← Church History Matters
Church History Matters
203 - Word of Wisdom Command or Counsel? I Church History Matters I Word of Wisdom Series
00:50:30
Loading summary
Transcript88 lines
- [00:00]
A
Why has the word of wisdom been observed differently over time?
- [00:05]
B
Is the word of wisdom a commandment for all time, or is it a commandment just for our time?
- [00:09]
A
But a living church also depends on living revelation.
- [00:12]
B
The core doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are relatively few in number.
- [00:18]
A
That not only was alcohol used as a disease preventative, but that quote, it was also regarded as a necessary beverage.
- [00:25]
B
It wasn't just about alcohol either. The physiological health reform movement was also growing throughout the country.
- [00:32]
A
Did they just quit cold turkey? Did they just start living the word of wisdom right away?
- [00:37]
B
The matter was taken up and joked about.
- [00:39]
A
This is not a commandment, but is wisdom. It's a principle.
- [00:42]
B
Hey, this is a really smart thing to do, but I'm not commanding you to do this.
- [00:47]
A
Something has seriously shifted between then and now.
- [00:53]
B
Hello, Scott. Welcome back.
- [00:55]
A
Yes. Excited for a new series, man.
- [00:59]
B
Yeah. And this series is on our most requested topic. We have listeners contact us and say, hey, could you talk about this? Could you talk about this? And actually keep a whiteboard in my office of topics and it's going to take forever to get them all crossed off. But this was the most requested one. The Word of Wisdom.
- [01:19]
A
The Word of Wisdom, yeah. We're not completely sure why, but a lot of you out there have asked us if we could do a deep, deep, deep dive on the history of the Word of Wisdom. So for all of you who asked for it, here we go.
- [01:45]
B
When we say deep, deep, deep, it's because we already did a deep dive on the Word of Wisdom when we covered the entire Doctrine and Covenants last year. In fact, in preparation for this episode, I re. Listened to that episode and. And we did a pretty good job. You know, if I don't say so myself, if we do say so ourselves.
- [02:07]
A
That was fun when I remember that.
- [02:09]
B
It was fun. It was fun. And it's episode 145 of our podcast, if you want to go back and look it up wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. We also did a Saints and Soda episode with Garrett Dirkmont, who's one of our favorite guests of all time, explaining the history of the Word of Wisdom.
- [02:27]
A
And. But that said, you know, even though we did do a pretty decent deep dive, we were still under some time constraints with the Come follow me schedule. We not only had to cover Section 89 that week, Casey, if I remember right, it was also sections 90 through 92, which meant we kind of had to hurry a little bit faster. But now we do not have that pressure.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah, we. We were doing Multiple episodes per week to the point to where my parents complained that there was too much content. But now we're back in our original format and we can do a dive as deep as the ocean on whatever topic we want. And no one is going to tell us to do fewer or shorter episodes, except maybe our editor, Ryan. And pretty much everyone is scripture central. Yeah. Shout out to Ryan. Ryan, you're such a great editor. So we're going to take our time on this and we're going to do a long, marinating, slow roasted walk through the Word of Wisdom throughout the entire history of the church.
- [03:27]
A
Slow roast? Yeah. It's going to be like enjoying one of those slow roasted chickens at Costco, only we will not be devouring this meaty topic sparingly. See what I did?
- [03:39]
B
I see. What?
- [03:40]
A
Word of Wisdom.
- [03:41]
B
I got it. A little Word of Wisdom humor. There's five or six people that will understand that.
- [03:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good times. But so in doing this, we do want to point out that we're probably not going to do so much of a verse by verse walkthrough of section 89. We did that back in episode 145. Again, go check that out if you want to hear that. What we're more going to focus on here is sort of the history of how the Word of Wisdom has been defined and practiced in the church, especially the contexts in which all of that happened, where it fits into the church's overall teachings, essentially. Is that fair, Casey?
- [04:17]
B
Absolutely. And one of the things that has become clear throughout, throughout our history is that the Word of Wisdom is a big deal. It's one of the ways that Latter Day Saints distinguish themselves from members of other faiths. I think just about every Latter Day Saint could tell a story about how their faith came up in a social situation because of the Word of Wisdom. At some time they were offered something that's forbidden by the Word of Wisdom, like coffee, tea or alcohol. And they had to explain that they couldn't partake because of their religion. And our health code is one of the most visible things about being a Latter Day Saint.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah. And one thing that's also clear to anyone who's done even a little bit of study on this is that expectations surrounding the observance of the Word of Wisdom have actually changed significantly over time. It's very, very different today, for example, than it was in Joseph Smith's time. And sometimes that's troubling for people. And this is why I think this is worth covering. Right. In fact, that brings us to one of the most commonly asked questions that listeners have sent in. And we're going to call it our burning question of the day, which is why has the word of Wisdom been observed differently over time just in our short history of our church? Like, why is that?
- [05:34]
B
Right. And we should also note that when we say time, we could go in a lot of different directions. For instance, if the Lord commands the Saints to abstain from the use of wine in our time, does that mean it was a command for all time? Did people in the Bible or the Book of Mormon sin when they drank wine? Did Jesus use alcoholic wine when he hosted the Last Supper? Did the Saints break the commandments when they used wine in their early sacramental services? Is the word of wisdom a commandment for all time, or is it a commandment just for our time? Right.
- [06:10]
A
Yeah. Often there is a tendency in the church that we feel like the way things are done now is the way things were always done. There is one true and living way to do it, the way we are doing it now. And then we want to that back into Scripture. There's a problem with that. Of course it's comfortable to think that all the teachings of our church currently are eternal. The uncomfortable truth and the uncomfortable fact is that there are only a precious few core truths that are eternal and unchanging. But a living church also depends on living revelation. And many of the teachings of the church are specific to this time, though they can be traced back more or less to timeless truths. So there is some stuff that shifts and then there's some stuff that stays the same. And sometimes that's uncomfortable. Maybe. Let's unpack that for a second. Casey, how should we think about both of those?
- [07:05]
B
Yeah, there are eternal truths that don't change, and our religion is based on those. For instance, this is a quote I share in my classes from Elder David A. Bednar. It's from his book Increase in Learning. And here's what he wrote. He wrote, a gospel doctrine is a truth, a truth of salvation, salvation revealed by a loving heavenly father. Gospel doctrines are eternal. They do not change and pertain to the eternal progression and exaltation of heavenly fathers, sons and daughters. Doctrines such as the nature of the Godhead, the plan of happiness, and the atonement of Jesus Christ are foundational, fundamental and comprehensive. And then he adds this interesting sentence. He says the core doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are relatively few in number. That's the end of the quote. And for me, the most interesting thing he says, there is that last sentence. Where he says the core doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are relatively few in number.
- [08:03]
A
Yeah. And the criteria he uses for core doctrine there is that it's eternal and does not change and that it pertains to the eternal progression and exaltation of heavenly father, sons and daughters. He cites examples like the Godhead, the plan of happiness, the atonement of Jesus Christ. I remember Casey taking his class 20 something years ago at BYU, Idaho, right before he became an apostle. And I remember him walking through this.
- [08:28]
B
You were in his class? He did this in class.
- [08:30]
A
I was in his class.
- [08:31]
B
Oh, wow.
- [08:32]
A
He did this in his class. And I remember him kind of, you know, rocking my world when he said there's only a couple doctrines really, like fundamentally that don't change. And he did that. Godhead, plan of happiness, atonement of Jesus Christ. Very few. That's not an exhaustive list. But he said most things then grow out of that are principles and applications. Anyway, he had us do this whole paper on that, which is fun. But it got me thinking. What are some examples of things that some people have thought were doctrine, but they have changed over time? A couple that pop into my head immediately are polygamy. It was actually authorized in this church from the 1840s to the 1890s, but now it's an excommunicable offense. I was talking about that in class the other day with some students, and one student was saying, how is that not a doctrine? And we actually look at section 132, the first 20 verses say the doctrine is eternal marriage between one man and one woman. That's what exaltation is based on. One application of eternal marriage is plural marriage. Anyway, there are some nuances and there's some careful ways to kind of think about the differences there. Another one would be like priesthood and temple availability. Right. There was no racial restriction in Joseph Smith's day for who could access the temple or belong to the priesthood. But then in Brigham Young's day, until 1978, there was. But then now we're back again to no racial restrictions. Right. And we've done a whole series on that. We just got done in our last series talking about women in priesthood, and we talked about different definitions of priesthood, which was a fun ride. Like priesthood in. In the Doctrine of Covenants is defined sometimes as a group of male priests. It's also a reference to the eternally sealed family of God, which includes men and women as priests and priestesses. It's also male and female temple work workers. That's how it's referred to in Nauvoo. It's also referred to as the power of God delegated to man. It's also referred to as the authority that all men and women exercise in their church callings today. And I wouldn't say that one's changing that one. It's more like we got layer and layers and layers of meaning on that word, which is fun to trace that we tried to do that last series, which is fun. One more maybe is the teachings on the gathering. Maybe this is a clear example. Teachings on gathering. Right. Gather physically to a center place. That was the teaching of the church in Joseph Smith's day and Brigham Young's day. But then that's going to shift to church leaders saying, stay home and gather where you are in your own nation. And so those are just a couple that came to mind. I just jotted down, like, how have some fundamental teachings in our church changed or shifted over time? And those are examples that a lot of our listeners would be familiar with.
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, and you really went for some fundamental teachings. I was going to name some cute ones. Like young men and young women can both go on missions when they're 18. That's a teaching that's changed. Or church is two hours, hours instead of three hours, which was the most popular change in the history of the church, I think I could note. Or women can act as witnesses at baptisms and proxy baptisms and sealings. All things that have changed relatively recently within the last decade within the church and what we call this cluster of teachings that are expected to change. Usually we use the term policy or practice to describe them, though there's other names we could use too. Doctrines are eternal, but policies and practices are usually time bound and specific to a certain context. So to take your last example there, the doctrine of the gathering of Israel has remained constant since the beginning of the church and has to do with getting people gathered into the eternal family of God through temple ordinances. But the practices and the policies related to it have changed based on changing context. When, for example, there was only one temple in the world, saints were invited to gather physically to Nauvoo or to the Inner Mountain west where the temple was, so they could make covenants there. But once temples and stakes began to be built in other parts of the world, the one temple context had shifted. And so church leaders began to counsel new converts to stay where they were and to build Zion locally.
- [12:58]
A
Yeah. So when we're trying to wrap our heads around a question like why has the Word of Wisdom been observed differently over time. It's helpful to understand first that the Word of Wisdom is itself not a doctrine. Right. It may be doctrinally based on the sanctity of the body or the need for God's people to be holy, but it is itself not a doctrine. In fact, in verse three, it actually refers to itself in section 89 as a principle with promise. I like that. It's a principle with a promise, which he says in that same verse is adapted to be helpful to anyone striving to be a saint. So that's the first thing to remember is this is not a doctrine that's unchanging. Right. And then the second thing we need to keep in mind when we're trying to get why the Word of Wisdom has been observed differently over time is to understand the context that surrounded those shifts in practice. You mentioned policies and practices are time based and context specific. So to begin with, we know the Word of Wisdom was a revelation given specifically to church members in Ohio in 1833. So that can spark the question, okay, so what was the original context In Ohio in 1833, the cultural context of what was happening? What do we need to understand in order to appreciate, first of all, what originally brought this revelation about, and then how it was originally thought of and practiced by church leaders and members? But then, too, to answer this question fully, we need to understand, how did the cultural context shift that the saints were in? And then why did church leaders then shift the application or practices and policies surrounding the Word of Wisdom in tandem with those cultural shifts? And so we would expect that to happen. That's how it's always happened as the cultural context that the saints find themselves in shift and change church leaders. This is the value of having living prophets and apostles. Right? One of them is that they can then apply these principles and practices in ways that are most relevant and helpful to the saints. And so that's what we want to do. You know, we want to explore all of these cultural contexts in this series. And so we're not sure how many episodes this is going to be, but today, let's start, Casey, with that 1833 Ohio context.
- [15:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, just to cite an example, when you read verse three, and let me also reference verse four, which says the word of Wisdom was given because of the evils and designs in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days. So knowing that this was given specifically for those of us living in the last days, we don't need to do mental gymnastics to try and explain why the Savior or his apostles or any other earlier dispensations, drank wine or used the substances currently forbidden by the Word of Wisdom. They weren't in the last days, for instance.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah, so he makes this very specific in verse four. This is four people living in the last days. So he's already contextualizing it broadly there. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Okay, so let's begin then. Let's do the work of understanding the cultural context in which the Word of Wisdom was given. What were the conditions the saints were living in? What were the challenges, the evils and designs that they were contending with? What's happening in Ohio in 1833 relative to the issues that are actually addressed in section 89? And then as those conditions change, like I said, we're going to want to trace how the policies and practices surrounding the Word of Wisdom change to meet those challenges. So, Cayce, how do we do this? Where should we start to dig into the context of Ohio, 1833.
- [16:37]
B
Right, right. I mean, just by exploring the context of this one teaching, we actually find out a lot about the conditions of the times when the church was restored and how the Word of Wisdom developed over time. And it's a story that kind of weaves its way in and out of the economics and the politics and the societal winds of the nearly two centuries since the Word of Wisdom was first revealed in 1833. And I'm going to give some credit here for a lot of this research. We want to acknowledge the work of a really great scholar, Paul Peterson, who wrote his dissertation on the history of the Word of Wisdom. And let me make a personal note here. Paul Peterson was the head of the Department of Church History and Doctrine at BYU Provo for a number of years. Amazing guy. One of the funniest guys I've ever known, too. He would always come up to you and go, hey, you can't win the super bowl every day, bud. Something like that. After he'd observed your lesson or something. Or he would say, you know, you're a flaming ball of charisma or something like that. And he was just really funny and really kind. He was actually going to be my thesis chair when I was working on my master's thesis, but this was way long ago. And he got called up to reopen the Jerusalem center after 9 11. And he called me personally and said, you know, the First Presidency has asked me to do this. I'm so sorry, I can't be your chair. Can you find somebody else? And then he Pointed me in a couple directions. So, Paul Peterson. And if you look in the footnotes for the. For the Joseph Smith papers on section 89, too, you'll see that they mostly reference Paul Peterson. Like, this is still the standard text and we want to recognize the excellent work he did. In fact, we'll post in the show notes a link where you can go and download Paul's dissertation. And it's eminently readable. So if you want to check our math, we'll just give you that link and you can go and find it. Because we're working off Paul's stuff here, though we've added in some. Some more recent research as well.
- [18:40]
A
So this was in 1972 that he did this dissertation, correct?
- [18:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [18:46]
A
So excellent. Keep that in mind. Check out that link in the show notes. This is very good. Is Paul still around? Is he still alive?
- [18:53]
B
I should have mentioned that Paul passed away a few years ago. He fought with cancer for a couple years and, you know, a couple times I saw him, he was totally bald. And. And then we lost him, unfortunately. But he is still very, very well respected and revered in religious education. Fondly remembered and a great guy. Or I would promise you, if he was still with us, we would have him on as a guest and just let him explain all this. But we're going to try to live up to his legacy here.
- [19:21]
A
Okay. Well, let's set the scene in early America, the American Republic. Talk about alcohol. Okay. Alcohol consumption was widespread among early Americans. And in the early 1800s, it was on the rise. It was estimated that in 1792, the average American drank two and a half gallons of alcoholic beverages per year. By 1810, that figure had risen to four and a half gallons. And in 1823, the figure had risen to seven and a half gallons. There's a lot of reasons for this. Liquor was sometimes seen as a common table beverage. It was seen as a mark of hospitality. Also, water could be a dangerous carrier of diseases. Honestly, it would carry things like tuberculosis and cholera. And alcohol may have been safer to drink in a lot of cases. And so the United States was a nation where drink was associated with all kinds of social associations, like the way that it is today. But that context was alive and well then as well.
- [20:26]
B
Yeah. So Horace Greeley, who's this really famous American writer, he even interviews Brigham Young at one point, captures what the early 19th century was like as an American. And in this recollection, he wrote about his childhood days in Vermont. So this is what Horace Greeley wrote. He Said, in my childhood, there was no merrymaking and there was no entertainment of relatives or friends. There was scarcely a casual gathering of two or three neighbors for an evening social chat without strong drink, cider always, while it remained drinkable without a severe contortion of visage. Rum at seasons and on all occasions were required and provided. No house or barn was raised without a bountiful supply of the latter and generally of both. And then he gives a bunch of slang names for alcohol. He says, a wedding without toddy, flip, sling or punch with rum undisguised in abundance would have been deemed a poor, mean affair, even among the penniless, while the more thrifty, of course, dispense wines, brandy and gin in profusion. Dancing, almost always the only pastime wherein the sexes jointly participated, was always enlivened and stimulated by liquor. Militia training, then rigidly enforced at least twice a year, usually wound up a drinking frolic at the village tavern. And election days were drinking days, and even funerals were regarded as inadequately celebrated without the dispensing of spirituous consolation. So, man, I don't know if he missed any social occasion, but he runs through, like, barn racings, dances, weddings, funerals, election days. And then he just basically says, if you had a relative come over, you broke out the drinks, right? And it existed in abundance and in all manner. And I gotta say, you know, 17 gallons of liquor is a lot for one person, even over the course of a year. So this was a big part of being an American. It was part of our founding legacy,
- [22:42]
A
I guess you'd say, wow, what a legacy. And, of course, this level of drinking in America and American life naturally raised a few heckles about the wisdom of doing so or even the safety of doing so. And a number of people spoke out about it, most notably a guy named Benjamin Rush, who's one of the early founding fathers. He was the prominent voice against alcohol from the time of the American Revolution until 1815, Rush argued in a pamphlet he wrote in 1784 called An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind, where he says that excessive consumption of distilled alcohol, such as rum and whiskey, causes serious physical illness, mental instability, moral decline, and social disorder. And so he frames drunkenness not just as a sin, but but actually as a disease that affects both body and will. Rush believed widespread intemperance threatened public health, and his medicalized understanding of addiction starts to help lay the intellectual groundwork for the later American temperance movement, which many of you will have heard about and
- [23:56]
B
A lot of Christian leaders picked up on Russia's ideas here and began teaching that excessive drinking was inconsistent with the teachings of churches. This, in turn, led to the founding of the American temperance Society in 1826. That's the year before Joseph Smith gets the plates of the Book of Mormon. And the movement to curtail or ban the use of alcohol began to spread throughout the country pretty quickly. For example, by 1831, just two years before the word of wisdom was revealed to Joseph Smith, state temperance societies existed in all but five of the states, with 2,200 local societies and a membership of approximately 170,000. And just to show how fast it was growing, by two years later, the local societies had more than doubled to 5,000, with a total membership of 1,250,000. So just exponential growth in a very, very short period of time. And at the same time, these temperance societies were complicated. They weren't quite as monolithic as we might think. For instance, some of the more liberal temperance societies drew the line of distilled liquor, but they held relatively few prohibitions against drinks like beer, wine, and cider. So hard liquor versus I don't know what to call them because I don't have an experience talking about alcohol. But like lower proof beverages. Is that the best way to say it?
- [25:28]
A
Scott, I too, share your ignorance. I don't know. Lower proof sounds good.
- [25:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, lower proof. Okay, okay. And other. Other societies were more strict and just forbid any consumption of alcohol. And these distinctions, along with the tendency of some Southern temperance leaders to identify some of the leaders in the northern United States with the movement to abolish slavery, meant that the temperance movement eventually kind of fractures and then declines. But in the early 1830s, where we're starting our story, it was at its peak. So when the word of wisdom comes, the temperance movement is on the rise, and it's just going to keep going up. Throughout the 1830s, it becomes more and more of a cultural force in the United States where the saints are gathering.
- [26:18]
A
And guess which state in the United States of America was most affected by the temperance movement? I will tell you. It was the state of Ohio. It's the State of Ohio, right Where Latter Day Saints had been commanded to gather in 1830, the Lord told the New York Saints to gather there. And here we are. The church is now headquartered in Ohio, which happens to be the state in the Union that has probably the most fervency going on about this idea of temperance. Ohio at this time is still frontier. A lot of different kinds of liquor Were available in wide abundance. There a guy named James Finley, who's a Methodist revivalist, he noted as he rode his little circuit in Ohio that not only was alcohol used as a disease preventative, but that it was also regarded as a necessary beverage. And a house could not be razed, a field of wheat cut down, Nor could there be a log rolling, a husking, a quilting, a wedding, or a funeral without the aid of alcohol.
- [27:26]
B
So wild, wild times, quilting back then, you know, lots of alcohol while you're.
- [27:31]
A
I mean, we couldn't even quilt without alcohol. I want to see some of those finished quilts, actually, with people who've been drinking alcohol.
- [27:40]
B
I bet the stitching was. Was all over the place and everything like that. Or maybe you get into the groove again. I don't have a lot of experience with this stuff. That's true. Okay. So, as in many other areas of the United States, in Ohio, churches became leading proponents. The temperance movement, for instance, the Shakers, who were neighbors to the saints in Ohio. You remember Parley P. Pratt and Sidney Rigdon and Leman Copley. Go and visit the Shakers and give them section 49. They strongly oppose the use of alcohol, and they're actually bigger than we are around this time. So they don't support the drinking of alcohol, especially not as a normal part of community life. And from their beginnings in the 18th century, the Shakers are a good example of one of these movements. They emphasize celibacy, simplicity, self control, spiritual purity. And they saw alcohol, especially distilled spirits, as something that encouraged disorder, excess, and moral decline. Now, the hotbed for temperance reform in Ohio was the area known as the Western Reserve, which is right where the church is. That's where approximately one quarter of all the total temperance societies in the state were located. And there's also a lot of religious groups there, like we already mentioned, the Shakers. Another person that was contemporary, this is Reverend Edward Brown, who was a resident of Oberlin, Ohio, noted that in the 1830s, raisings, meaning, you know, the construction of a building without whiskey soon became the rule instead of the exception in this part of Ohio. And another settler there, D. Griffiths, no relation to me, who was just a temporary settler in the region, noted in 1835 that, quote, the inhabitants in general, who have much regard to their reputation, practice total abstinence. So this guy passing through, he's just there temporarily, is like, whoa, Everybody around here is really concerned about their reputation when it comes to alcohol consumption. They won't touch it because they think that it'll be harmful to their reputation.
- [29:42]
A
Yeah. We can also see a strong push for temperance in, like, the newspapers in this region of Ohio, like the Paynesville Telegraph, which coincidentally published the first anti Mormon book ever. Thank you very much. Also frequently published warnings against intemperance. An article published in that newspaper urges all individuals, sex and groups to unite together in the cause of temperance. So it should come as no surprise to us that on October 6, 1830, a temperance society was organized in Kirtland, Ohio. Right. Everybody's doing it, and it's. It's clearly a good thing. Like, people are seeing this as, like, good. Just a few weeks later, the first missionaries carrying copies of the Book of Mormon arrived there. It's a group that included Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and Peter Whitmer, Jr. We call this the Mission to the Lamanites. Right. On their way out to the. To the western past the border of the western United States to talk to the Native Americans out there. They stop in Kirtland, which just gets the whole ball rolling here, which is so cool. But by all accounts, the Kirtland Temperance Society was very successful. The Kirtland Distillery, which had existed since 1819, was closed for lack of patronage by February 1, 1833, just a few weeks before Joseph Smith receives Section 89, the word of wisdom. One resident of Kirtland said that the Kirtland Temperance Society, quote, did more to reclaim the drunkard, save the moderate drinker, and protect the rising generation than the whole Prohibition party of Ohio has ever done or ever will do.
- [31:22]
B
Wow, man.
- [31:22]
A
Let's just step back for a second, Casey. So in the whole United States, Ohio is kind of leading the pack. And in all of Ohio, it's the Western Reserve and then all the Western Reserve. The Kirtland Temperance Society is being held up as having done more to save the drunkard, the drinker, and the rising generation than all the rest of the Prohibition party of Ohio.
- [31:43]
B
Wow.
- [31:44]
A
It's like the tip of. The tip of. The tip of the temperance movement. It sounds like was happening right there.
- [31:50]
B
That's what they claim. I don't know if they had enough data to know that they were saving actual drunkard more than any other place. But it seems like this guy whose name is Christopher Carey, he's the one that writes that quote. Yeah, feels like, yeah, we're doing more. We're the tip of the spear, just like you said, we're the most important or most successful temperance society in Ohio. And again, we don't have a lot of information about how much effect the local temperance society had on Joseph Smith or the early saints. But it seems safe to say that they would have been aware of their work. Kirtland wasn't huge. Safe to say, yeah. And it's still not huge today. So we want to emphasize the word of wisdom does not come in a vacuum. These ideas were in circulation. There were a lot of people, particularly where the saints lived, that were involved in temperance movements. And we should also mention it wasn't just about alcohol either, though that seems to be the biggest movement. This is the wording. The physiological health reform movement was also growing throughout the country. And this movement focused on the effects of different substances on the human body, not just alcohol. In fact, the most famous proponent of this movement was Sylvester Graham, who just so happened to also be a former agent of the Pennsylvania Temperance Society. And Graham recommended things like complete abstinence from. Here's his list. Distilled spirits, wine, beer, cider, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, pepper, mustard, and every other kind of artificial stimulants and narcotics. So, yeah, I mean, he would go so far as to say, hey, lay off the mustard there, pal, Because I guess he saw it as an artificial stimulant or a type of narcotic, which I've never thought of pepper or mustard that way, but okay, that. That's where the thinking was in the early 19th century.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah. And Graham is so influential. Like, I've read more up on him, and it's. If I understand his line of reasoning. Right. He thought that anything that stimulates your body unnaturally, like these substances, would lower your ability to control yourself sexually. So he believed that overstimulation of the body led to lowering of inhibitions. Can we say that sexual inhibitions. And so there's definitely more moral stuff going on here for Graham than at first meets the eye, which is interesting.
- [34:25]
B
Yeah.
- [34:25]
A
Now, do you want to say more?
- [34:28]
B
Oh, I was just going to say Graham. It doesn't sound like the guy that's going to get a dirty soda, you know, a caffeinated beverage. Stimulants are bad. Like, get where he's.
- [34:37]
A
Stimulants equals bad. Because people do bad stuff when they're overstimulated. Yeah, that's his premise. Now, Graham is not the only one we should point out, too. There's a contemporary medical journal, actually, it's called the Journal of Health, condemned the use of. Here's their list. Alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee. And that also advised against excessive meat eating. In Philadelphia, the College of Physicians and Surgeons introduced a course on the pathology of intemperance, they called it. While around 75 physicians in the state of New York signed a statement saying that distilled spirits would no longer be on their list of approved medications. No more medicating with distilled spirits. Then by the mid-1830s, those movements have reached Ohio. Of course, Oberlin College, which is very near to the Saints, not only opposed the use of liquor, but also tobacco, tea and coffee. In Gambier, Ohio, 50 members of the Kenyan Temperance Society committed to totally abstaining from tobacco after they heard the Reverend James McElroy say that tobacco was almost as injurious as. As excessive drinking. Other religious groups, such as the Shakers, there's another one called the Zohar Society of Separatists, German communal group that was found in nearby Tuscarawas County.
- [36:04]
B
Nice job. Yeah, nice pronunciation.
- [36:06]
A
Tuscarawas, yes. They would also not allow the use of tobacco. So we see it's going not just from alcohol, but now it's starting to extend to tobacco. And other people have on that list tea and coffee and other things. But this is striking because in Ohio, tobacco was almost universal among men and it was also fairly common among women. And so now we see some pushback even against that, too.
- [36:33]
B
So this is the environment that the revelation we know as the Word of Wisdom was introduced into. And there's generally two schools of thought on how the Word of Wisdom came into being. The first was that it was just a natural or a logical pronouncement of principles related to all these 19th century health movements. And the second is that it was given by Revelation. And by the way, it's okay to believe both those things that the Saints were looking at these health movements and saying, okay, what does the Lord have to say about this? And Joseph Smith inquired of the Lord and the Revelation came. One scholar who advanced the notion that the Word of Wisdom was just the product of prevailing social and religious climates at the time was Dean McBrien. He wrote the following. I'm going to quote from his thesis. He said, a survey of the.
- [37:23]
A
When did he. Sorry, when did he live?
- [37:26]
B
This is early 20th century. So this is some of the first attempts to sort of contextualize Joseph Smith. That's one of the problems with the Word of Wisdom is stuff like we're talking about today would be controversial in the early 20th century because a lot of Latter Day Saints assume that the Word of Wisdom was just a bolt out of the blue, came from nowhere. Amazing revelation. Dean McBrien is one of the first People who's saying, well, yeah, but let's look at the environment too. Everything's affected by the environment. Yeah, that matters.
- [37:59]
A
Every revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants came because of some external circumstance. Right, right.
- [38:03]
B
This is not a new thing, but yeah, that's normal. But Dean McBride is writing this one. We're just barely sort of learning how to contextualize. So he says a survey of the situation existing at Kirtland when the revelation came forth is a sufficient explanation for it. The temperance wave had for some time been engulfing the West. Just a few years before, Robert Owen had abolished the use of ardent spirits in his community. At New Harmony In 1826, Marcus Morton had founded the American Temperance Society, called it first the Cold Water Society by way of contempt. So that's what people that didn't like it, we're calling it. Okay, back to his quote. In June 1830, the millennial harbinger quoted in full with the hearty personal endorsement of Alexander Campbell. An article from the Philadelphia Journal of Health which article most strongly condemned the use of alcohol, tobacco and eating intemperately of meats. So Alexander Campbell. I'm stepping out of the quote here. Alexander Campbell was the head of the Disciples of Christ movement, which Sidney Rigdon is part of, and then separates right before the missionaries come to Ohio. So Alexander Campbell, their religious neighbor, essentially is talking about this too. His paper gave wide publicity to the temperance cause. Temperance societies were organized in great numbers during the early 30s. 6,000 being formed in one year on the Western Reserve. Many temperance lectures were delivered, many temperance pamphlets circulated, and many temperance meetings were held from 1826 on. The arguments are used everywhere, were based as much on phys as on moral grounds. On October 6, 1830, the Kirtland Temperance Society was organized with two hundred and thirty nine members. Among its members were listed a George Smith, several Morley's Wells, a Co And a Lyman. These are names all associated with the history of Mormonism. And it is not improbable, though not known for certain, that these temperance workers had relatives among the Saints, even if they themselves were not Mormons. And boy, when you start to see words like Lyman and Morley, those are still names that exist in the church today. Like Isaac Morley and Lucy Morley are sort of the. The heart of the church in Kirtland, Ohio. And whether it was them or whether it was relatives of them, it's not a big stretch to say that a lot of the early church members were involved in these temperance movements and that probably had an influence on Joseph Smith.
- [40:37]
A
Yeah, I think there's a lot of evidence to support this position, Frankly. Right. Like McBrien argues, there are a lot of names on the rolls of the Kirtland Temperance Society that overlap with the names of early members of the Church. The Revelation's statement that, quote, strong drinks are not for the belly lines right up with this. Actually, it's a little harder to connect the Revelation to the movements advocating for restricting the use of tobacco, tea, and coffee. And suspicions that he was possibly influenced by Sylvester Graham is that he does address many of the same issues that Graham brings up in section 89. Right. This revelation is addressing them. So we're assuming Joseph Smith is asking about these same issues. It's not just about tobacco or liquor. Right. There's more to section 89 than that. And these are all issues that are in the air, and especially Sylvester Graham is there. So we don't know if they ever met. We don't know if Joseph is reading his stuff or not. But he's certainly asking the same questions that Graham is out there preaching about. Maybe this is a good time to reference that classic story of the Word of Wisdom that we often use, which we can track down to an address that Brigham Young gave February 8, 1868. Where, and by the way, he wasn't there. Brigham Young had not yet emigrated to Kirtland when the Revelation was given in 1833, but he probably would have known everyone there. Okay. He probably heard this story from someone who was there or people that were there. But remember how he says the story. He says in his Conference talk, I think I am as well acquainted with the circumstance which led to the giving of the Word of Wisdom as any man in the church, although I was not present at the time to witness them. He admits the first school of the prophets was held in a small room situated over the Prophet Joseph's kitchen in a house which belonged to Bishop Whitney and which was attached to his store, which store probably might be about 15ft square. In the rear of his building was a kitchen, probably 10 by 14ft, containing rooms and pantries. Over this kitchen was situated the room in which the prophet received revelations and in which he instructed his brethren. The brethren came to that place for hundreds of miles to attend school in a little room probably no larger than 11 by 14. When they assembled together in this room after breakfast, the first they did was to light their pipes and while smoking, talk about the great things of the kingdom and spit all over the room. And as soon as the pipe was out of their mouths, a large chew of tobacco would then be taken. Often when the prophet entered the room to give the school instructions, he'd find himself in a cloud of tobacco smoke. This and the complaints of his wife at having to clean so filthy a floor made the prophet think upon the matter. And he inquired of the Lord relating to the conduct of the elders in using tobacco. And the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom was the result of his inquiry. You know what it is, and you can read it at your leisure. Close quote. I think it's interesting, this story. I don't think it's. It's not accurate. I think it is. Is just incomplete. Is that fair? Like the revelation itself does not only talk about tobacco. So this certainly was probably one of the issues, immediate issues for Joseph Smith. But I got to think it's. It's really speaking more into this broader context we've been talking about.
- [43:47]
B
Yeah. And it's kind of a fun story. And so it's sort of become the standard explanation. We should note, too, that all the descriptions he gives there of the Whitney store are accurate. You can go visit the Whitney store today on a church history tour. It's been restored. They've restored the room where the school of the Prophets met. All the details that he shares are accurate. And he also agrees with the essential facts of the matter with David Whitmer, who's another prominent member of the church, who gave a similar account of how the revelation was received. Now we're going to read David Whitmer's account, but I should note beforehand that David Whitmer is considerably more cynical about the origins of the Word of Wisdom. This is from an interview he gave in 1886, which is the year before his death. And at this point, he's been long disaffected from the church, and he's still kind of nursing old grudges against Joseph Smith. If you ever get the chance, go and read an address to all believers in Christ, which I think is written the year that he dies. Right.
- [44:49]
A
Yeah, Right around then.
- [44:50]
B
Yeah, yeah. So he kind of lays his cards on the table there, that he believes the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was inspired, but that Joseph Smith went off the path at a certain point. And so this recollection is a little jaundiced in that sense. But this recollection was found in an interview that he gave to the Des Moines daily news on October 16th. And here's how it reads. Quite a little party of the brethren and sisters being assembled in the Smith's house. Some of the Men were excessive chewers of the filthy weed, and their disgusting slobbering and spitting caused Mrs. Smith to make the ironical remark that it would be a good thing if a revelation could be had, declaring the use of tobacco a sin and commanding its suppression. The matter was taken up and joked about. One of the brethren suggested that the revelation should also provide for a total abstinence from tea and coffee drinking, intending this as a counter dig at the sisters. And sure enough, the subject was afterward taken up in dead earnest and the word of wisdom was the result. Now, I don't know how it's going to harm the sisters to have them not drink tea and coffee. And I think David Whitmer's being a little facetious there, but that's maybe the first school of thought saying, oh well, yeah, Joseph Smith just made it up because of these things that were happening. Whereas I think Joseph Smith was affected by the circumstances around him. But I also think he sought a revelation because of the circumstances, not that he just made up a revelation to deal with some weird battle of the sexes that it sounds like David Whitmer's trying to explain.
- [46:36]
A
David, love me some David Whitmer. You look at his picture, just Google his picture. Like he looks grumpy.
- [46:43]
B
He's a frowny guy.
- [46:44]
A
Yeah, he's a frowny guy. But so I picture him saying it with that like frowny face.
- [46:51]
B
Maybe I should have done a German accent too, because he probably have. That would have been even funnier.
- [46:56]
A
You do have a really good German accent. You should bust it out sometime.
- [46:59]
B
One of these days I'll bust it out. Yep.
- [47:02]
A
Also, I think it's important to note that David was living in Missouri in 1833 at the time that the revelation was given. So he did travel back and forth to Ohio, but he probably was not there when this revelation was received. He was an important, well connected member of the church, one of the leaders in Missouri, but he, yeah, likely not there. One person who was there and does share a reminiscent account nearly 50 years later is a guy named Zebedee Coltrane. Here's what he said. The prophet Joseph was in an adjoining room and came in with that revelation in his hand. Out of the 22 members that were there assembled, all used tobacco, more or less, except for two. Joseph read the revelation and when they heard it, they all laid aside their pipes and the use of tobacco. That's probably our best first hand source, but it also points toward one of the biggest questions that's still asked about the word of wisdom, which is like, did they just quit cold turkey? Did they just start living the word of wisdom right away? Or did they understand this just to be wisdom? Right. Not a commandment, which is how the Revelation itself speaks. This is not a commandment, but his wisdom. It's a principle with promise. So this account, given 50 years later, is interesting because he remembers them just, boom, quitting cold turkey. But we know the story is not that clean cut, right?
- [48:26]
B
Yeah. In fact, that might be the most complicated and debated part of the whole Revelation. The most debated part of the Revelation might not even be the verses about alcohol, tobacco and coffee and tea. It's the phrase that appears right near the first, that the Revelation was given, quote, not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom. So it's making it sound like, hey, this is a really smart thing to do, but I'm not commanding you to do this and you shouldn't constrain others to do it. But I'm getting ahead because that is going to be the main setting of our next episode where we're going to tackle the question of what living the word of wisdom looked like in the time of Joseph Smith.
- [49:11]
A
Yeah. So interesting. Yeah, that's verse two. Not by commandment or constraint, but by Revelation. Brothers and sisters, we all know that today this is commandment, right? This is commandment. Something has seriously shifted between then and now, and so we are going to do that. We're going to go through everything that changed as best we can. Casey, we're imperfect, but we're going to be relying heavily upon Paul's great dissertation. And so you guys asked for a deep, deep dive, and today we only made it as far as, here's the context of Ohio in 1833, and there was a Revelation given. Okay. That's how far we got. But, yeah, so next time, let's consider a little bit the text of the Revelation and what we know about how the people in Joseph Smith's time lived the word of wisdom.
- [50:03]
B
So, yep, that's next time. All right, so we'll see them. That sounds like fun.
- [50:09]
A
See you there. Thanks, Casey.
- [50:10]
B
All right, bye. Bye.