Tannering Fundamentalism | J. Max Anderson, The Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact

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During the early part of the twentieth century, Lorin C. Woolley of Centerville, Utah, produced affidavits in which he maintained that on 26 and 27 September 1886, Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith appeared to President John Taylor while he resided in the home of John W. Woolley (his father) and there revealed to Taylor that the Mormon Church would some day abandon the practice of plural marriage. Joseph Smith at that time directed Taylor to appoint and ordain five men to perpetuate plural marriage after the Church had relinquished the practice. Subsequently told and retold, the Lorin Woolley story came to form the foundation of priesthood authority for most Mormon polygamist offshoots, who now number in the tens of thousands. 

Working for more than a decade, Max Anderson has undertaken a monumental labor in behalf of mainstream Mormonism in an attempt to discredit Woolley’s story. This volume represents. the first of a projected three-volume attack. Placing the Woolley account under the microscope, Anderson critically analyzes every minute detail—names, dates, places and events—and quite successfully does to the foundation of modern fundamentalism what the Tanners (Modern Microfilms) have done to Mormonism. Undoubtedly, Anderson has dealt a heavy blow to the growth of modern-day polygamy. In its effectiveness, the book is long strides ahead of all its predecessors, including The Way of the Master by Mark E. Peterson, Plural Marriage Unlimited by Paul E. Reimann, and . . . Some That Trouble You by Clair L. Wyatt. 

Anderson attempts to force fundamentalists to view the records of their beginnings from the same perspective that Jews must view the complete historical void of Israel’s four-hundred-year sojourn in Egypt—”Reference to them was stricken from the records.” In religious matters, whenever facts and evidence are lacking, faith will always fill the void. Anderson’s hope is that in the case of Mormon fundamentalism the lack of corroborating evidence will make the faith much more difficult to muster. But the fundamentalists are not altogether without justification in their feeling that there is much powerful evidence to support their position. The suppression of Church records in the past, coupled with present Church policy that denies known fundamentalists access even to the general archives, has created great mistrust for the Church in the minds of thousands of fundamentalist-believing people who feel that the problem is not in a genuine lack of extant evidence but in its inaccessibility. 

Following his historical analysis of Woolley’s story and dredging up in the process every conceivable inconsistency and difficulty, Anderson simply labels its author a consummate liar. Then, turning abruptly from historian to psychoanalyst, the architect-author proceeds to probe into Woolley’s personality “to get at the cause of the whole matter.” Looking for Woolley’s motivation for telling “such lies,” Anderson analyzes several of his subject’s dreams and draws the conclusion that Woolley was merely seeking for attention and grasping for honor and power. In coming to this conclusion, the author also debunks the testimonies of two eyewitnesses to the Woolley story, Patriarch John W. Woolley and Daniel R. Bateman, both of whom lived and died affirming its validity. The reader thus gradually begins to notice that Anderson hopes to destroy fundamentalist faith with the same weapons the anti-Mormons have used since 1820. 

However effective the Anderson work might be, it is not without its shortcomings. Unfortunately, the author does not choose to view it as a fair-minded judge or an honest historian, willing to look at all sides of the story. Instead, he plays the role of a prosecuting attorney, anxious to win the case for his client, the Church, and carefully sifts his source materials while selecting for use only those that are to the credit of his client. In short, his zealousness to defend the faith has obscured his objectivity. Critical of Lorin Woolley, Anderson either neglects to mention or downplays the significance of any information that tends to support the Woolley story, even though such information is often vital to the very issues he addresses.

A more impartial examination of the Lorin Woolley story might reveal at the outset that it comes from what historians would call a secondary source, because it was recorded more than twenty-six years after the events it describes had transpired. This does not mean that it is therefore untrue, which is what Anderson implies without ever mentioning that the only accounts Mormons have of the First Vision come from such sources. Labeling a document does not necessarily determine its accuracy or inaccuracy, but without question it is relevant information. One small slip of memory, such as a wrong date or place, or a small detail in an incident, can lead to all kinds of historical problems in an otherwise sound account of a secondary nature. Such is certainly the case with the First Vision and numerous other events sacred to the Mormon faith.

Anderson’s primary attack on the Woolley story thus zeroes in on details. He creates an iron bedstead based on dates and details in Woolley’s story and then uses them to their own discredit by comparing them to contemporary records. For example, in his first account (1912), Woolley says that the 1886 vision occurred “in the latter part of September,” and that he does not know the exact date. In later accounts, he sets the date at September 26 and 27. He also changes his list of names of those who were present. These kinds of apparent inconsistencies furnish Anderson with all the ammunition he needs to discredit Woolley’s testimony. Yet it is important to note that Anderson does not produce a single fact to dispute the first account of the Lorin Woolley story. 

In examining the Woolley story more fairly, realization of the extent to which the Woolleys were involved with John Taylor during the period in question becomes crucial. For this information we are indebted almost entirely to the diaries of Samuel Bateman, not that these diaries are the only ones extant pertaining to the subject. At least four others are more complete. There is, for example, the personal diary of President Taylor, as well as the personal diary of George Q. Cannon, the First Presidency’s Office Journal, and the personal diary of L. John Nuttall, who kept extensive diaries while serving as secretary to Presidents Young, Taylor and Woodruff. Nuttall habitually recorded many details of each day’s activities in these diaries which are now at Brigham Young University. Strange as it may seem, all the Nuttall diaries are present and accounted for except those for the years 1885 through 1887. The Taylor diaries are presently located in the First Presidency’s Office Vault and are not available for research. No one is allowed to see them, not even Taylor’s descendants, although the Church normally allows children and grandchildren open access to the diaries of their parents and grandparents. In the case of the Taylor materials, it has made a curious exception. Both Raymond Taylor and Samuel W. Taylor have asked to see the diaries of their grandfather without success. Indeed, the Church has been slow even to acknowledge that it has them. The Cannon diaries are also in the vault and unavailable, although in 19711 was allowed to read the entries in Cannon’s diaries for 26 and 27 September 1886 and to photograph them. These photos appear in Anderson’s book. Neither Anderson nor I, however, has been allowed to look into the Cannon diaries aside from those two days. The First Presidency’s Office Journal is another story of the same telling.

Other materials that have been fortunate enough to escape the Church’s veil of secrecy, such as the diaries of Samuel Bateman, do not in any way dispute the Lorin Woolley story in terms of its contentions and meaning. Anderson has unfortunately refused to recognize this and has resorted to character assassination and straining at gnats. His treatment of the Woodruff Manifesto is no better than his work on the Woolley story. Rather than tell the whole tale, he chooses to whitewash the Church of its involvement in plural marriages contracted after the Manifesto. Relying on the same old answers, he places the blame on Apostles John W. Taylor and Mathias F. Cowley, men who, in fact, were acting under presidential sanction, but when exposed were offered up as sacrifices in order to vindicate the Church’s integrity. In making his defense at his trial, Cowley lamented that he had acted “conscientiously and under the direction of those higher up [,] not defiantly or with the idea of taking the bits in my own mouth.” Indeed, most students of Mormonism now realize that the 1890 Manifesto was never intended to end plural marriage, but was to be strictly a political document issued for the purpose of diverting government prosecution from the Church as a body to its members. This would compound problems for the government which would have to legislate against and prosecute some ten thousand polygamists rather than to focus its attack on one organized body as it had done with the Church. So the responsibility of practicing the principle would lie at the feet of each individual in accordance with the 1886 revelation, and the Church would be left free from government prosecution. A careful reading of the manifesto itself reveals this simple truth, but Anderson hopes his readers will continue to swallow the old story in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it.

As Mormons in general and fundamentalists in particular become increasingly aware of what looks very much like a concerted cover-up of the crucial evidence, books like Anderson’s (while better than what has gone before) will continue to be as half-hearted and inconclusive as are all the howlings in the night about the historicity of the Mormon story itself. And we must continue to wonder what Wilford Woodruff meant when in 1893 he dedicated the Salt Lake Temple and prayed for those who in future generations should choose to live in plural marriage: 

Heavenly Father, when thy people shall not have the opportunity of entering this holy house … . Or when the children of thy people, in years to come, shall be separated, through any cause, from this place, and their hearts shall turn in remembrance of thy promises to this holy Temple . . . we humbly entreat thee to turn thine ear in mercy to them; hearken to their cries, and grant unto them the blessings for which they ask. 

The polygamy story: fact or fiction indeed. 

The Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact. by J. Max Anderson. Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1979, x+157 pp., index. $4.95.