This essay addresses the remarkable perseverance of Mormon polygamy. 1 I argue that its survival is chief ly 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. The history of Mormon

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... my rehearsed in this paper selectively appropriates that work, together with early Latter-day Saint discourse, to more fully exhibit the bright promise given plural marriage by the Church's founding generations. I will also recount the Saints' torturous detachment from the practice and, further supporting the paper's theme, summarize fundamentalist efforts to maintain a continuum with Mormonism's polygamous past. Finally, the essay concludes with comments of the implications for the persistence of plural marriage for official Mormonism and American society today. Anxious that there be no doubt concerning their commitment to the monogamous home, contemporary spokesmen of the orthodox Church repeatedly issue firmly worded communiqués denying that their organization approves polygamous marriage or has any formal connection either with Mormon fundamentalists or other communities that do. In what is probably the most-often referenced statement of that kind, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, in an interview with Larry King on CNN in 1998, said that the information he possessed was that only 2 to 5 percent of the Saints engaged in plural marriage, but added that it was a long time ago, was not now doctrinal, and was ended in 1890.