Spiritual wifery

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Mormonism and polygamy
Portrait of five caucasian Latter-day Saints, married to each other in nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint polygamy, against the backdrop of what may be a hedge. All seem to be posing; none face the camera. Leftmost is a woman, seated, her hair done in a high, braided bun, wearing a dress with buttons down the middle; in her hands are an open book. Center-left, standing furthest to the back (though still very much with the portraited group) is a woman, her hair done up but resting low, in a polka-dotted top and a scarf or ascot around her neck and a skirt. She carries a hat, held to her waist. Center is a woman, sort of kneeling or seated (perhaps there is an unseen stool she's sitting on?). She wears a white dress, her hair is done up in a high and large bun and she wears a headband. In her right arm she holds a hat, over her knees; her left arm rests on the lap of the man sitting center right. She may be leaning against his legs. Center-right is a man, wearing a suit jacket of some kind and a high-collared shirt. He is balded and bearded. His left hand is placed over the left arm of the center woman. Rightmost is a woman, her hair done up but resting low, sitting in a visibly wooden (likely handcrafted) chair. She wears a dress with buttons going down the middle. She holds a hat, which looks very like center's hat, over her knees.
A Mormon "Saint" and Wives by Charles Weitfle (ca.1878–1885)
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Spiritual wifery is a term first used in America by the Immortalists[clarification needed] in and near the Blackstone Valley of Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the 1740s. The term describes the idea that certain people are divinely destined to meet and share their love (at differing points along the carnal-spiritual spectrum, depending on the particular religious movement involved) after receiving a spiritual confirmation, and regardless of previous civil marital bonds.[1] Its history in Europe among various Christian primitivistic movements has been well documented.[2] The followers of Jacob Cochran as early as 1818 used "spiritual wifery" to describe their religious doctrine of free love. Often confused with polygamy, spiritual wifery among the Cochranites was the practice in which communal mates were temporarily assigned and reassigned, either by personal preference or religious authority.[citation needed]

The term was later introduced to the Latter Day Saint movement by John C. Bennett, who openly applied it to the doctrine of plural marriage. According to Helen Mar Whitney, "At the time [in Nauvoo] spiritual wife was the title by which every woman who entered into this order was called, for it was taught and practiced as a spiritual order."[3] Bennett was soon excommunicated for such offenses.

The term complex marriage was later used by the Oneida Community in the 1840s to describe a free marriage practice similar to spiritual wifery.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ William G. McLoughlin, "Free Love, Immortalism, and Perfectionism in Cumberland, Rhode Island, 1748-1768," Rhode Island History 33 (1974), pp. 67-85
  2. ^ John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: the Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 28, 46, 56, 57, 117, etc.
  3. ^ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Signature Books, 1997)
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