The Adam-God Doctrine

In 1852, Brigham Young made several significant theological developments, the repercussions of which are still being felt in the LDS church today. These included the formalization of several anti-Black policies and acknowledging publicly for the first time the church’s practice of plural marriage (i.e., polygyny). To support the principle of plural marriage, Brigham and several of the apostles also began preaching a new complementary theology that significantly revised earlier Mormon conceptions of the identity of God and the genesis and destiny of humankind on Earth. Specifically, Young declared that:

"When our Father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken—He is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians and non-professing must hear it, and will know it sooner or later."

Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses Vol.1, p.50.

Brigham’s new cosmology, frequently referred to as the Adam-God doctrine, was a new overarching vision that touched on every facet of Mormon theology by making plural marriage the central theme. This new theology went far beyond merely identifying Adam as God the Father—it significantly reshaped Mormon theology regarding who we are, from whence we came, why we are here, and what is our eternal destiny. As Jonathan Stapley justifiably points out, the term Adam-God doesn’t accurately reflect the scope of this new theology, and centers male identity and purpose of a cosmology that also defines female identity and purpose. For this reason, Stapley argues we should refer to it as “Brigham’s garden cosmology,” rather than the Adam-God doctrine. However, as I will hopefully illustrate below, Brigham’s new cosmology fundamentally centers male identity and purpose by design, and so I think referring to it by “Adam-God” reflects the reality of what is a patriarchal theology at its core.

Before I get ahead of myself, I want to clarify that I am not a trained historian, or theologian, and everything I convey here are my summaries and interpretations of the work of others. It is not my intention to give a thorough and detailed historical or theological analysis of the Adam-God doctrine. If you want a thorough and scholarly treatment of the Adam-God doctrine, I recommend David Buerger’s article in Dialogue, Jonathan Stapley’s article in the Journal of Mormon History, and Ogden Kraut’s (fundamentalist) tract entitled, Michael/Adam. There are many other sources you could consult, but these are some of the most rigorous and easily available. With that out of the way, let me give a brief summary of some of the major tenets of the Adam-God doctrine as better described in detail by the aforementioned sources.

An Adam-God Summary

In very brief form, the Adam-God doctrine is that Adam/Michael is the father of humanity—both spiritually and physically. He was a glorified eternal being who was born on another world and obtained their exaltation. He fathered our spirits through sexual reproduction with his exalted plural wives. He created this world (with others) and came to the Garden of Eden with Eve, one of his plural wives. They “fell” from their exalted state by eating the foods of this mortal world, which transformed their bodies toward mortality (essentially translation, in reverse). Then they sired the physical genesis of the human race on Earth. Thereafter, they reclaimed their exalted immortal status by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life. Adam also sired Jesus Christ in the flesh through sexual intercourse with Mary, but this time as an exalted being. It is the destiny of all humankind to follow the pattern of Adam and Eve to obtain their exaltation, which will open the path to eternal progression via the sexual procreation of spirit children in the eternities. We will then become an Adam or Eve to the worlds of our spirit children.

Again, I refer the reader to the articles mentioned above for a more thorough treatment of the Adam-God theology, but this brief summary is sufficiently detailed for the purposes of our present discussion. What I want to highlight below is that many of the ideas of the Adam-God doctrine are still with us today, affecting church doctrines and policies regarding eternal destiny, gender roles, sexuality, and more. Before we get into that, however, I want to emphasize that Brigham Young’s Adam-God teachings were not just a one off, anomalous occurrence. Brigham taught these ideas both publicly and privately from 1852 to 1877—a period of 25 years! Furthermore, subsequent church leaders continued to promote these ideas, though less emphatically, well into the 20th century. As Jonathan Stapley affirms:

Many church members and leaders have wondered whether we simply have not had a complete picture of Brigham Young’s teachings, that existing archival sources are in some way unreliable, and that his apparently controversial teachings were simply a misunderstanding. While it is true that we don’t have audio or video records of Young’s sermons—he was decades too early—we do have a body of sermon audits, meeting minutes, diary entries, and correspondence that is mountainous in volume. [...] The documentary evidence is overwhelming—Brigham Young clearly and repeatedly taught the details of Adam and Eve and his garden cosmology [i.e., Adam-God] from 1852 to his death in 1877.

Stapley (2021). "Brigham Young's Garden Cosmology," Journal of Mormon History, 47, pp. 76–77.

After Brigham Young’s Death

Despite his consistent and emphatic teaching on the subject until his death, the Adam-God doctrine was never fully embraced by the general membership of the church. Rather, many rejected it as heretical because it contradicted the Bible and many of Joseph Smith’s earlier teachings, whereas others (Young included) considered it a gnostic doctrine—a higher truth to be taught only to those enlightened enough by the Spirit to accept it. As such, most of Brigham’s sermons on the Adam-God theology we confined to more intimate settings in his later years. After his death, those church leaders who continued to accept it taught it to those who—having grown sufficiently enlightened by the gospel’s milk—were ready for the spiritual meat of the higher law. As David Buerger relates:

Contrary to many later perceptions, Brigham Young's death in late August 1877 did not mark the end of the Adam-God doctrine. [...] In 1880, for example, Edward Stevenson of the First Council of the Seventy "by request of one of the Presidency ... (spoke) upon God a the father of our spirrits (sic)" at a Davis Stake conference. His message was clear: "...tharefore Adam is the Father of my Spirrit & also of my body..." Two years later Stevenson and several others dealt with Thomas Howell, who opposed the Adam-God doctrine, in a general meeting of the Seventies. Howell was advised that if he "could not comprehend these things to lay them up untill he could, & if he indulged in that spirrit to correct or set President Young rite that he would be delt with & lose his faith & standing in the Church." After "meny remarks" Howell "said he was rong, sory for it & asked forgiveness."

Buerger (1982). “The Adam-God Doctrine,” Dialogue,15, p. 33.

Buerger recounts several more stories of high ranking LDS ecclesiastical leaders teaching principles of the Adam-God doctrine in official settings. In 1888, George Q. Cannon reemphasized Christ’s parentage through sexual union between Adam and Mary, as well as Adam having been born on another planet. The same year, a counselor in the Salt Lake Stake Presidency, Joseph Taylor, preached in the Logan Temple that Adam was an exalted being and the father of Jesus Christ. In the 1890s, apostles Brigham Young Jr., Franklin D. Richards, and Lorenzo Snow can each be found making statements affirming the Adam-God doctrine, with Snow exulting the thought of “Adam being our father and God.” Thus, in the decades following Brigham Young’s death, the Adam-God doctrine continued to be taught by church leaders, albeit in a less public manner.

Movement Toward Repudiation

With the turn of the century, those who opposed the Adam-God doctrine began to more systematically distance the church from it. For instance, the editor of the Deseret News, Charles Penrose, reprinted a letter he had written denying that “Mormons worship Adam, or that Adam was the father of Jesus Christ.” In a 1902 issue of The Improvement Era, he authored an article entitled, “Our Father Adam,” wherein he argued that Brigham Young’s 1852 statement that “Adam was our God and the only God with whom we have to do” was misinterpreted and better understood as referring to the concept of patriarchal order.

This apologetic would become a common feature of arguments denying the Adam-God doctrine over the next century, but in 1902 the matter was still not quite settled among the membership. Indeed, that same year, President Joseph F. Smith equivocated in a response to a member inquiring as to the veracity of the Adam-God doctrine by saying “Christ is not Adam, nor is Adam Christ, but both are eternal Gods, and it may even be said Fathers, since they are the parents of eternal or spiritual children. […] As to the personality and position of each God, and as to which is the greater, these are matters immaterial at the present time.”

Clear and strong repudiation of the Adam-God doctrine did not occur until 1912, when the First Presidency published in The Improvement Era the following statement:

Speculations as to the career of Adam before he came to the earth are of no real value. We learn by revelation that he was Michael, the Archangel, and that he stands at the head of his posterity on earth (Doctrine and Covenants, Sect. 107:53–56). Dogmatic assertions do not take the place of revelation, and we should be satisfied with that which is accepted as doctrine, and not discuss matters that, after all disputes, are merely matters of theory.

The Improvement Era, March 1912, pp. 417–8.
Quoted in Buerger (1982). “The Adam-God Doctrine,” Dialogue,15, p. 41.

The new official stance on the identity of God was addressed in greater detail in a 1916 article of The Improvement Era, written by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, entitled “The Father and the Son.” It declared that, “God the Eternal Father, whom we designate by the exalted name-title ‘Elohim,’ is the literal Parent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and of the spirits of the human race.”

Despite this unambiguous statement, apparently questions among the membership remained, as President Penrose felt compelled to declare in a General Conference of the same year:

There still remains, I can tell by the letters I have alluded to, an idea among some of the people that Adam was and is the Almighty and Eternal God. [...] The notion has taken hold of some of our brethren that Adam is the being that we should worship. [...] I am sorry that has not been rectified long ago, because plain answers have been given to brethren and sisters who write and desire to know about it, yet it still lingers, and contentions arise in regard to it. [...]

Who was the person Adam prayed to? Adam prayed to God. [...] So Adam was neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Ghost, was he? Then who was he? Why, we are told he was Michael in his first estate, and as Adam he will stand at the head of his race.

Pres. Charles Penrose, General Conference Report, 6 April 1916
Quoted in Buerger (1982). “The Adam-God Doctrine,” Dialogue,15, p. 42.

This marked a formal shift in the official teachings of the church regarding the identity of God, with 20th century LDS general authorities further deprecating the Adam-God doctrine. However, the entirety of the doctrine was not negated—only the part specifically related to whether it was Adam/Michael or Elohim who fathered our spirits. Much of the remainder of Brigham Young’s theological innovations that were originally part of his Adam-God theology continued to be taught. Specifically, 1) the doctrinal centrality of the patriarchal order of celestial marriage as expressed by eternal polygyny, and 2) the doctrine of eternal progression as the continuation of seed via sexual procreation between exalted beings. In the following sections, I will examine these concepts as they are found in the temple endowment liturgy and the changes made to that liturgy over time.

The Mormon Priestess

In July 2013, a landmark essay was written by Elizabeth Hammond for the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, entitled, “The Mormon Priestess.” This was later republished in modified form as a chapter in Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, edited by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright. In this insightful piece, Hammond discusses the many ways in which the LDS temple endowment liturgy is rooted in an explicitly patriarchal theology that establishes a God > Man > Woman hierarchy. I will be drawing heavily from this essay, while adding some of my own commentary regarding other things I have learned since that reinforce Hammond’s astute observations. Even though I will be summarizing many of her points, I still highly recommend reading the entire essay. It is phenomenal.

Before we proceed further, I must warn the reader that I will be quoting and analyzing the language of the endowment liturgy. I will not be revealing any of the specific things that members covenant not to reveal (i.e. the names, tokens, signs, and penalties). If this still makes you uncomfortable, consider yourself forewarned. However, given that you are reading this on a blog named Tokens and Signs, I feel like the fact that we’re not going to shy away from frankly discussing the temple liturgy on this site shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Finally, inasmuch as Elizabeth Hammond’s essay was written in 2013, it does not reflect the significant changes made to the language of the temple liturgy in 2019. Don’t worry, I will discuss those changes further below. For the present moment, I want to largely summarize and react to Hammond’s observations regarding the older language, while also looking back to the language used before the changes made in 1990. I think looking at the evolution of the language of the temple liturgy is insightful in terms of understanding 1) what the changes mean, and 2) why the changes take the form that they do. With that said, let’s take a look at “The Mormon Priestess.”

Binding Rituals of Patriarchy

The central thesis of Hammond’s essay is that the endowment ritual operates within “a very consistent internal logic of gender theology,” especially regarding “messages to women about their identity and spiritual condition.” In short, it is the logic of male headship and female subservience. In the endowment, women are promised they may become “priestesses unto their husbands” and make covenants of “spiritual allegiance to a husband who will someday be exalted as a god like Heavenly Father, whereupon the wife’s power—her priesthood—will come through the exalted husband.” Hammond explains, “In this model, the woman is eternally dependent on her husband for a connection to God the Father.” That is, women do not have access to God directly—husbands become the mediators between their wives and God.

Hammond explains that in the initiatory ritual, women administer the rites to other women, and do so through a special dispensation of priesthood authority, presently limited to the temple. In the endowment ritual, women (as well as men) don ritual vestments “preparatory to officiating in the ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood.” As Hammond observes, priestesshood is mentioned multiple times in the temple liturgy. In every instance, a woman’s priesthood is tied to her husband’s authority. For example, the opening of the endowment begins with the following words of introduction:

“Brethren, you have been washed and pronounced clean, or that through your faithfulness you may become clean, from the blood and sins of this generation. You have been anointed to become hereafter kings and priests unto the most high God, to rule and reign in the house of Israel forever.

Sisters, you have been washed and anointed to become hereafter queens and priestesses to your husbands.

Brethren and sisters, if you are true and faithful, the day will come when you will be chosen, called up, and anointed kings and queens, priests and priestesses, whereas you are now anointed only to become such. The realization of these blessings depends upon your faithfulness.”

Note the gender discrepancy in the wording above: men are anointed to become “kings and priests unto the most high God,” whereas women may become “queens and priestesses unto your husbands.” This is the essence of the logic underlying the temple liturgy. This logic will be reinforced over and over again throughout the later scenes of the endowment drama. To better illustrate this, as Hammond also does in her essay, I want to present side-by-side comparisons of the language of the endowment ritual before 1990, and after 1990. For those unaware, the endowment received substantial revisions in 1990 in response to member feedback, and a major focus of the changes was a softening of the language to sound more gender egalitarian. In the older version, for example, Elohim and his messengers only addressed Adam when giving instructions to both Adam and Eve; in the revised version, Adam and Eve are addressed together.

Let us consider the dialogue between Elohim and Adam and Eve specifying the conditions of the Fall:

Notice that in the older version, Elohim addresses Eve first, chastising her for hearkening to the voice of Satan to partake the forbidden fruit and for tempting Adam, and thereafter curses her with sorrow in childbearing. When Elohim addresses Adam, he is chastised first for having “hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,” and thereafter the land is cursed to torment him in his labors for subsistence.

What happens next is incredibly important. Eve is put under covenant to obey “the law of the Lord,” which is to hearken unto Adam as he hearkens unto the Father. The older wording of “your law in the Lord,” both reflects the fact that Elohim only speaks to Adam in the older version, but also hearkens back to the Creation scene in which Adam is made “lord over the earth, and over all things on the face of the earth.” In contrast to Eve, Adam is placed under “the law of Elohim,” and covenants directly with Elohim to obey God’s law and keep God’s commandments. Shortly thereafter, all participating patrons are placed under similar covenants, as part of the Law of Obedience.

Here sisters are first placed under covenant to obey the “law of the Lord,” which is to hearken unto their husbands, who in turn hearken unto the Father. Note that the previous version had sisters covenanting to “obey the law of their husbands.” From this, and other clues, we can deduce that the “law of the Lord” is synonymous with the “law of their husbands,” which the explanation of the terms of the covenant in the post-1990 version affirm. Also again note that the men are placed under covenant to obey the “law of God” and to serve God directly.

In her essay, Hammond explains how men and women effectively receive two different endowments. Adam (and male patrons) are brought into covenantal relationship directly with Elohim. Eve (and female patrons) are brought into a covenantal relationship with their husbands. As Hammond observes, “Nowhere in the temple endowment does Eve say God’s name (though she does say Lucifer’s name), including when she covenants. The single time she portrays a covenant relationship, she utters Adam’s name.” Hammond further explains:

God stipulates that if Eve covenants with Adam, and Adam covenants with God, then a savior will be provided for them. That is, Adam and Eve’s redemption is contingent upon the pattern established in this exchange, wherein Eve covenants to Adam and Adam covenants to God. [...]

The moment the patron makes the Covenant of Obedience, that person declares his/her God. The One that a person ultimately obeys is the One the person ultimately worships. Adam declares Elohim, but Eve declares Adam because Elohim told her that her salvation depended on her doing so. At no time in the temple does Eve explicitly covenant to Elohim. Adam is established as her master. I posit this is true for every covenant Eve makes.

Hammond (2013). "The Mormon Priestess."

This first covenant establishes the pattern for the entirety of the temple theology. Elohim is established as Adam’s God and the Lord of his covenants, and Adam is established as Eve’s God and the Lord of her covenants. Hence why Adam enters into the covenantal relationship dubbed the “law of Elohim” or the “law of God” and Eve enters into a covenantal relationship termed the “law of the Lord,” being synonymous with the “law of their husbands.” Keep this distinction in the back of your mind for when we look closer at the 2019 changes to the temple language a little later. Also recognize that in 1990, the temple language was significantly revised—softening the language of patriarchy while keeping the underlying theology intact. That is, the wording was changed to sound more egalitarian, while managing to convey the same underlying messages of male headship.

We’ll touch on the significance of the 2019 changes later, but for now, recognize that the general pattern of the temple theology is established in these first covenants, and carries over across the rest of the temple liturgy. As Hammond elaborates:

Two different endowments are going on, as if there are two different temples in the same room—one for men and one for women—where each individual views not just his/her own endowment, but also the parallel but distinctly different endowment of the opposite sex.  The endowment creates two individuals of different spiritual status, and acts out the relationship between the two in the veil ceremony, names, tokens, and marriage rites.

Woman, therefore, cannot have priesthood in this mortal life, because God only administers to men.  A woman’s power comes not from God the Father but instead directly through the husband-god’s exaltation.  In mortality, the husband is not yet divine, so the woman is not yet a priestess.  Once he is exalted (calling and election made sure, which can happen after death or during the second anointing), the woman inherits her priestesshood and she can administer to her husband-god with power.

Hammond (2013). "The Mormon Priestess."

The Nauvoo Temple Theology

Before we get further into Hammond’s analysis of the temple liturgy, let us briefly return to Brigham Young and his “garden cosmology” of the Adam-God doctrine. Recall that Young explicitly taught that Adam is “our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do,” and that Eve is one of his plural wives, with whom he sired our spirits and the physical bodies of mortal progenitors. Note that Eve is not proclaimed a goddess, nor is she a figure “with whom we have to do.” She is a companion to Adam who serves him solely in the capacity of the reproductive creation process. In this model, Adam is our God, just as he is Eve’s God and Lord.

We do not have a definitive transcript of the garden narrative from Brigham Young’s endowment liturgy against which we may directly compare the language of later versions. The versions we do have are likely the product of revisions made in the early 20th century, when things like the Oath of Vengeance were removed. It is likely that the garden narrative of Young’s endowment was fairly different from what we had immediately before and after the 1990 revisions, or what we have today. We can be reasonably confident of this because we know that the 1877 endowment ritual in the St. George Temple had a lengthy Lecture at the Veil that summarized the endowment ritual in explicitly Adam-God terms. Compared to the version cut in the 1990 revisions, we can see that the Adam-God elements had been removed and replaced with a version of the traditional biblical narrative found in the Book of Genesis.

While the explicit references to the Adam-God theology have since been removed from the temple liturgy, its legacy lives on through the explicitly patriarchal theology that remains intact. The current liturgy may not teach that Adam is the father of our spirits, but it still teaches that Adam is Eve’s God, just as each husband is God and Lord to their wives. The current liturgy may no longer teach that “Elohim, Jehovah and Michael are Father, Son, and Grandson,” as Joseph F. Smith once summarized, but it still establishes an Elohim > Adam > Eve hierarchy wherein Adam is Eve’s intermediary to Elohim.

This theology of the Patriarchal Order can be found in the earliest versions of the endowment ritual. In 1845, just as many of the general membership were receiving their endowments for the first time in the uncompleted Nauvoo Temple, Brigham Young and other apostles provided instruction on the meaning and significance of the narratives of the temple endowment ritual. Included in this instruction were numerous statements that explicitly taught this gender hierarchy:

The man was created, and God gave him dominion over the whole Earth, but he saw that he never could multiply, and replenish the Earth, without a woman. And he made one and gave her to him. He did not make the man for the woman; but the woman for the man, and it is just as unlawful for you to rise up and rebel against your husband, as it would be for man to rebel against God.

When the man came to the veil, God gave the keywords to the man, and the man gave it to the woman. But if a man don't use a woman well and take good care of her, God will take her away from him, and give her to another. Perfect order and consistency makes Heaven but we are now deranged, and the tail has become the head. [...] 

One reason why we bring our wives with us, is, that they make a covenant with us to keep these things sacred. You have been anointed to be kings and priests, but you have not been ordained to it yet, and you have got to get it by being faithful.

Heber C. Kimball, 21 December 1845, emphasis my own.
Quoted in "An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton", p. 227

We want the man to remember that he has covenanted to keep the law of God, and the Woman to obey her husband and if you keep your covenants you will not be guilty of transgressions.

Orson Hyde, 21 December 1845, emphasis my own.
Quoted in "An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton", p. 226

After his fall, another name was given to Adam, and being full of integrity, and not being disposed to follow the woman nor listen to her was permitted to receive the tokens of the priesthood. [...]

Woman will never get back, unless she follows the man back. If the man had followed the woman he would have followed her down until this time. Light, liberty, and happiness will never shine upon men until they learn these principles. The man must love his God and the woman must love her husband.

Brigham Young, 28 December 1845, emphasis my own.
Quoted in "An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton", p. 239

Apotheosis For He, But Not For She?

What are the implications of a temple liturgy that promotes a God > Man > Woman covenantal hierarchy? Inasmuch as the endowment drama is instructive of Mormon theology regarding the identity, purpose, and potential of humankind, what does the temple teach concerning the eternal destiny of different genders? The short answer is that in the eternities, husbands are superiors to their wives. The longer and more eloquent answer:

The dual-endowment insight suggests two different exaltations. If a woman’s deity is her husband, and she provides his eternal increase (children), and she is his priestess, this means she is not, herself, a deity. A priest and a deity have a specific relationship—one worships the other. The deity loves and upholds covenants to the priest, but the priest is not the deity’s peer. [...]

If a woman could be  priestess unto God, she could be exalted by Elohim and unto Elohim, and become a goddess.  But she is a priestess to her husband in her afterlife, not to Elohim. Ultimately therefore, I believe the temple establishes that it is the man who has the direct access to Godly power and apotheosis, and woman has as her promise access to her husband-god’s power (priestesshood) but NOT, under this definition, access to apotheosis.  She shall be exalted but not become a goddess.  Thus we do not worship her, pray to her, or entreat her for favor.  She is not a source of divine power to the human family, but a source of power to her divine husband.  She is a “Mother in Heaven” but not a “Heavenly Mother.”  The man alone will become a Heavenly Father, a deity, and a deity can have many, many priests (sons) and priestesses (wives).

Hammond (2013). "The Mormon Priestess."

The observation that only men qualify for apotheosis while the exaltation of women is limited to their being “queens and priestesses unto their husbands” is reinforced in various passages of the Doctrine and Covenants and other ritual ordinances of the temple. In D&C § 131:1–4, it is taught that “the new and everlasting covenant of marriage” (i.e., plural marriage) is requisite for man to obtain the highest degree of glory in the celestial kingdom, enabling eternal increase. Similarly, Brigham Young famously declared, “The only men who become Gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.” Critically, polygamy has always been limited to the concept of eternal polygyny (men having multiple eternal wives), despite the mortal polyandry (women having multiple earthly husbands) that some of Joseph Smith’s early plural wives experienced.

The revelation on plural marriage (D&C § 132) seems to imply that both husbands and wives joined together in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage will be exalted to godhood. It reads: “they shall be gods, because they have no end” and “because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.” However, it is not entirely clear that the “they” in these passages refers to the married couple and not to the husbands singularly. Verse 19 begins its elaboration on the blessings of exaltation by centering on the man (“if a man marry a wife by my word…), but then shortly transitions to they and them pronouns, which can be read either as a plural reference to the couple or a singular reference to the man/husband whose perspective is central in the narrative. The plural use of “gods” in verse 20 would suggest it is the couple, but as Elizabeth Hammond points out:

When Bruce R. McConkie interpreted this scripture to mean that women would be goddesses in his famous book Mormon Doctrine, Marion G. Romney—who was appointed By President McKay to identify errors in the book—listed “women to be gods” as one of those errors.

Hammond (2013). "The Mormon Priestess."

Notably, an 1879 exposé of the temple endowment written by Caroline Owens Miles claimed, “…that a man to be exalted in the world to come must have more than one wife. The woman then took the oath of obedience to their husbands, having to look up to them as their gods. It is not possible for a woman to go to Christ, except through her husband.”

Finally, the language of the second anointing ritual explicitly differentiates between the blessings bestowed to men and women in the celestial kingdom. Men become “kings and priests unto the Most High God, to rule and rein in the House of Israel forever” whereas women become “queens and priestesses unto your husband, to rule and reign with him in his kingdom forever.” Wives may be further blessed “to be an heir to all the blessings sealed upon her husband,” and to be “exalted to her husband’s exaltation,” but also “to attain to Godhood.”

Given its secretive nature, documentation of the exact wording of the second anointing is elusive. However, we do have records of the blessings given to Brigham and Mary Ann Young and to Heber and Vilate Kimball in 1846. In each of these, the male participants were anointed as a “king and priest unto the Most High God.” By contrast, their wives were blessed to be “queen and priestess unto her husband.” In the case of Vilate Kimball, the officiator (Young) “pronounced all the blessing upon her head in common with her husband.” The blessing given to Mary Ann Young stated:

Sister Mary Ann Young, I pour upon thine head this holy consecrated oil and seal upon thee all the blessings of the everlasting priesthood in conjunction with thine husband; and I anoint thee to be a queen and priestess unto thine husband, over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And thou shalt be heir to all the blessings which are sealed upon him, inasmuch as thou dost obey his counsel; and thou shalt receive glory, honor, power, and exaltation in his exaltation. And thou shalt be a strength in thy mind, for thou shalt have visions and manifestations of the Holy Spirit. And the time shall come that angels shall visit thee, and minister unto thee, and teach thee, and in absence of thy husband shall comfort thee and make known his situation. [...]

And I seal thee up unto eternal life, that thou shalt come forth in the morning of the first resurrection and inherit with him all the honors, glories, and power of eternal lives, and that thou shalt attain unto the eternal Godhead. So thy exaltation shall be perfect and thy glory be full, in a fulness of power and exaltation. And the glory, honor, and power shall be ascribed unto the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Second anointing blessing to Mary Ann Young by Heber C. Kimball, officiating.
Quoted in Buerger (1994), "The Mysteries of Godliness," pp. 88–90. Emphasis my own.

From these we see that the temple liturgy does appear to promise an exaltation to godhood for women, but that the blessings of their exaltation are constrained within the exaltation of their husband.

In short, Godhood > Goddesshood.

2019 Temple Changes

Now, with all of the above as a foundation, let’s talk about the significant changes made to the temple liturgy in January 2019. As we have already seen, these are not the first time that significant changes have been made to the temple rituals, including ones that have meaningfully altered temple theology. For instance, Brigham Young’s Adam-God doctrine used to be an explicit part of the Lecture at the Veil, but was revised into a more traditional biblical narrative probably sometime around the turn of the 20th century, perhaps contiguous to the removal of the Oath of Vengeance from the endowment liturgy.

Easily the best documented changes are those made in 1990, which removed the penalties and significant portions of the endowment drama, and altered the language to sound more gender egalitarian. As I argued above, these changes to the wording of the endowment give the impression of being more egalitarian, yet preserved the patriarchal nature of the underlying covenants. In January 2019, the wording of the endowment liturgy was again revised, and the nature of the changes again reflects an effort to make the liturgy appear more gender egalitarian. Some of these changes have theological implications, but I argue that others, once again, reflect an effort to give the impression of egalitarianism while actually preserving a theology of patriarchy that has merely been obfuscated.

To demonstrate my case, we will need to take a closer look at the specifics of these changes. A full transcript of the 2019 changes to the endowment liturgy can be found on the Thinker of Thoughts and Stuff blog, along with accompanying commentary. Here I want to focus on just a few sections that I believe are particularly relevant to our discussion, but if you are curious regarding the other changes or someone else’s opinion, I will refer you to Streeter’s blog.

EDIT (5/5/2024): Side-by-side comparison transcripts of the changes made in 1990, 2019, and 2023 can be found in this PDF document.

Queens and Priestesses, unto Whom?

The first significant change happens right in the introductory remarks of the endowment ritual. Now, both men and women are “pronounced clean” as a result of their washings in the initiatory. The addition of the word “hereafter” also clarifies that the blessings of both genders will be confirmed at a later time (in the second anointing ritual). The significant change here, of course, is replacing the phrase “to your husbands” with “in the new and everlasting covenant” in reference to women’s reception of queenship and priestesshood. This is reinforced immediately thereafter when the blessings of both men and women are specified as being “through the holy order of matrimony in the new and everlasting covenant.”

Is there a meaningful difference between the wording of these versions? I submit that there is not. In Mormonism, the “new and everlasting covenant” has since 1843 been a phrase denoting the Patriarchal Order of polygamy (i.e., polygyny). It is defined in D&C § 132, wherein men are entitled to take multiple wives—with or without their first wife’s consent. Indeed, the Lord declares that he will destroy the first wife if she refuses her consent. Thus, women are still queens and priestesses “to their husbands” according to the “new and everlasting covenant of marriage.” The change in wording just makes this less immediately obvious. It gives the impression of gender equity by obfuscating an underlying patriarchal theology through flowery euphemisms.

The Law of Obedience, to Whom?

When Elohim addresses Eve and places her under a covenant of obedience, she no longer addresses and covenants with Adam, but directly addresses Elohim and covenants with him. Indeed, she speaks the same words that Adam utters immediately after her. This pokes a big hole in Hammond’s 2013 argument that Eve only has access to Elohim through Adam, but if we look a little closer, we can see that something else is going on here that is noteworthy.

In the previous version, Elohim put Adam and Eve under separate covenants: the “Law of Elohim” for Adam and the “Law of the Lord” for Eve. As we saw earlier, the terms of these two covenants are distinct. The Law of Elohim (also, the “Law of God”) is that Adam covenants with Elohim directly to obey his law and keep his commandments. The Law of the Lord is that Eve will hearken to the counsel of her husband as he hearkens to the counsel of Elohim. This difference was even more severe in the pre-1990 version, wherein Eve covenanted with Adam “to obey your law as you obey our Father.” It was even described as “your (i.e., Adam’s) law in the Lord.”

In the 2019 version, both Adam and Eve enter into the same covenant—the Law of the Lord. That is, both Adam and Eve covenant with Elohim that Eve will hearken unto her husband as he hearkens unto the Father. However, Eve also addresses Elohim directly when entering into this covenant and states, “Elohim, I now covenant with thee that from this time forth I will obey thy law and keep thy commandments.”

After witnessing Adam and Eve enter into their covenants of obedience, the temple patrons are then also placed under covenants of obedience. Formerly, women covenanted to the Law of the Lord, and men to the Law of God. Now, both men and women simultaneously covenant to the same agreement. Which covenantal law are they both placed under? Not the Law of God (or Elohim)—it is the Law of the Lord.

Nelson’s Reassurance to the Fundamentalists

In support of the argument that the 2019 changes were not intended to alter the patriarchal theology of the temple liturgy, consider President Russell M. Nelson’s address in the the October 2021 General Conference, entitled, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation.” In this speech, Nelson begins by talking about the renovations to the Salt Lake Temple, using it as an prelude to his discussion of “adjustments” made to temple worship. He emphasizes that the renovations to the temple are necessary reinforcements to the existing foundation laid by the Utah pioneers, in order to ensure that the structure they built “will withstand the forces of nature into the Millennium.” (An emphasis on the latter-days and imminent apocalypse are common themes in Nelson’s talks as church president).

Nelson then continues by discussing the “restoration of the endowment” to Joseph Smith. He quotes an 1877 excerpt from John Nuttall’s journal, wherein Smith—shortly after the Nauvoo endowment was first introduced—allegedly told Brigham Young, “This is not arranged right, but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed, and I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all these ceremonies.” Thereafter, Nelson relates that Young and subsequent presidents of the church made refinements to the temple liturgy as directed by revelation. He quotes Harold B. Lee to emphasize, “Nobody changes the principles and [doctrine] of the Church except the Lord by revelation.” The full quote, which was made in the context of the church’s extensive Priesthood Correlation Program, is worthy of consideration:

Keep in mind that the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ are divine. Nobody changes the principles and doctrines of the Church except the Lord by revelation. But methods change as the inspired direction comes to those who preside at a given time. If you will analyze all that is being done and the changes that are taking place, you will realize that the fundamental doctrines of the Church are not changing. The only changes are in the methods of teaching that doctrine to meet the circumstances of our time. You may be sure that your brethren who preside are praying most earnestly, and we do not move until we have the assurance, so far as lies within our power, that what we do has the seal of divine approval.

Harold B. Lee (1971). "God’s Kingdom—A Kingdom of Order," Ensign, Vol. 1, No. 1

Nelson also mentions how the administration of the sacrament was changed from passing a communal drinking cup to the entire congregation, to the use of individual disposable cups. Importantly, he states, “The procedure changed, but the covenants remain the same.”

Finally, Nelson gets to the heart of his address—recent changes to the temple liturgy. He emphasizes that, “Under the Lord’s direction and in answer to our prayers, recent procedural adjustments have been made.” He repeatedly emphasizes that God is the author of these adjustments, not the brethren. He is careful throughout his talk to use “adjustments” rather than “changes” in reference to the temple. He claims that these adjustments were made to help patrons “understand with great clarity exactly what you are making covenants to do.” He presages the possibility of further changes in the future by emphasizing, “Current adjustments in temple procedures, and others that will follow, are continuing evidence that the Lord is actively directing His Church.” Having made all these reassurances, Nelson continues for the remainder of his talk to emphasize the importance of the temple and admonish the membership to make temple worship a priority in their lives.

When I heard this talk last October, it was immediately apparent to me what President Nelson was trying to accomplish. Historically, whenever significant changes have been made to the temple liturgy, segments of the membership (especially those of a more conservative/fundamentalist bent) often express dismay at what they perceive as distortions of an ordinance they believed was supposed to be unchanging and eternal. They have good reason to believe this—church leaders have frequently quoted Joseph Smith making statements to this effect.

On 11 June 1843, Joseph Smith is recorded as stating, “Ordinances instituted in the heavens before the foundation of the World in the Priesthood for the Salvation of men, are not to be altered or changed, all must be saved on the same principles.” In a church conference on 5 October 1840, Smith also taught, “Therefore [God] set the ordinances to be the same for ever and ever, and set Adam to watch over them, to reveal them from heaven to man or to send Angels to reveal them.” Subsequent church leaders have made their own statements to the same effect. In a 1979 General Conference address, Elder David B. Haight taught that a critical feature of the apostasy of the early Christian church was “sacred ordinances were changed to suit the convenience of men.”

For this reason, it becomes important that whenever the church makes changes to ritual ordinances, they reassure members that the changes are only procedural and not doctrinal. This is precisely the purpose of Nelson’s address.

Nelson’s message is clear. Regarding the changes to temple liturgy, just like changes to the administration of the sacrament, “The procedure changed, but the covenants remain the same.” He is trying to reassure those who are worried that recent changes to the language of the endowment ritual have fundamentally changed the covenants. I believe that his reassurances confirm the analysis of the changes I presented above. Specifically, that the wording was changed to give the impression of being more egalitarian, but that the underlying covenants of patriarchy and male headship are intended to remain intact—they’ve only been obfuscated.

Every Adam a God Again

I present the above as my observations and interpretation regarding the significance of the changes made in 2019 to the endowment liturgy, which are by no means authoritative. It is my opinion that the changes made in 2019 are similar in nature to those made in 1990, wherein the language of the temple liturgy was modified to give the impression of being egalitarian while simultaneously attempting to preserve the underlying theology of the Patriarchal Order that runs throughout. I’d argue that the 2019 changes are more significant in that Eve now actually makes her covenant directly with Elohim, and all participants irrespective of sex enter into the same covenant as part of the Law of Obedience.

However, I believe that the choice of wording that has all participants covenanting to the “Law of the Lord”—rather than the “Law of Elohim” or “Law of God”—is intentional and designed to obfuscate the patriarchal theology that resides within the unspoken terms of that covenant. Similarly, the invoking of “the new and everlasting covenant” is also intended to reference the polygynous cosmology of the Mormon afterlife, where an exalted husband becomes a King and Priest unto God the Father, and his plural wives become Queens and Priestesses unto their husband as their God.

In this, I believe we see a holdover of the Adam-God doctrine, which sanctified polygyny as the crowing jewel of the Restoration. This remains the case today, regardless of whether the husband’s god is Elohim or Adam/Michael in the current endowment liturgy. In the current version, Elohim might be God the Father, but every Adam becomes the exalted god through whom every Eve will receive her lesser exaltation.

Theologizing Heteronormativity

Before we close, I want to touch on one more area where ideas originally at the foundation of the Adam-God doctrine continue to persevere into the present to affect current LDS theology and policies. Specifically, the idea that eternal increase—the highest, most exclusive, and crowning jewel of exaltation—refers to the eternal genesis of spiritual progeny through celestial sexual reproduction. In an unending chain, exalted beings beget spirit children through sexual procreation, who in turn may overcome mortality and become exalted beings who beget their own spirit children, etc. This principle is centered in a heteronormative, polygynist cosmology, wherein women function as semi-exalted consorts to exalted men.

The current Latter-day Saint doctrine of the heteronormative patriarchal family is rooted in this cosmology. Polygynist marriages are still performed according to the new and everlasting covenant, provided that their practice is limited to the life hereafter. That is, men can be sealed to multiple women provided only one of those women is currently living (see General Handbook § 38.4.1.3), or they are legally divorced and the second sealing has been granted First Presidency approval (see General Handbook § 38.4.1.2). Marital sealings are limited to cisgender heterosexual relationships. The rationale for this restriction is rooted in the idea of sexual reproduction being an essential feature of the eternal destiny of humankind.

As a doctrinal principle, based on the scriptures, the Church affirms that marriage between a man and a woman is essential to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. The Church also affirms that God’s law defines marriage as the legal and lawful union between a man and a woman.

Only a man and a woman who are legally and lawfully wedded as husband and wife should have sexual relations. Any other sexual relations, including those between persons of the same sex, are sinful and undermine the divinely created institution of the family.

General Handbook § 38.6.16, "Same-Sex Marriage," accessed 17 December 2021

These policy rationales are formulated in the 1995 document entitled, The Family: A Proclamation to the World. It states that heterosexual marriage is “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” and that “gender is an essential characteristic” of that plan. In elaboration, the “Family Proclamation” continues by emphasizing that all individuals are “spirit sons and daughters of heavenly parents” whose plan for them entails family relationships perpetuating beyond the grave. It emphasizes that Adam and Eve’s first commandment “pertained to their potential for parenthood” and characterizes procreation as “divinely appointed” to heterosexually married couples. For emphasis, the document repeats: “Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.”

The idea of gender and heterosexual reproduction being an essential feature of humankind’s eternal destiny, organized according to “the new and everlasting covenant of marriage,” has its roots in Brigham Young’s Adam-God theology. The notion of each human being a literal spirit child of heavenly parents, and that our eternal destiny is fundamentally tied to the biological potential for parenthood are Adam-God principles. These are not my own conclusions—Jonathan Stapley makes this case very clearly in his January 2021 Journal of Mormon History article that I mentioned near the top of this post.

Stapley argues that “a primary focus of [Brigham Young’s garden cosmology] was to narrate how biological reproduction was a foundational and inevitable principle of the universe.” In so doing, he was departing from earlier teachings of his predecessor, Joseph Smith, while simultaneously expanding upon others. The biggest and most important area of divergence between the cosmologies of Smith and Young is the question of the genesis of spirits. Stapley explains:

Joseph Smith taught in the King Follett Discourse that “God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all.” This idea is attested in four of the audits. Additionally, Joseph Smith taught this concept in sermons, letters, and revelations from 1839 to 1844 and was remarkably consistent. For example, one observer recorded Smith preach in 1840 that “Eternity means that which is without beginning or End,” and that “the Soul is Eternal. It had no beginning; it can have no End.” Later in the same sermon Smith reiterated “that the Soul of man—the Spirit, had Existed from Eternity.” In fact, the idea that human spirits are eternal and uncreated is perhaps the single best documented Nauvoo teaching of Joseph Smith and it was fundamental to his approach to the problem of evil.

Stapley (2021). "Brigham Young's Garden Cosmology," Journal of Mormon History, 47, pp. 71–72.
Discourse, 5 February 1840, as reported by Matthew L. Davis.
Discourse, 7 April 1844, as reported by William Clayton.

In contrast, Young’s cosmology was intimately concerned with how spirits came to be, viewing them as having a definite beginning and a potential end. In Smith’s cosmology, spirits were coeternal with God, who gathered them and prepared a plan for their progression to eventual exaltation. In Young’s cosmology, spirits were created in what Stapley terms “viviparous spirit birth.” Stapley explains:

This is a zoological term describing, to use Orson Pratt’s explicit language, how spirits “were organized in the womb of the celestial female.” [Footnote 23: Parley P. Pratt described the anatomy of spirits and how they are “begotten by the heavenly Father, in His own likeness and image, and by the laws of procreation.”] Brigham Young went so far as to claim that not only were spirits created through celestial procreation, but that the irreparable spirit would also be destroyed. Like the burning of wood and coal, or the composting of weeds, their matter—what Young frequently called “native element”—was recycled in births of new spirits.

Stapley (2021). "Brigham Young's Garden Cosmology," Journal of Mormon History, 47, p. 75.
Orson Pratt, The Seer, July 1853, pp. 102–3.
Parley Pratt (1855). The Key to the Science of Theology, p. 50.
Journal of Discourses 2:124 and 1:352.

I highly encourage you to read the rest of Stapley’s article because he demonstrates very clearly that Brigham Young emphatically taught “that sexual procreation is a foundational law of the cosmos.” It is at the very center of his Adam-God cosmology. However, unlike other specifics of that doctrine—specifically the identifying of Adam as the father of our spirits—the idea of sexual procreation and viviparous spirit birth would manage to survive into the present as an orthodox doctrinal tenet. Indeed, it remains at the center of current Mormon theology. When every Primary child learns to sing, I Am a Child of God, they are learning an outgrowth of Young’s Adam-God theology. When we teach our children that their destiny is to progress to become like their literal spirit parents, we are also teaching them that they too may progress to become literal parents to a new generation of spirit children.

Returning to the temple liturgy, we’ve already discussed how exaltation looks different for men and women. Men become kings and priests unto God, whereas women become queens and priestesses unto their husbands. We also mentioned how the Doctrine and Covenants limits eternal increase to those who enter into “the new and everlasting covenant of marriage,” which is a euphemism for polygyny. It naturally follows that the Mormon cosmology of exaltation is the cycle of generating new spirit children through sexual procreation and putting into motion the plan for their eventual exaltation unto the same. In referring to Young’s Adam-God cosmology, Stapley affirms:

This generative cycle—the path Young described for Adam and Eve—he claimed, was the path of exaltation for all humans. Women and men, could look forward to endless procreation that renders even Abraham’s stars in the heaven and seashore sand modest by comparison. [...] Today church leaders boldly proclaim to the world that every human being is a child of “heavenly parents,” with many believers understanding this to mean viviparous spirit birth.

Stapley (2021). "Brigham Young's Garden Cosmology," Journal of Mormon History, 47, pp. 81, 83.

Heteronormative patriarchy is at the foundation of the current Mormon cosmology. It is the outgrowth of a doctrine that has since been classified by prominent church leaders as among the most profane of heresies. What shall we make of the fact that the Family Proclamation and the LDS church’s policies prohibiting same-sex marriage are the outgrowth of theological ideas that today are an excommunicable offense to promote?