Nov. 11, 2026

Surprising Emma Smith Polygamy Puzzle (Michelle Stone 2 of 7)

Show Notes

Emma Smith Polygamy Puzzle

Michelle Stone didn’t expect one episode about Emma Smith to change her mind, but her deep dive into the Emma Smith polygamy sources did exactly that. In Part 1, Michelle explained how the Book of Mormon convinced her that polygamy was not God’s higher law. Her 132 Problems channel began there, with the scriptures. But scripture questions lead to history questions: what was happening when a revelation was given, and how reliable is the William Clayton affidavit? (Michelle and Cheryl Bruno wrote a paper on that affidavit for the Journal of Mormon Polygamy.) Then Michelle decided to do an episode on Emma.

https://youtu.be/xR_xqMgUEN4

Don’t miss our other conversations with Michelle: https://gospeltangents.com/people/michelle-stone/

Gospel Tangents

Mormon Enigma

She studied Emma the way she studies everything, sometimes 60 hours a week. She started with Mormon Enigma and Jennifer Reeder’s biography First, then read everything else she could find, including RLDS sources. Her conclusion: “Emma does not make sense.” Everyone who knew Emma praised her honesty and integrity, Michelle says, and yet once Emma denied that Joseph practiced polygamy, she became “the biggest liar in Mormonism.” Michelle doesn’t accept the usual explanations, that Emma was protecting her sons or the RLDS Church, without a source to back them up.

Her connection to Emma is also personal. Michelle, a mother of 13, lost two children in a row during very hard years in 2020 and 2021. She remembers standing at the sink with one thought: “Emma made it. I can too.” Emma lost her first son, twins, an adopted twin, little Don Carlos and a stillborn son, and Michelle believes her own losses gave her some insight into Emma’s life. She already had a daughter named for Emma. “I don’t care that much about Joseph Smith,” she told me. “I care a lot about Emma Smith.” That’s why she plans to write her dissertation on Emma, though she adds that the more she studies, the more Joseph has risen in her estimation too.

132 Problems/Death Threats

Saying all this out loud came at a cost. Many former members had supported her channel while she argued that polygamy wasn’t of God. When she said she didn’t believe Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, Michelle says, that support disappeared immediately and “brought the haters out.” Some fundamentalists made sure she knew they still believed in blood atonement, and she went through a long stretch of death threats. Others, she says, have had revelations that she will be their wife. She is quick to add that many of the fundamentalists she knows are lovely people.

The channel kept growing anyway. Michelle started it in February 2022, sure no one would watch, and found out she wasn’t the only polygamy geek. She calls section 132 “horrific” and says it’s time for it to leave our scriptures. She points to President Spencer W. Kimball ending the priesthood ban, influenced in part by Lester Bush’s article, as a model for how a church can change course. And she asks why we still tell the story of an angel with a sword threatening Joseph if he didn’t take teenage plural wives. When I asked whether that story is in the historical record, Michelle said it all comes down to the sources. She began by asking people to at least consider that Emma might be telling the truth. Now she wonders how the traditional account ever passed for settled history. “The field is white, ready to harvest,” she says.

In Part 3, Michelle talks about the hard years that took her back to school at Utah Valley University, and the patriarchal blessing that led her from Sarah Ann Whitney to Helen Mar Kimball. Members can get the whole interview right now at patreon.com/gospeltangents. Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapters

0:00 Introduction
1:12 From Scripture to Joseph Smith’s History
2:04 Death Threats & Blood Atonement
4:17 Researching Emma Smith/”Emma Does Not Make Sense”
6:53 Support for the Channel Disappears
8:11 It Was Emma, Not Joseph
9:05 “Emma Made It. I Can Too.”
11:45 “The Biggest Liar in Mormonism”?
14:05 Growing the 132 Problems Channel
16:39 Lester Bush & the Priesthood Ban
17:15 An Angel with a Sword?
17:48 Isn’t It in the Historical Record?

Don’t miss our other conversations with Michelle: https://gospeltangents.com/people/michelle-stone/

Gospel Tangents