The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been in the headlines recently after a series of essays were posted on the church's "Gospel Topics" website that detailed much about the its history with polygamy (see here, here, and here). Most notably, these essays included admissions that the Church's founder Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives (at least one as young as 14) and that among these were women who were already married to other men.
While most of this information was not new to academics and scholars of Mormon history, much was likely surprising news to many of the Church's rank and file membership. While the institutional Mormon educational curriculum does contains some references to Joseph Smith's "plural marriages," full details about the extent and nature of these marriages, including his experiments with polyandry, are absent from the standard Sunday School curriculum (see here and here for an overview). Thus, these were surprising - if not shocking - revelations by the LDS Church to many of its members.
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