The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Polygamy=== {{main|Mormonism and polygamy}} [[File:Polygamists in prison.jpg|thumb|Mormon polygamists in prison at the Utah Penitentiary, {{circa|1889}}]] Polygamy (called plural marriage within the church) was practiced by church leaders for more than half of the 19th century,<ref name=HoP>{{Cite web |last=Embry |first=Jessie L. |year=1994 |title=The History of Polygamy |url=https://heritage.utah.gov/history/uhg-history-polygamy-2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181107044102/https://heritage.utah.gov/history/uhg-history-polygamy-2 |archive-date=November 7, 2018 |access-date=December 31, 2018 |publisher=[[Utah State Historical Society]]}}</ref> and practiced publicly from 1852 to 1890 by between 20 and 30 percent of Latter-day Saint families.<ref>{{cite book|last= Flake|first=Kathleen|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GLLCAB5vmMQC&pg=PA65|title=The Politics of American Religious Identity|publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]]|year=2004|isbn=0-8078-5501-4|pages=65, 192 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref name="Embry19942">{{Citation | last = Embry | first = Jessie L. | title = Utah History Encyclopedia | publisher = University of Utah Press | year = 1994 | chapter = Polygamy | chapter-url = https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/p/POLYGAMY.shtml | url = https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/ | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240322100959/https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/p/POLYGAMY.shtml | archive-date = March 22, 2024 | isbn =9780874804256 | access-date = April 9, 2024}}</ref> It was instituted privately in the 1830s by founder Joseph Smith and announced publicly in 1852 at the direction of Brigham Young.<ref name="Embry19942"/> For over 60 years, the [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and politics in the United States|church and the United States]] were at odds over the issue: at one point, the Republican platform referenced "the twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushistory.org/gop/convention_1856.htm| website=US History.org|publisher=[[Independence Hall Association]] |location=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |title=GOP Convention of 1856 in Philadelphia}}</ref> The church defended the practice as a matter of religious freedom, while the federal government aggressively sought to eradicate it; in 1862, the United States Congress passed the [[Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act]], which prohibited plural marriage in the territories.<ref name="Embry19942"/> In 1890, church president Wilford Woodruff [[1890 Manifesto|issued a Manifesto]] that officially terminated the practice in the United States,<ref name=OD1/> though it did not dissolve existing polygamous marriages of any couples, some of which continued to cohabit into the 1950s.<ref name=HoP/> Some church members continued to enter into polygamous marriages in Canada and Mexico, but these eventually stopped in 1904 when church president Joseph F. Smith disavowed polygamy before Congress and issued a "[[Second Manifesto]]," calling for all plural marriages in the church to cease. Several small fundamentalist groups, seeking to continue the practice, split from the LDS Church, but the mainline church now excommunicates members found practicing polygamy and distances itself from those fundamentalist groups.<ref name=VeryShort/>{{rp|91}}<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25396937 |title=Mormons seek distance from polygamous sects |year=2008 |publisher=[[NBC News]]}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page