We've all heard stories of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, and how he used to have several wives. He was also called out as a conman, but today we are going to focus on the confirmation that the man indeed had several wives back in his day.
Recently, the Mormon Church released 12 long essays in an effort to be more transparent about its past, present, and future. The essay includes a lot of things, such as the ban on black people from the church, and Joseph Smith having at least 40 wives, which included a 14-year-old girl who went by the name Helen Mar Kimball.
"There is so much out there on the Internet that we felt we owed our members a safe place where they could go to get reliable, faith-promoting information that was true about some of these more difficult aspects of our history," Elder Steven E. Snow, the church's historian, told the New York Times.
Smith's first wife Emma was opposed to him having other wives. Smith, on the other hand, was conflicted as he was forced to choose either his wife or the will of God. The will of God meant -- for him at least -- the right to have more than one wife.
Interestingly enough, the essay highlighted that several of the women who were married to Smith were already married to other men. This whole thing is coming off as very similar to Neegan in The Walking Dead. He's a man of many women, and some of these women were taken away from men who stand behind him.
We find it surprising that the church is revealing this much information to the public. For years, people have had distasteful things to say about the Mormon Church, and we doubt announcing that the founder and prophet of the church having many wives would make things better.
What happens now?
Well, things might just go on as usual, but we do expect some members of the church to feel a little cheated by some of the things the founder has done, along with racial problems the church had in the past.
At the end of the day, the church did the correct thing by being transparent about these things. Now, the next step is to finally reveal to the world that Smith was a conman.
