B. Carmon Hardy

B. CARMON HARDY {[email protected]} is emeritus professor of history at California State University, Fullerton. He has a long-time interest in Utah and Mormon history and has published extensively on these subjects. His best-known works are: Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992); and Doing the Works of Abraham: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, Vol. 9, in THE MORMONS AND THE AMERICAN FRONTIER, general editor Will Bagley (Norman, Okla.: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 2007).

Articles

Self-Blame and the Manifesto

Dialogue 24.3 (Fall 1991): 43–57
Before the Manifesto was first read in conference, members and church leaders fully believed in plural marriage as being a commandment from God. Once the Manifesto was read, over time members started wondering if it was because of their own actions that polygamy was no longer a commandment.

Polygamy, Mormonism, and Me

Dialogue 41.2 (Summer 2009): 85–101
Hardy describes the long, difficult process of researching polygamy during a time that the church wasn’t open about polygamy.

The Persistence of Mormon Plural Marriage

This essay addresses the remarkable perseverance of Mormon polygamy.I argue that its survival is chiefly explained by the emphasis it was given in the nineteenth-century Church. The cardinal significance early leaders granted plurality in their teachings, combined with spirited defenses in its behalf, so gilded the doctrine that its enduring attraction was assured. A great deal of research studying patriarchal marriage has occurred in the last thirty or so years.