This paper argues that Joseph Smith’s plural marriage system did not emerge in isolation but belongs to a longer American lineage of perfectionist and prophet-controlled spiritual marriage. Early American religious experimentation created environments in which the traditional Christian ideal of monogamous marriage could be modified, especially where revivalism, antinomianism, and communal authority weakened ordinary legal and ecclesiastical constraints.
First Great Awakening (1730s-1760s)
The upheavals of the First Great Awakening set Old Lights, who defended traditional clergy and restrained piety, against New Lights, who embraced revivalism, intense conversion, lay testimony, and emotional preaching. Some New Lights broke away entirely as “Separates,” deliberately distancing themselves from the colonial religious establishment. Antinomian ideas—that inward spiritual experience could override external law— gave religious feeling precedence over legal and ecclesiastical norms and fed directly into later revivalism.
Wesleyan Holiness and Perfectionism
John Wesley’s teaching on Christian perfection, developed in
mid‑eighteenth‑century Methodist revivals, held that after conversion a
believer might receive a distinct “second blessing” or entire sanctification,
cleansing the heart from inward sin. Over the nineteenth century this
perfectionist ideal was taken up and radicalized in various Holiness and
perfectionist circles, turning Wesley’s pastoral theology into a
platform for bolder social and marital experiments.
Blackstone Valley Perfectionism
Religious experimentation
flourished in the Blackstone Valley, a roughly fifty‑mile corridor through
central Massachusetts and northern Rhode Island. Here some Separates intensified
perfectionist themes by tying them to decisive, quasi‑mystical conversions and
even expectations of literal immortality, rather than the quieter
Wesleyan model of deepened holiness within ordinary life. In some groups a
single leader claimed perfected status; in others, several individuals or even
the whole fellowship were regarded as perfected.
The earliest well‑documented
case is the Cumberland, Rhode Island, Separates (c. 1740s), where
antinomian and New Light influences led some to reevaluate their marriages.
Emphasis on “marriage in the Lord” sharpened the conviction that both
spouses should be wholly converted saints.
Some believers concluded that
true spiritual marriage should unite only perfected Christians, calling
legal unions with “unperfected” spouses into question. The Cumberland
perfectionists appear to be the first known American group to practice
spiritual marriage, with some adherents leaving legal spouses for higher,
spiritual unions. Civil authorities reacted: Rhode Island passed legislation
targeting “breaches of marriage covenants,” signaling the perceived threat
these experiments posed to marital norms.
Similar perfectionist circles
emerged elsewhere in the Blackstone Valley region, including Immortalist groups.
Drawing on scriptural texts such as “whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die,”[1]
they argued that true believers might not die in the ordinary way.
The followers of Shadrach
Ireland’s Immortalist movement (c. 1750–1780) were urged to practice
celibacy under Ireland’s direction until they became a “new creation” and thus
perfected. Once perfected, believers could acquire spiritual spouses, whose
bonds superseded their legal marriages. Ireland believed himself immortal and
took at least one “spiritual wife” as well as a “spiritual consort” despite
remaining legally married. Eventually he claimed to be the “second Messiah.”
Ireland represents the first well‑documented instance of spiritual polygyny in
American religious history. And he introduced the idea that a charismatic
leader could claim authority over the sexuality and marital arrangements of his
followers.
Second Great Awakening (1790s-1830s)
The marital experimentation that had emerged in the
Blackstone Valley, together with broader influences of Separatism,
antinomianism, and perfectionism, created a religious platform on which later
groups could build. As perfectionist ideas spread beyond the valley in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they appeared in new
settings that extended this ferment.
One such group was the Dorrellites of Leyden, Massachusetts,
in the 1790s. Their leader, William Dorrell, was a self‑proclaimed messiah who
practiced strict vegetarianism and rejected civil marriage as lacking true
spiritual authority. Contemporary reports attributed to him the claim that
those who had experienced an inward resurrection from sin “had a right to a
promiscuous intercourse,” offering a religious rationale for what later
observers described as free‑love behavior, and hostile neighbors portrayed
Dorrellite meetings as drunken and sexually disorderly.
Scattered Holiness and perfectionist circles (1800s-1860s)
Perfectionism also fed into a
broader field of scattered holiness circles across greater New England and
upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. These were usually small
bands organized around a local exhorter, though some survived as prayer groups
within existing denominations while others developed semi‑separate movements or
near‑communal settlements. They commonly adopted stricter discipline, intense
fellowship, and sharper separation from “worldly” Christians, and some pushed
perfectionist logic toward social and marital innovation.
Prophet‑controlled Spiritual Marriage
Beginning in the mid-1810s, prophet-controlled groups
emerged in which charismatic leaders claimed authority to assign and reassign
spouses. These systems could include polygyny, polyandry, or reconfigured forms
of monogamy, but their unifying feature was not a single marital form so much
as the claim that prophetic authority could override ordinary civil marriage.
Although the perfectionist prophet Shadrach Ireland had earlier influenced the
sexuality of his followers in limited ways, these later leaders pushed
antinomian and spiritualized marriage much further.
Isaac Bullard
Arising from Lower Canada and Woodstock, Vermont, Isaac
Bullard’s Pilgrims (1817–1818) were a short-lived wandering millenarian
sect. Bullard styled himself as the prophet Elijah and drew on restorationist,
perfectionist, and communalist ideas to create an authoritarian religious
movement. According to hostile observers and later reconstructions, Bullard
rejected conventional marriage, dissolved existing unions, and reassigned
sexual partners under his authority. The surviving evidence is unclear whether
members could have more than one spouse at the same time, whether new unions
were ritually declared, or whether the system was monogamous, polygynous, or a
rudimentary form of complex marriage. But certainly, Bullard controlled the marriage
and sexuality of his followers.
Jacob Cochran
The Cochranites (c. 1818–1830s) combined religious
enthusiasm, restorationism, perfectionism, and communalism into a
prophet-centered system where legal marriages could be subordinated to
spiritually designated unions. Cochran claimed special divine anointing and
exercised sweeping influence over the religious and domestic lives of his
followers with his interpretations functioning as binding revelation.
In practice, Cochran’s doctrine of spiritual wives included
both spiritual polygyny and monogamy with partner reassignment.
Legal marriages could be set aside, supplemented, or displaced by spiritual
pairings. Assignments were not always permanent and women could be reassigned
to other men, making Cochranism not merely polygynous but a dynamically
redistributive system.
Kingdom of Matthias c. 1828—1837
A decade after Cochran introduced his doctrine of spiritual
wives and while the Cochranites were still active, the Kingdom of Matthias
emerged as another experiment in prophet‑controlled marriage and household
order. It was a small, intense household led by Robert Matthews, who called
himself Matthias and claimed prophetic and patriarchal authority in a restored
Kingdom of God. The movement combined apocalyptic expectation, household
communalism, and restorationism. Domestic, economic, and sexual relations were
reorganized under his direct rule, and Matthias concentrated authority far more
tightly than either the looser holiness circles or later communal
perfectionists.
The Kingdom of Matthias became notorious through press
coverage of scandal, violence, financial manipulation, and sexual misconduct,
helping define a public image of the dangerous prophetic “fanatic” who claimed
power over doctrine, households, property, and women. Matthews taught that “all
marriages not made by himself, were of the devil,” and that he had come to
establish “a community of property, and of wives.” He identified “match
spirits” that overrode existing legal marriages, producing a non‑monogamous
network of overlapping spiritual marriages best classified as a prophet‑controlled
system of spiritual marriage with reassignment and quasi‑complex‑marriage
features rather than straightforward spiritual polygyny.
Bible Communists and Complex Marriage ,
John Humphrey Noyes’s “Bible Communism” (c. late
1830s–1880) emerged from a network of New York and New England
perfectionist circles. In some instances, visions and dreams were read as
divine endorsements of new spiritual bonds, including spiritual marriage. Noyes
went on to build a more tightly regulated communal and marital order at Putney,
Vermont, and later Oneida, New York.
Recasting social relations around his reading of Acts 2–4,
he labeled this order “Bible Communism,” blending perfectionist,
restorationist, and primitivist impulses and positioning himself as a prophetic
authority over the sexual and communal life of a perfected people. In the early
1840s he advanced beyond monogamy to complex marriage, formally established by
the mid-1840s, in which all adult members were in principle spiritually married
to one another. Women could initiate or refuse sexual relations, and the system
was publicly framed as one of mutual consent, though Noyes and other leaders
frequently shaped pairings to prevent exclusivity and promote “useful” unions.
Later, Noyes implemented a eugenics program where selected couples reproduced
while most other sexual relations were governed by male continence to avoid
conception, helping make Oneida one of the most durable communal experiments in
American history.
Mormonism
Mormonism was a restorationist movement founded by Joseph
Smith Jr. that claimed new scripture, restored priesthood authority, continuing
revelation, and a mandate to gather believers to a New Jerusalem in preparation
for the last days. Within that system, marriage became an arena of prophetic
authority, priesthood keys, and covenantal expansion.
Before discussion Mormon plural marriage, let’s discuss
Smith’s exposure to earlier prophets who controlled spiritual marriage.
Joseph Smith’s hometown newspaper published an article on
April 26, 1826 describing Isaac Bullard’s followers as rejecting ordinary
marriage, abolishing surnames, and allowing adherents to “cohabit
promiscuously,” while Bullard was said to be “marrying and unmarrying”
according to his will and pretending to marry women “in God” to “sanctify the
flesh.” Five years later in 1831, a New York paper compared the “Mormonites” to
the Pilgrims and Joseph Smith to Isaac Bullard.
Regarding Cochranism: From February to September 1832 Joseph
Smith’s brother Samuel and future apostle Orson Hyde spent considerable time
among the Cochranites, staying in their homes and attending their meetings, and
later recalled that these people “believe in a plurality of wives which they
call spiritual wives” – relationships that were said to “dissolve, or disannul,
all former marriage connexions.” A Mormon branch was eventually organized near
a Cochranite settlement, and contemporary and later observers noted that some
Cochranite converts joined the Church and carried elements of this “spiritual
wives” teaching into early Mormon communities.
Regarding Matthias: From November 9th to 11th, 1835, Robert
Matthews, travelling under the alias “Joshua the Jewish Minister,” visited
Smith in Kirtland. Smith eventually recognized who he was and denounced him as
“the Devil in bodily shape.”
There is no evidence of comparable contact or influence
flowing from John Humphrey Noyes to Joseph Smith.
The precise date of Joseph Smith’s proto‑plural marriage
with Fanny Alger remains uncertain, though recent estimates place it in late
1835 or early 1836. In August 1835, the newly published Doctrine and Covenants
included a “Statement on Marriage,” noting that “this church of Christ has been
reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy.” Later that same year,
in an antinomian vein, Smith illegally performed the marriage of Newel Knight
and Lydia Goldthwaite by “the authority of the everlasting priesthood,”
signaling a willingness to ground marriage in priesthood authority rather than
civil law.
Five and a half years later, in 1841, Joseph Smith began
practicing plural marriage, marrying dozens of wives over the next two to three
years and introducing nearly 30 men and 50 women to the practice. His system
fits into a prophet‑controlled model of marital assignment and reassignment: he
controlled who could participate, leading men entered plural unions only after
his instruction and permission, and evidence suggests that he received
revelation designating plural wives for husbands rather than leaving unions to
ordinary choice.
Joseph’s polyandrous sealings illustrate marital
reassignment in another form, since about one‑third of his spiritual marriages
were with women already legally married to other men. Smith’s theological
objective here is unclear. D&C 132 also encodes a theology of marital
allocation and reallocation, stating that David’s wives were “given” to him by
prophetic key holders but later those wives were “given unto another.” Brigham
Young made this explicit in 1861 when he taught that a woman could leave a
husband for a man holding “higher power and authority,” and said that some had
received this teaching from Joseph Smith.
Taken together, Joseph Smith’s plural marriage system is
best understood as a comprehensive, priesthood‑centered order of kinship and
covenant, in which prophetic authority claimed power not only to authorize
plural unions but also to allocate, reallocate, and rank marital bonds under
sealing keys. In that sense, Mormonism belongs within the wider American
history of prophet‑controlled spiritual marriage, even as it gave that pattern
a more formal priesthood and sealing theology than Ireland, Bullard, Cochran,
or Matthias had achieved.
Summary
John Wesley’s teaching that believers could experience a
second work of grace, or entire sanctification, provided one theological
starting point for later perfectionist innovation. In the Blackstone Valley,
that idea took a more radical turn as some believers came to see perfection as
a quasi‑metaphysical transformation into a new spiritual state, helping
generate forms of spiritual marriage that could override legal marriage and
giving charismatic leaders like Shadrach Ireland increasing control over followers’
sexual and marital lives.
As the ferment of the Second Great Awakening spread, these
experiments led to multiple forms of marital reorganization. Some groups, such
as the Bible Communists, promoted complex marriage in which all adult members
were in principle married to one another, while others, like William Dorrell’s
movement, appear to have abandoned conventional marital bonds while affirming a
religiously charged celebration of sexuality.
Isaac Bullard, Jacob Cochran, Robert Matthews, John Humphrey
Noyes, and Joseph Smith each developed distinct forms of prophet‑controlled
marriage, but they shared one underlying principle: the charismatic leader
could override ordinary civil marriage and direct the creation, dissolution,
assignment, or reassignment of spiritual unions. Joseph Smith’s plural marriage
system emerged within that broader world of experimentation and, though
distinct in its priesthood and sealing theology, likewise developed strong
assignment and reassignment features.
In this light, Joseph Smith’s plural marriage system belongs
to a longer American lineage of perfectionist and prophet‑controlled spiritual
marriage. Mormon plural marriage thus appears not as an isolated anomaly but as
one especially elaborate form of early American religious marital innovation.