Evidence · Case 11 · Mormonism
Official Declaration 1, Doctrine and Covenants
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
President Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto advised members to refrain from any marriage forbidden by law, and the church accepted it on October 6, 1890. It is now printed in the Latter-day Saint canon as Official Declaration 1.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The 1890 Manifesto didn’t end plural marriage. New plural marriages were performed with church sanction until the Second Manifesto of 1904. Isn’t the date misleading?
Correct, and the church’s own essay says so. The accurate statement is that the end was officially announced in 1890 and the practice was fully discontinued after 1904. The detail matters because it bears on whether the 1890 declaration was a revelation or a public statement made under federal pressure, which is the question the next exhibit takes up.
- The Bible records God permitting and regulating polygamy among the patriarchs and kings without condemnation. If plural marriage discredits Joseph Smith, doesn’t it discredit Abraham, Jacob, and David?
The Christian reply is that the Old Testament narrates polygamy and its consistently bad results (Sarah and Hagar, Leah and Rachel, Solomon’s wives) without commanding it, that the creation account and Jesus’s teaching on marriage assume one man and one woman, and that the New Testament requires monogamy of church leaders. The LDS claim was that plural marriage was commanded by revelation as a requirement for the highest exaltation (Doctrine and Covenants 132), which is a different thing from tolerated ancient practice. The point is not that polygamy discredits Smith; it is that a doctrine commanded by revelation was later ended by revelation, which raises the question the next claim raises too.