Plural marriage: From an exaltation requirement to grounds for membership withdrawal
A practice described by senior Church leaders as revealed by God and necessary for the highest exaltation is now prohibited as contrary to God’s law. The current General Handbook requires both a membership council and withdrawal of membership when a person knowingly enters plural marriage.
The short answer
Was plural marriage taught as a religious obligation tied to exaltation?
Yes. Brigham Young said “the only men who become Gods” are those who “enter into polygamy.” Joseph F. Smith testified that every man able to practice it who refused “shall be damned.” Both men set the requirement for men with the ability and opportunity, not for every member at once.
The defining contrast
Required for the highest glory. Required grounds for withdrawal.
The change is not merely from legal to illegal. It is a reversal in religious consequence: conduct nineteenth-century leaders connected to divine command and the highest blessings now brings the Church’s most serious membership action.
“The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory.”Journal of Discourses 11:269
“A membership council is required if a person knowingly enters into a plural marriage.” It then states: “Withdrawing a person’s Church membership is required if a person knowingly enters into plural marriage.”General Handbook § 32.6.1.2
What this establishesYoung’s full paragraph supplies an important qualification: members had to submit to the order at least “in [their] faith.” It makes acceptance of the principle—and, for those to whom the blessing was offered, participation—part of attaining the highest celestial status.
The revealed principle
Section 132 contains eternal marriage and plural marriage
Section 132 is still printed in the Doctrine and Covenants. It opens with a question about the patriarchs’ “many wives and concubines,” threatens damnation for rejecting “a new and an everlasting covenant,” and gives specific rules for taking additional wives. The Church publicly announced plural marriage in 1852; the 1843 revelation is its claimed authority.
Multiple wives are an express subject
The revelation opens with Joseph Smith’s question about the biblical patriarchs having “many wives and concubines.” It says God commanded Abraham to receive Hagar and describes the wives and concubines received by Abraham and other patriarchs as authorized by command.
The Church’s Gospel Topics essay says God commanded Joseph Smith to institute plural marriage and identifies the practice as one ancient principle restored through him.
Eternal sealing is broader than plurality
Verses 19–20 promise exaltation and godhood to a man and a wife sealed by priesthood authority who abide the covenant. Later verses separately address additional wives, including a man espousing “another” and then “the second.” The text therefore joins eternal and plural marriage within one revelation without making every eternal marriage plural.
Monogamous sealings can satisfy the eternal-marriage portion. The plural-marriage provisions remain part of the same revelation and are still canonized.
Damnation, “ten virgins,” and a wife “destroyed”
- Verse 4: “if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory.”
- Verse 62: “if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him.”
- Verse 54, addressed to Joseph Smith’s wife: “if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord.”
- Verse 64: a wife taught “the law of my priesthood” must “believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed.”
These verses are printed in the current Doctrine and Covenants without amendment. A member who acted on them today would lose Church membership.
Practiced privately, denied publicly
“One man should have one wife”
While Joseph Smith was marrying plural wives, the Church’s published scripture denied polygamy, and Smith publicly denied having more than one wife. The Church’s current essay now gives the number of his wives as between 30 and 40.
“Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death.”1835 Doctrine and Covenants, p. 251 ↗
The rumors “prompted members and leaders to issuecarefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated ‘celestial’ plural marriage.”Official essay ↗
What the essay acknowledgesJoseph Smith “was sealed to a number of women who were already married”; the youngest, Helen Mar Kimball, was sealed to him “several months before her 15th birthday”; and Emma Smith “likely did not know about all of Joseph’s sealings.” The 1835 one-wife article stayed in the Doctrine and Covenants until the 1876 edition, when section 132 was added. Smith’s May 1844 remark is preserved in Thomas Bullock’s report of the discourse. Read the 1844 report ↗
What leaders said was at stake
Practice, capacity, belief, and salvation
These statements are preserved in contemporaneously published sermon reports, not audio recordings or canonized texts. Their contexts differ, but each places plural marriage within the categories of revelation, obedience, salvation, exaltation, or continued fidelity to the religion.
Brigham Young: at least “polygamists” in faith
Immediately before the defining sentence, Young told listeners that to receive Abraham’s blessings they would be “polygamists at least in your faith.” He criticized those who hoped to remain in the Church without obeying, believing, or submitting to the order because public office might become available.
The immediate minimum is acceptance in faith, not universal immediate practice. Yet Young’s next sentence says only those who “enter into polygamy” become Gods and explains the loss as refusing an offered blessing. The printed report supports both parts of that reading.
Joseph F. Smith: ability and opportunity mattered
Smith said a faithful man with one wife could receive the reward belonging to eternal marriage, but not the “benefits, blessings and power” of the “second or more faithful and fuller observance.” He then stated:
“I understand the law of celestial marriage to mean that every man in this Church, who has the ability to obey and practice it in righteousness and will not, shall be damned, I say I understand it to mean this and nothing less, and I testify in the name of Jesus that it does mean that.”
Smith placed those without understanding or capacity outside the law and left their judgment to God. For the qualified, however, he called the law binding and said it could not be disregarded “with impunity.”
Ending the practice meant giving up the religion
Woodruff said that doing away with polygamy would be only “one feather in the bird, one ordinance in the Church and kingdom.” He continued: “Do away with that, then we must do away with prophets and Apostles, with revelation and the gifts and graces of the Gospel, and finally give up our religion altogether.”
Woodruff tied the practice to the revelatory system itself. Twenty-one years later he issued the Manifesto beginning the institutional retreat from new plural marriages.
Opposition was treated as opposition to Mormonism
Kimball, first counselor in the First Presidency, said: “You might as well deny ‘Mormonism,’ and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives.” He added that if the First Presidency, Twelve, and other authorities united against the doctrine, “the whole of them would be damned.”
This statement does not define who had to practice. It shows that a senior leader categorized opposition to the doctrine as opposition to the religion and its revealed principles.
What changed
The end was a process, not a date
The Church’s own historical essay describes legal pressure, revelation, continued cohabitation, post-Manifesto marriages, and a later enforcement rule. September 1890 is essential, but it was not an immediate clean break.
- Federal law and institutional pressure
Legislation, imprisonment, and property confiscation
Official history of the legal campaignCongress outlawed plural marriage and later unlawful cohabitation. The Supreme Court rejected the Church’s free-exercise defense and upheld legislation that exposed Church property to confiscation. Leaders and plural families faced hiding, prosecution, imprisonment, and threats to temples and ordinances.
- Official Declaration 1
Woodruff declared an intention to submit to the law
“My advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.”
Official Declaration 1The Church accepted the declaration as authoritative and binding on October 6. Woodruff later said revelation showed him that continuing would cost the Church its temples, ordinances, leaders’ liberty, and property.
- Incomplete transition
Old families continued; some new marriages followed
Church essay on post-Manifesto marriagesExisting plural families often continued cohabiting. The official essay says new plural marriages continued quietly in Mexico and Canada and, in exceptional cases, in the United States. It identifies 25 plural marriages in one incomplete ledger and says some post-Manifesto marriages required approval from a member of the First Presidency.
- Joseph F. Smith’s official statement
New plural marriages became an excommunicable offense
Anyone solemnizing or entering such a marriage would be “liable to be dealt with … and excommunicated therefrom.”
April 1904 Conference Report, p. 75The conference unanimously approved Smith’s statement. The Church essay calls it a watershed: the 1890 Manifesto had said members need not enter plural marriage; the 1904 action made entry prohibitory and attached an ecclesiastical penalty.
- Present position
Against God’s law and incompatible with membership
“The practice of plural marriage should be discontinued, which means that it is now against the law of God.”
Gordon B. Hinckley, October 1998Hinckley said practicing members were excommunicated and that the Church required monogamy even where civil or religious law permitted polygamy. The current handbook uses the term “withdrawal of Church membership” and makes that result mandatory when a person knowingly enters plural marriage.
The institutional explanation
A command for one period, revelation to end it
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says monogamy is God’s standing rule unless God declares otherwise. In its account, God commanded Joseph Smith to institute plural marriage for a limited historical period, and participants understood themselves to be obeying a divine command.
The Church says Woodruff then received revelation about the consequences of continuing under federal pressure. Official Declaration 1 began a return to monogamy while preserving existing family obligations; the Church’s essay describes the transition as gradual and the scope of the Manifesto as initially contested.
The Church categorizes both the introduction and the ending of plural marriage as revelation. It does not retract the earlier claim that God commanded the practice.
What the explanation does not resolve
Authority, permanence, and safe reliance
Calling both directions revelation classifies the reversal; it does not explain why a practice described as essential to godhood could be withdrawn under legal pressure.
Religious consequence
The reversal moved beyond civil compliance. A practice linked to exaltation and salvation is now called contrary to God’s law and requires membership withdrawal.
Prophetic category
Woodruff had said ending polygamy entailed giving up prophets, apostles, revelation, and the religion. He later became the prophet who formally began ending it.
Timing
If the 1890 direction ended the command, the continued approval or performance of some new marriages afterward still requires historical explanation. The Church describes the transition as gradual and uneven.
Reliance
If categorical salvific teaching can become prohibited conduct, readers must decide what confidence members can place in a prophet’s forceful declaration as enduring truth.
Measured conclusionA member entering plural marriage today would face mandatory withdrawal of membership for conduct earlier leaders connected to obedience and exaltation.
What did not change
The canon and sealing questions remain
Present prohibition does not mean every theological element of plural marriage has been removed. The continuities complicate the history without erasing the reversal in mortal practice and membership consequence.
Section 132 remains scripture
Doctrine and Covenants 132 remains canonized with its plural- marriage provisions. The Church’s current essay says one man and one woman is God’s standard “unless He declares otherwise.” The Church therefore has not taught that God could never again authorize plural marriage.
The present rule changes authorization, practice, and membership consequence. It does not declare the nineteenth- century revelation fraudulent or remove it from scripture.
A widower may be sealed again
If a sealed wife dies, the handbook permits her living husband to be sealed to another woman who is not already sealed to another man. A sealed widow may not be sealed to another man during her lifetime without cancellation of the first sealing.
A living man may be sealed for eternity to a second wife after his first wife dies. “A living woman may be sealed to only one husband at a time.” The Church says the nature of those relationships after death is unknown, but its policy still allows a living man to be sealed to more than one wife.
New Testament context
Recorded in the Old Testament, never commanded for exaltation
The Old Testament records polygamy among patriarchs and kings and records its harm. It never presents plural marriage as a condition of God’s highest blessing. Jesus and Paul ground marriage in the union of two. Latter-day Saint scripture itself gives contradictory verdicts on the same biblical polygamists. Quotations below use the English Standard Version.
Matthew 19:4–6; Ephesians 5:31–32
Jesus and Paul return to creation
“The two shall become one flesh.”
Asked about divorce, Jesus answers from Genesis: God made them “male and female” and “the two” become one flesh. Paul uses the same one-flesh union of two as the image of Christ and the Church—one bridegroom, one bride.
Matthew 19:4–6; Ephesians 5:31–32, ESV ↗1 Corinthians 7:2–4
Reciprocal, exclusive marriage
“Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”
Paul’s counsel is symmetrical: the wife has authority over her husband’s body as he has over hers. Section 132 gives a husband “ten virgins” and threatens a wife who will not accept them with destruction.
1 Corinthians 7:1–5, ESV ↗Deuteronomy 17:17; 1 Kings 11:3–4
Israel’s king was told not to multiply wives
“He shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away.”
The law of the king forbids accumulating wives. First Kings then reports that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines and that “his wives turned away his heart after other gods.” The narrative treats his polygamy as a cause of his fall, not as obedience to a higher law.
Deuteronomy 17:17; 1 Kings 11:1–6, ESV ↗Jacob 2:24 · D&C 132:38–39
Two Latter-day Saint verdicts on David and Solomon
“David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.”
The Book of Mormon (1830) calls their plural marriages abominable and commands “there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife.” Section 132 (1843) says “David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me” and that Solomon “in nothing” sinned except in what he did not receive from God. The Book of Mormon allows one exception—God may command it to “raise up seed”—but it calls David and Solomon’s practice abominable, not commanded.
Jacob 2:23–30 ↗Matthew 22:30 adds a further disagreement: Jesus says that in the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Latter-day Saints distinguish mortal marriage from eternally effective sealings; historic Christian traditions read the verse as excluding marriage in the resurrection. Section 132 makes eternal marriage—including plural marriage—the condition of exaltation.
Finding
The authorized conduct and its ecclesiastical consequence reversed
Doctrine and Covenants 132 presents plural marriage within a revelation attributed to God. Brigham Young connected accepting and entering the order to Abraham’s glory and becoming Gods; Joseph F. Smith said qualified men who refused to practice would be damned and lose the fuller blessings. Woodruff and Kimball connected rejection of the principle to rejection of revelation or Mormonism.
While Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage, the Church’s published scripture said “one man should have one wife,” and he publicly denied having more than one. The Church’s essay now calls those statements “carefully worded denials.”
The Church now requires monogamy in mortal marriage, calls plural marriage contrary to God’s law, and requires withdrawal of Church membership when a person knowingly enters it. Yet Section 132, with its damnation clause, “ten virgins,” and threats against wives, remains canonized, and a living man may still be sealed to more than one wife.
Sources and limitations
Read the record
The central nineteenth-century quotations were checked against BYU’s page scans. Official Church scripture, history, conference, and handbook pages supply the current position and the Church’s explanation of the transition.
The Journal of Discourses is a set of stenographic publications, not a canonized standard work or verbatim audio record. The Church says it was sometimes transcribed inaccurately and is not by itself authoritative doctrine. The quotations here were checked against the complete relevant page scans and their surrounding arguments; this audit did not establish publicly accessible original shorthand transcripts for these four sermons. Their evidentiary value lies in contemporaneous publication, multiple senior speakers, extended contextual reasoning, and agreement with canonized and official records—not in treating every printed sentence as infallible. The precise number and authorization path of post-1890 plural marriages remains uncertain; the article uses the Church essay’s limited ledger figures and preserves that uncertainty.