeline.

An issue which constantly plagued Navu Mormonism was polygamy.

We can't ignore or forget how much drama and tension was created by practicing polygamy

among the highest-ranking Mormon elites while

they were trying to keep outsiders from knowing too much. Rumors of polygamy would inevitably

result while the practice was spreading. For the leadership on the inside, those rumors could be

useful if they were kept in check. You see, it's much easier to approach a prospective polygynous wife

with a proposal if she's already heard that celestial marriage is going on. This was her ticket to the

new and everlasting covenant of marriage, the highest circle of Mormon ascendancy, both in this life

and the afterlife. Once you're on the inside of this select circle,

you're guaranteed exaltation and your own planet with your new husband. In these cases, allowing

rumors of polygamy to propagate helped the practice grow, and it prepped people to accept this

new model of families. However, the negative consequences couldn't be separated from the positive.

This Victorian era of American history balked at the idea of adultery or any kind of relationship

outside the standard one-man, one-woman model of a nuclear family. Contradicting those

societal norms came with differing

levels of conflict and accusations of polygamy, and those were a constant thread in the church.

But it wasn't just the Navu church. As we've discussed on the show before, Joe was accused of adultery

...