User:Hydrangeans/draft of D&C 132

Doctrine and Covenants section 132, also called the 1843 revelation, the revelation on celestial marriage, the plural marriage revelation, D&C 132, or section 132, is a section of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants (D&C). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) regards the D&C as scripture, and the denomination canonized D&C 132 in 1876. The section has been included in each edition of its D&C ever since. The text now known as D&C 132 was first penned on July 12, 1843. Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (sometimes also called Mormonism) and president of the Church of Christ (by that time renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), dictated the text, and Wlliam Clayton scribed it.

Smith's followers at the time considered him a prophet who dictated revelations understood to be as if from the voice of God. The text of D&C 132 is given from such a first-person point of view, as if it is God speaking.

Background
As founder of Latter Day Saint movement, or Mormonism, and the Church of Christ (renamed in 1838 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), Smith and his followers believed that he was a prophet of the Christian God who acted as God's representative and mouthpiece according to divine inspiration. Smith often promulgated teachings by dictating what he and his followers accepted as revelations from God, generally phrased in the first-person from the perspective of deity.

Beginning sometime in the 1830s in Kirtland, Ohio or in the early 1840s in Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith secretly initiated a practice of religious polygamy (also called celestial marriage and later called plural marriage). By 1844, almost a hundred people in Nauvoo were secretly involved in polygamy, and rumors and gossip about polygamy spread throughout the community.

Also during this time in Nauvoo, Smith articulated a theology which emphasized turning families into "eternal units" through a ritual "sealing" ordinance which he taught would enable familial relationships, including marriage and parenthood, to continue after death, connecting all people together in a "human family".

Smith married several polygamous wives in Nauvoo without disclosing he had done so to Emma Hale Smith, who was his first and only publicly acknowledged wife. Emma Smith likely knew about Smith's polygamy by 1842 or 1843. She temporarily accepted polygamy by May 1843, selecting four women for Joseph Smith to plurally marry and allowing some of his polygamous wives to move into the Smith home, but she soon changed her mind and demanded Smith's other wives leave.

On July 12, 1843, at the Nauvoo Red Brick Store, Hyrum Smith (Smith's brother) encouraged Smith to dictate a revelation on polygamy. Hyrum was initially hostile to polygamy when he heard about it through rumors but had since come to accept and endorse it. With a scribed revelation, Hyrum believed he could persuade Emma the way he had been persuaded. Joseph Smith was skeptical and warned Hyrum, "You do not know Emma as well as I do," but nevertheless agreed to dictate a revelation.

With William Clayton scribing, Joseph Smith dictated, a sentence at a time, for three hours. Some portions of the text may have been known to Smith in the 1830s. Before dictating, Smith told Clayton and Hyrum that he "already knew the revelation perfectly from beginning to end". The resulting manuscript comprised about 3,300 words, and it was ten pages long.

Summary
CONTENT

Textual history
Either later that day on July 12 or the next day, Newel K. Whitney received Joseph Smith's permission to make a copy of the text, which Whitney had Joseph C. Kingsbury transcribe. The Kingsbury copy is eight pages long. Willard Richards transcribed another copy, based off of Kingsbury's. Several contemporaneous transcriptions likely circulated in Nauvoo, though how many is not known.

A few days after the document's dictation and transcription on July 12, Joseph Smith permitted Emma Smith to destroy the original manuscript scribed by Clayton.

CONTENT

"All other extant versions are based on the Kingsbury copy."

Nauvoo
After Joseph Smith finished dictating the revelation on July 12, 1843, Hyrum took the copy Clayton transcribed and that same day visited with Emma Smith in an attempt to persuade her to accept polygamy as a divine doctrine. Emma was unpersuaded and answered that she "did not believe a word of it". When Hyrum returned to the Red Brick Store where Smith and Clayton had remained and reported what had happened, Smith answered, "I told you you did not know Emma as well as I did."

CONTENT

(Emma's extremely negative reaction, see Park and maybe Newell and Avery as well? Van Wagoner likely treats it as well, and Bringhurst)

Between one and two hundred people in Nauvoo may have been aware of the 1843 revelation, but how many adherents either accepted or rejected it while in Nauvoo is not known.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) canonized the text in 1876, adding it to its Doctrine and Covenants as section 132.

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D&C 132 remains part of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants in the twenty-first century; leadership cites its content on the believed divinity of gender roles, and its verses that describe marriage as eternal are popular among Latter-day Saints, but the denomination tends to gloss over the portions that are explicitly about polygamy.

Community of Christ
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (later renamed to Community of Christ) has never canonized the text of D&C 132 or included it in its Doctrine and Covenants.

Section 132 of Community of Christ's Doctrine and Covenants is an unrelated text produced as a revelation given through church president Frederick Madison Smith.

Fundamentalist Mormonism
"The issue in the 1970s and 1980s centered on interpretations of Doctrine and Covenants 132:7" (more context in paper itself, see page 128n110)

Interpretation
CONTENT

(Kinship and expanding meanings of family)

(Culmination of Smith's Abrahamic society project)