Idea that righteous parents can save wayward children a consistent doctrine in Mormon history

Although doctrines and decrees change in the LDS Church — think polygamy and blacks — one consistent teaching from the time of Joseph Smith to today is that the righteousness of parents can provide salvation to wayward (read: unrighteous) children. This is a big deal to many LDS parents (I can think of a score or more, who worry about children who have moved away from church activity.) It’s important to understand that the definition of “wayward” extends far beyond a child that may have picked up criminal habits, lax moral standards or a particular vice. For example, the child of devout Mormon parents who becomes the devout follower of another religion, can often be tagged as “wayward.”

One of the more recent pronouncements on wayward children being saved due to their parents’ earthly exertions came from LDS Apostle James E. Faust in the April 2003 General Conference. In his talk, “Dear Are the Sheep That Have Wandered,” Faust quoted the early 20th century LDS Apostle Orson F. Whitney, who was himself quoting LDS founder Joseph Smith: “The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.”

Here’s another quote from the late LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer, in the April 1992 General Conference: “Who are these straying sheep — these wayward sons and daughters? They are the children of the covenant, heirs to the promise, and have received, if baptized, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which makes manifest the things of God. Could all of that go for naught?”

LDS doctrine differs from many churches in that it associates works, as well as faith, as criteria for judgment and ultimate reward from God. In that sense, the promise of salvation for wayward children is less an act of “grace” as a declaration that something can be accomplished for them in the afterlife. In his talk, Faust, who died in 2007, adds this caveat: “Repentant wayward children will enjoy salvation and all the blessings that go with it, but exaltation is much more. It must be fully earned. The question as to who will be exalted must be left to the Lord in His mercy.”

In Mormon doctrine, there is a difference between salvation, which is available to virtually all members of humanity, and exaltation, a higher, divine afterlife status. In fact, the Mormon view of human salvation is far more liberal than many churches, which sometimes draw a line separating humanity into a traditional heaven and traditional hell. It may be that the promise to concerned LDS parents that wayward children will belong to them in the afterlife — if the parents are righteous — is simply a consequence of a parent achieving exaltation and having the ability to interact with others, including children, who have been resurrected into a lower kingdom? The late LDS Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith seems to say exactly that in this excerpt from the LDS tome “Doctrines of Salvation”: “Children born under the covenant, who drift away, are still the children of the parents; and the parents have a claim upon them; and if the children have not sinned away all their rights, the parents may be able to bring them through repentance, into the celestial kingdom, but not to receive the exaltation.”

Also in the “Doctrines of Salvation,” Fielding Smith quoted LDS Prophet Brigham Young, who says: “Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang.” Several other quotes from LDS leaders on this topic is compiled in the September 2002 LDS magazine The Ensign.

In the early days of the LDS Church, huge importance was placed on how numerous a family a righteous Mormon priesthood holder could accumulate. The example of patriarchs, such as Abraham, was heavily emphasized. This was one reason, I believe, for the polygamy doctrine. However, the early LDS church also sanctioned “adoptions,” in which groups and families of church members became “children” of church leaders. John D. Lee, for example, was an “adopted” son of Brigham Young. This quote from Joseph Smith seems to underscore how the sealing process of children to parents provided an advantage in the next world:

“When a seal is put upon the father and mother, it secures their posterity, so that they cannot be lost, but will be saved by virtue of the covenant of their father and mother.

“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in his mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.” (For more quotes on this topic, go here.)

As I have mentioned, salvation for wayward children is a doctrine that likely scores of thousands of active LDS parents fervently cling to. The LDS Church’s belief that family ties are eternal is not public relations. It is frankly regarded as a promise tied to strict theological obedience. As a result, parents are serving as proxies for countless children, battling for their status in the afterlife even as many of these children have long put Mormonism out of their minds.

--- Doug Gibson

--- Originally published at StandardBlogs in 2013.

Orson F. Whitney biography captures the contradictions of faith

Orson F. Whitney, an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for almost a quarter century in the early part of the 20th century, is perhaps best known today for a 1929 speech delivered a little more than a year before his death.

As Dennis Horne, author of the biography, “The Life of Orson F. Whitney,” Cedar Fort Inc., notes, at the April 1929 LDS General Conference, Whitney promised faithful parents that their wayward children would be saved if they, the parents, remained faithful to their spiritual covenants. “Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, ’till you see the salvation of God,” Whitney promised in his discourse.

As Horne mentions, Whitney was certainly thinking of his eldest son, Horace “Race” Whitney, who had strayed from his parents’ faith. Race Whitney, a journalist and hopeful playwright, had been married and divorced twice -- to the same woman -- before he died of causes related to alcoholism at age 28.

Whitney is frankly more of a Wikipedia entry than a well-known historical figure of Mormonism.

Horne has affectionately focused on a life that bridged early Utah Mormonism to 20th century growth of the religion (1855-1930).

Using mostly the subject’s diary entries and autobiography, the author has constructed a life story interesting as much for its contradictions and secrets as for Whitney’s several-decades devotion to Mormonism. After a rocky start to adulthood, Whitney -- the son of Horace K. Whitney and Helen Mar Kimball, plural wife to Joseph Smith Jr. -- served a mission to Ohio and Pennsylvania at the age of 21. 

Now entrenched in his family faith, a new Salt Lake City bishop, Whitney married his first wife Zina Beal Smoot, and a year later, the new father was shipped to a second mission across the Atlantic Ocean to England where the first contradictions and secrets of Whitney’s life are revealed.

As Horne notes, Whitney was an emotional man, susceptible to praise and flattery. He also was a literary man, who would later write a four-volume History of Utah, two novel-size poems, and ghost write many articles for LDS leaders.

In England, Whitney entered a mission that was rife with dysfunctional behavior. The mission president, LDS apostle Albert Carrington, was later excommunicated for adultery while serving as mission leader and another missionary, Charles W. Stayner, was preaching a version of Mormonism that included reincarnation. During the mission, Whitney apparently made an energetic attempt to make a 16-year-old girl convert his plural wife, but was stymied by her mother’s objections.

As Horne relates, Whitney became a convert of Stayner’s theories for almost two decades, and was a driving force of a semi-secret Mormon group that discussed reincarnation and devised strategies to make Stayner the eventual prophet of the LDS Church. In fact, as his devotion to Stayner increased, Whitney partially supported his friend at the expense of his own family, and even lobbied LDS Church President Lorenzo Snow on reincarnation and Stayner.

During much of this time, Whitney was both a bishop and assistant church historian, as well as a noted author and poet in Utah. While it’s likely his long flirtation with reincarnation delayed his calling as an apostle, it never seemed close to harming his church membership, even as apostles and others publicly denounced the reincarnation doctrine.

It’s hard not to compare Whitney’s late 19th century obsession with changing the church’s position on reincarnation with the current Ordain Woman movement. The former, of course, did not lead to excommunication. Eventually Stayner, still a member of the church, died and soon afterward Whitney recanted his divergent beliefs, which essentially paved his way to an apostleship.

Horne’s biography is hampered because Whitney destroyed and edited large portions of his diary as he grew older. Examples of tampered diary entries include his relationships with Stayner, the English convert teen, some entries on reincarnation, and emotional affairs with some women (most notably Mary Laura Hickman) that Whitney would have clearly chosen as plural wives had he been allowed.

After the Second Manifesto of 1904, the LDS church hierarchy cracked down on polygamy, severely disciplining those who continued the principle. After he became an apostle in 1906, Horne notes that Whitney had the unpleasant task of disciplining longtime church members for polygamy, including former apostle and mentor John W. Taylor.

Whitney still believed in polygamy privately. There also is another confidante of Whitney’s, named “Dick,” who may have had the same Svengali-like effect on the apostle that Stayner once had. As with other potentially controversial aspects of his life, much of that subject was self-censored.

Before his first wife died in 1900, Whitney had one plural wife, Mary (May) Minerva Wells, the sister of a woman he had loved as a youth who had died. They had two children quickly but then were childless, although they stayed married until Whitney’s death. Frankly, there is not much of May in the diaries that Horne shares in his biography (Mary Laura Hickman is far more often on Whitney’s mind, for example) and one suspects that the couple’s relationship may have been strained.

Whitney’s health began to fail when he was called to be the LDS European Mission president in the early 1920s. The strain of dealing with a media assault on Mormonism in that country and added health problems to his prostate and kidney left him an invalid who could not even read by the time he returned to Utah. He regained his strength and served admirably as an apostle for the rest of his life.

In another example of his life of bridging generations, he was one of the first LDS leaders to often speak on KSL Radio. He died of pneumonia about a month after giving his final conference talk in April 1930.

Horne’s biography is an affectionate account of a man who deeply loved his religion and the men who led it. A bishop for three decades and apostle for 24 years, he expended all his talents, including writing and speaking, for his faith. As the book notes, he had failings and crisis of faith. That makes him real, and much preferable to the plaster saints that are sometimes constructed in hagiographies.

The biography is available here.

-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardNET