Transcription
Hi, I'm Carly. If you're new here, I'm that one girl on TikTok who doesn't believe that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. That's so ignorant. How could you think that? Even the church says that he was. That's right, they do.
And during my faith journey last year, I realized that Mormons and ex-Mormons have one thing in common: they both believed that Joseph was a polygamist. So, if I was going to deconstruct from all of the other church's narratives, why would I still believe this one?
Now, polygamy wasn't the first thing I researched on my faith journey. Because when God first convicted me to follow James 1:5, just like it says to ask God if I lack wisdom and not to just put things on a shelf, I first studied the doctrines of the Word of Wisdom and garments. I was extremely prayerful and only studied church materials. And what I found was not only were those false doctrines, but the church's stories of how those became doctrines were false. So, the church isn't just teaching false doctrines; they're teaching a false narrative. I have several videos on those subjects if you don't know what I'm talking about.
So, when it came to the subject of polygamy, I had little to no reason to believe that they were accurately and honestly presenting the historical events. Because even though the church doesn't practice it anymore and several prophets have come out and denounced the doctrine, they still hold on to the fact that Joseph did practice and teach it. So, although all of Joseph's contemporary writings and journal entries condemn polygamy, the church will continue to teach that he did practice it. Because if they admit he didn't, the entire foundation of the church would crumble.
If the members knew that Joseph wasn't a polygamist, they would automatically know that Brigham's succession and leadership of the church was false. So, when the church teaches about marriage and polygamy, they don't reference any of Joseph Smith's contemporary, unedited writings from his lifetime. Instead, the church only references documents and journals written after Joseph's lifetime, 8 to 20 years after he died. It's too easy to blame everything on a dead man.
So, although DNA evidence has proven that Joseph had no other children other than with Emma, and many of the dates that these alleged marriages took place conflict with other historical context and events, the church will never admit that even one of these alleged wives was lying or is maybe coerced by her current polygamist prophet husband. Because if the church gave room for us to doubt that even one of these polygamist marriages didn't happen, or that he actually meant what he said in his original journals before Brigham edited them, the entire veracity of the church would come crumbling down. And the people would understand that this isn't the same church that Joseph established, but it's a church built on Brigham's lies.