Frances (Fanny) W. Alger (Smith?) Custer - wife #2

In 1833, at the age of sixteen, Fanny Alger found herself living with Joseph and Emma as a sort of adopted daughter. Both Joseph and Emma were extremely fond of her, but Joseph loved her as more than a daughter.

Oliver Cowdery and Emma eventually discovered that Joseph's affection for Fanny had become physical and both made their complaints. Emma kicked Fanny out and Oliver accused Joseph of having an affair. Joseph never denied the sexual nature of his relationship with Fanny and insisted that Oliver acknowledge that he (Joseph) refused to call it an affair.

The first time hurts the worst, Emma. You'll get used to it.

Despite no extant evidence, apologists tend to frame the Fanny-Joseph tryst as marriage - A MARRIAGE WITH NO KNOWN OFFICIATOR AND NO WITNESSES. Sounds legit, right? Maybe Jesus himself officiated, or King David, or maybe Solomon (biblical dudes were always visiting Joseph when he needed them.) And yet Emma wasn't so convinced it was a marriage. I wonder why? The LDS Church didn't feel like including Fanny in Joseph's family tree either.

Isn't it a bit strange that Joseph was (kind of) living polygamy in 1833 when no revelation of restoration had been introduced and wouldn't be for several more years? The sealing power wouldn't even be restored until April 1836. Joseph was way ahead of the curve on this one! A better explanation for this whole mess is that Fanny was a tool of Satan sent to tempt Joseph and destroy God's budding church, but, as will always be the case, Satan's plan failed!

Five years later Fanny married Solomon Custer, with whom she had nine children. Unlike her parents, who eventually ended up in Utah, she eventually left Mormonism and joined her local Universalist congregation.

Members of the LDS Church generally know nothing about Fanny and if they do they tend not to bring her up. We're still waiting for the Church to address Joseph's polygamy in their recent series of essays on difficult historical matters.

Here's the Feminist Mormon Housewives podcast episode about her.

The Bible! The Bible! Who assembled the Bible?

A common pet peeve among Mormons is when someone assumes the Book of Mormon is the Mormon version of the Bible. Fuck's sake, people, "we believe the Bible to be the word of God" (Article of Faith 1:8)! We just have another book of scripture to help straighten things out. See, it's like a pair of glasses - one corrective lens isn't going to be enough to get your vision into focus...

So if Mormons are cool with the extra books found in The Book of Mormon how do Mormons feel about the Apocrypha? Well, quite frankly, Mormons never touch it. Here's what God told Joseph Smith:

"Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha—There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly; There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men. Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated. Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth" (D&C 91:1-4).

In other words, there's too much shit to wade through; don't waste your time. Oh, and don't read the Songs of Solomon either - they're not inspired. Those Old Testament apocrypha are the worst! (But the Book of Judith seems to have inspired the Book of Mormon somehow.) But the New Testament apocryphal gospels are a little trickier. Some of those darn Gnostic gospels actually predate the gospels included in the final cut. It seems as though their exclusion from the Greatest Hits compilation was more a matter of politics than unbiased research.

What if, in addition to pseudopigrypha, there were a huge absence of authentic and essential texts in the Bible? Why aren't the LDS Church and Mormons at large more interested and involved in a revision of the canonical Bible texts? Does corrective power of The Book of Mormon really justify having the wrong prescription in the other lens?

The biblical authors

Mormons "believe the Bible to be the word of God" (Article of Faith 1:8). Does this go for all of the words in all of the books? I ask because Bible scholars have found that, for example, Moses didn't write the first books of the Old Testament, Solomon didn't write the Psalms, Isaiah was written by at least two people, and Paul is not the author of all of his epistles. Those are significant problems, but there are still more.

Are they still the words of God if we know that the author is different than what was traditionally believed? Do we need to treat the questionable books, chapters, and verses with any particular care? How can the Bible's pseudopigrapha not be subjected to doubt? Do we need to revise the eighth Article of Faith? Couldn't one of our prophets, seers, and revelators go through and separate the actual words of the prophets and apostles from those of the impostors? What would remain of the Bible were we to remove everything of false or highly questionable authorship? Would we finally have a bulletproof Bible full entirely and only with the Word of God?

The temple - secret signs and tokens

In the Mormon temple endowment ceremony you learn a lot of great stuff like all the different handshakes that will get you into the Celestial Kingdom.

It's not a joke. The really do teach you how to handshake your way into Heaven. I couldn't believe it myself. Seriously? This is how I'll unlock the Pearly Gates? I literally have to physically do this move on an angel standing guard? Oh, they're seriously so important I can't tell anyone about them? Wow... And no one else has let this out of the bag yet? Satan doesn't know about this? I can imagine Satan could really mess up the whole who-gets-into-Heaven thing if he knew about this.

The "signs and tokens" I was taught in the temple struck me as completely arbitrary and superfluous to heartfelt Christian belief and yet I was told that these were gestures passed down from God to man from Adam until the present day. The temple was supposed to be the oldest, most sacred ritual in the history of man. 

I knew enough about the Israelite's tabernacle in the wilderness, Solomon's temple, and the temple in Christs time to know that the whole story sounded a bit funky. I also kept somewhere in the back of my mind the allegation that Freemasonry had something to do with the temple, but I never dared look into it. I nurtured my faith instead of my suspicions and doubts.

As it turns out I should have followed up on the whole Freemason thing. The temple endowment, as it turns out, is a complete rip off of Freemasonry. And we're not just talking about a simple handshake here,

 

all of the handshakes were lifted from the Freemasons,

 

as are most of the words, explanations, now purged penalties, clothing, etc. All I did when I went through the temple was become a pseudo-Freemason. Look it up. This shit's not just weird, completely unrelated to ancient worship, and devoid of any real Christian significance, it's really not that exciting. 

I say if you want to become a Freemason, go to the Freemasons, not the Mormons.