ABSTRACT
In 1852, Orson Pratt, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced to the world that Church leaders endorsed and practiced the principle of plural marriage, or polygamy. Two years later his sister-in-law, Belinda Marden Pratt, wrote an apology for this theological principle in which she presents polygamy as the defining characteristic of heaven. Her Defence of Polygamy (1854), first written as a letter to her sister and then widely reprinted, argues that plural marriage is an eternal principle that must be embraced by all who would enter into heaven; “becoming members of a polygamic family” is the only way in which the faithful can be saved. In outlining this and related doctrines, Pratt draws on her own embodied experience of sex and co-parenting. Her heaven is informed by the biology of menstruation, ejaculation, and gestation as well as her experience of “sisterly kindness” shown by the other seven women to whom her husband Parley was married. While critics of the practice characterized polygamy as a form of slavery, Pratt regarded her entry into a polygamous relationship as a form of empowerment. Her experience of plural marriage and her theology of a “royal family of polygamists” came to define “the kingdom of heaven” for members and leaders of the Church, providing her an influence far beyond that she imagined available to monogamous Protestant women.
