On my bloggingheads program, I spoke with Joanna Brooks about her piece here, about how the LDS Church’s recent essay on polygamy as practiced by prophet Joseph Smith failed to address lingering theological concerns. In her piece, Brooks argued that the new essay “sidesteps the crucial question of whether these sacrifices were founded in lasting principles of Mormon theology, or were they pains caused by the human excesses of our charismatic founder?”
In the clip below, Brooks describes how polygamy is very much alive in Mormon theology, despite the Church’s efforts to distance itself from the practice in a legal context. These unresolved theological issues, incidentally, have gone unnoticed in the context of LDS participation in this week’s Vatican conference on “traditional” marriage, The International Interreligious Colloquium on The Complementarity of Man and Woman.
You can watch the entire episode here.
