The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo
Gospel Topics Essays
The Church’s own essay states that Joseph was sealed to about 30–40 women; that the youngest were 14 (Helen Mar Kimball) and 16; and that some wives were already married to other men (often called polyandry). It also states that some of those sealings were for eternity only, that Helen continued to live with her parents, and that later Saints remembered dynastic covenant more than a household of teenage brides. None of that makes 14 comfortable in 2026. It does mean the X version — Joseph as a secret predator collecting children and stealing wives — is not Helen’s testimony, not the essay, and not the practice the Church later ended by revelation.
Latter-day Saints believe that plural marriage was authorized, regulated, and when the Lord directed, ended by revelation.
- Helen Mar Kimball later wrote that the sealing was a sacrifice her father Heber asked, that she did not at first understand it, and that she came to testify of Joseph as a prophet. Read her, not a meme.
- Eternity-only sealings to already-married women (Zina D. H. Young and others) are not the same thing as Joseph moving in and replacing a husband. Several of those husbands remained in the marriage and in the Church.
- Age of marriage in the 1840s United States was younger than today; 14 was still young, which is why even sympathetic historians flag it. Honesty is not the same as the accusation.
- The Church does not practice this. Official Declaration 1 is the current commandment. Using a withdrawn Abrahamic trial as if it were today’s handbook is bad faith.
- Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David are in the Bible the critics carry. If polygamy by itself makes a prophet false, their Old Testament is a museum of false prophets.