Will the LDS Church Go Back to Their Polygamy Roots?

A study done in 2008 showing a large gender gap and growing quickly as men of the church leave their Mormon faith in droves. 60% of Mormons are women, 40% are men. These numbers are a few years old, and likely to be more significant today. In 2007 the gap was 56/44 by those numbers it could be as high as 64/36 today. It may be to the point now where there is enough Mormon women for each Mormon man to have two wives each!

LDS_church_office_building

The LDS church has always been vague to the practice of polygamy stating it is gods law, and you must obey it to get into heaven. But it has been long rumored within the church that the original practice of polygamy was practiced because it was vitally important that every Mormon woman be married to a Mormon man, even if that man already had 50 other wives. And in the infancy stages of the religion there were not enough Mormon men to go around due to war, thus commanded. Later as the generations matured, this gender gap narrowed to something more even and the practice was stopped.

Some have sited that a federal law was initiated in 1862 known as the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act to ban all plural marriages signed by Abraham Lincoln. One of the conditions for Utah to be accepted into the union was to obey this law. In 1896 after many battles and hardships Utah’s leadership caved and they decided to become a state.

This narrow margin maintained for around a century, up until the last decade. Most people would point their finger to to the information age.

Mormons may point their finger to Satan, either way, they have gone back to 1850 social conditions. If the lord can take it away, can he not give it back. We will just have to wait and find out.

In 1958 Bruce R. McConkie wrote a book called Mormon Doctrine he states that God will re-institute the law of polygamy after the second coming of Jesus Christ. This mirrors Brigham Young’s teaching that polygamy was commanded to usher in the new

millennium.

See – John Cairncross, After polygamy was made a sin: the social history of Christian polygamy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974, ISBN 0-7100-7730, p. 181.