Gender throughout eternity

“Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”—as stated in the Proclamation on the family: through lessons and sermons, church members are often reminded of these three main phases of existence and the uninterrupted function of gender in each of them. Questions on facets of these phases often occur in discussions on “the plan of salvation” among church members. This repartition of unending life is indeed fundamental to Mormonism’s soteriology: through these needed phases each individual is on a journey to the highest glory in heaven. It is often synopsized in sermons and lessons, as in this statement by apostle Nelson in 2008:

“In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life.”¹ The last word, life, has the literal connotation of further development throughout eternity.

The sections of this subchapter take a closer look at each of the three phases—

premortal (5.2.1), mortal (5.2.1.4), and eternal (5.2.3).

1 Merrill L. Nelson, “Celestial Marriage,” General Conference (October 2008).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2008/10/celestial-marriage. Accessed October 17, 2019.

159 5.2.1. Gender from preexistence to mortal birth

The concept of preexistence of human souls was not extant at the onset of Mormonism in 1830. It is not found in the Book of Mormon, published that same year, nor in Joseph Smith’s initial teachings. It emerged in the ensuing years during a period of creative probing on the nature of the godhead. Different emphases moved the doctrines on the godhead and on the premortal origin of individuals in varied directions. Descriptions of those developing insights in the divine can be found in Bruening and Paulsen (2013), Jorgensen (2001), Paulsen and Boyd (2015), and Widmer (2000). For the elaboration of the doctrine of preexistence, see Harrell (1988) and Ostler (1982). Park (2010) analyzed how in the first decade of Mormonism the “theologies of embodiment” developed.

This section reflects the steps in the construction of gender binarism. Preexistence, indeed, proceeds in phases, from the prior intelligences to gendered spirits (5.2.1.1), next identified as literal offspring of heavenly parents (5.2.1.2), before being “ensouled” in a physical body (5.2.1.3). The ensoulment, however, raises the issue of homosexuality (5.2.1.4).

5.2.1.1. From “intelligences” to individual, gendered spirits

The concept of the soul’s preexistence is not unique to Mormonism. It is found in ancient Greek thought and, in Christianity, was advanced by Origines in the third century A.D.

Most Christian denominations today limit a belief in some form of preexistence to Christ.¹ In Joseph Smith’s writings during the 1830s, however, in particular in “the Book of Moses”

and “the Book of Abraham,” the concept is vastly widened. Grounded in a few biblical passages,² Joseph Smith’s concept of preexistence becomes a cosmological setting, with its own dramatic history, and is now part of core Mormon teachings.

Somehow, in a preexistence, each person got formed as an individual spirit in the disembodied shape of a man or a woman.³ The process of this formation is blurred, since

“a beginning” would contradict an eternal past. Mormon scripture speaks of

“intelligence” as an eternally preexisting matter used to form individual spirits: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29). In its discussion of the topic, the Doctrines of the

1 The belief in Christ’s preexistence has been highly debated in Christian theologies over the centuries. It is based on New Testament passages such as, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1–2); “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5).

2 “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jeremiah 1:5); “The spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7); “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2).

3 Note that in Mormon terminology sometimes a distinction is made between “spirit” and “soul” because of a statement in D&C 88:15: “And the spirit and the body are the soul of man.” An embodied spirit would thus be a “soul.” This explains the preference to speak of “spirits” when referring to preexistence and to the disembodied phase between mortal death and resurrection.

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Gospel Manual cautions: “There has been some speculation and articles have been written attempting to explain just what these ‘intelligences’ are, or this ‘intelligence’ is, but it is futile for us to speculate upon it.”¹

Prior to the creation of this world, God presented his plan of salvation to myriads of spirits. They were offered to obtain a physical body, pass through a mortal probation, and then resurrect to earn divine glory if worthy. The plan was joyfully accepted. Both Christ and Satan volunteered for the execution of the plan, which led to “the war in heaven”

that cast out Satan and his hosts.² Already in preexistence some souls distinguished themselves as “noble and great ones,” whom God would chose as leaders on earth (Abraham 3:22; D&C 138:55).

This backdrop of premortal life, with an elite group in its midst, is a regular topic in church sermons and lessons. Church leaders frequently assert to the youth that they belong to a select group of spirits prepared to be sent to earth in these perilous times.³ In a “devotional” meeting on September 17, 2019, to some 20,000 thousand faculty and students of Brigham Young University, to which young adults around the world were invited to tune in online, 95-year old church president Russell M. Nelson proclaimed as

“truth number one”:

You are sons and daughters of God. You already know this. You have sung about it since you were toddlers. But let me clarify a distinguishing characteristic about your identity. You are the children whom God chose to be part of His battalion during this great climax in the longstanding battle between good and evil—between truth and error. I would not be surprised if, when the veil is lifted in the next life, we learn that you actually pled with our Heavenly Father to be reserved for now. I would not be surprised to learn that premortally, you loved the Lord so much that you promised to defend His name and gospel during this world’s tumultuous winding-up scenes. One thing is certain: You are of the House of Israel and you have been sent here to help gather God’s elect.⁴

Such strong statements feed the consciousness of a deep-rooted elite identity, the origin of which is now hidden by a “veil” over memory, but to which one must be faithful.

1 See the chapter on “Our Premortal Life” in Doctrines of the Gospel: Student Manual, Chapter 6 (Church Educational System, 2010). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrines-of-the-gospel-student-manual/6-premortal-life. Accessed October 5, 2019.

2 Mainly based on the description in John’s Revelation: “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon,”

(Revelation 12:7), and further detailed in Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses, chapter 4.

3 See, for example, Thomas S. Monson, “A Royal Priesthood,” General Conference (October 2007); Randall L.

Ridd, “The Choice Generation,” General Conference (April 2014).

4 Russell M. Nelson, “The Love and Laws of God,” address given at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on September 17, 2019.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-nelson-byu-transcript-september-2019. Accessed September 27, 2019.

161 5.2.1.2. Gendered spirits as literal sons and daughters of heavenly parents

In his writings about preexistence in the 1830s, Joseph Smith did not mention a difference between male and female spirits, nor did he hint at a gender binary in the godhead. However, in the year prior to his death in 1844, he publicly spelled out his views on the continuation of marriage in the hereafter, as a distinctive requirement to reach a divine status. He proclaimed it as a revelation, which was canonized as official doctrine, published as section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants.

In the so-called King Follett sermon, delivered on April 7, 1844, three months before his death, Joseph Smith confirmed this idea that a mortal man and woman can become gods, but also that God himself became a god through that process. It led to the assumption of a marital relation between God the Father and a Heavenly Mother, as expressed in a hymn written in 1845 by the influential Mormon writer and poetess Eliza R. Snow and still frequently sung in Mormon congregations: “O, My Father, thou that dwellest in the high and glorious place . . . truth eternal tells me I've a mother there.” God as a pair of heterosexual parents took root in popular Mormon theology. The phrase in the first chapter of Genesis that God created “male and female” “in the image of God”

allowed seeing God as a man and a woman.

In order to describe the formation of the individual spirits from “intelligence,” church leaders adopted the language of procreation by these divine parents. Hales (2012) detailed the steps in the 1840s that led to this concept, which does not harmonize well with Joseph Smith’s original views on uncreated and asexual intelligence. Being born as a spirit son or as a spirit daughter of heavenly parents implied gendered spirits. In 1871 church leader Orson Pratt preached that after mortal probation, upon our return into the presence of God,

we will behold the face of our Father, the face of our mother, for we were begotten there the same as we are begotten by our fathers and mothers here, and hence our spirits are the children of God, legally and lawfully, in the same sense that we are the children of our parents here in this world.¹

In 1909, an official church statement proclaimed that ‘‘all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.’’² In his influential Mormon Doctrine (1966, 417) apostle McConkie explained life in the preexistence: “These spirit beings, the offspring of exalted parents, were men and women, appearing in all respects as mortal persons do, excepting only that their spirit bodies were made of a more pure and refined substance than the elements from which mortal bodies are made.” The above mentioned 1995 Proclamation states: “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or

1 Orson Pratt, “Discourse on August 20, 1871,” Journal of Discourses, vol. 14, 241.

2 First Presidency of the Church, “The Origin of Man,” Improvement Era (November 1909): 75–81.

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daughter of heavenly parents.” Though the first sentence speaks of “the image of God,”

implying a singular person, the second sentence broadens this to a duality—”heavenly parents.” The validation of these heavenly parents as real, exalted physical persons comes from another, fundamental Mormon doctrine which defines God as corporeal, anthropomorphic: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit”

(D&C 130:22)—given as instructions by Joseph Smith in April 1843.

Artistic representations of preexistence show a paradisiac setting, with at the center the Father and the Son as bearded men in white robes reverently surrounded by adult men and women in similar white robes. But no Heavenly Mother is depicted. In spite of her acknowledged presence and function, church leaders have been averse to giving her visibility. While the 1909 proclamation, and its subsequent citations by church leaders, still identified a “Father and Mother,” the more recent declarations speak only of

“parents,” probably to avoid drawing attention to a maternal deity as an individual.

Feminists, on the other hand, have been using her presence in Mormon theology as a vehicle for empowerment (Allred 1997; Jorgensen 2001; Paulsen and Pulido 2011; Pierce 1992; Preston 1993; Toscano 1998; 2004; Wilcox 1987). Though the 1995 Proclamation on the family acknowledges “heavenly parents,” the text also states: “In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father.” It implies the Father rules and the Mother is not to be worshiped.

5.2.1.3. Gendered ensoulment matches biological sex

Mormon terminology refers to the body as a “tabernacle” or a “temple” for the spirit, following apostle Paul’s characterizations in the New Testament.¹ The doctrine of preexisting spirits requires that the individual spirit joins the earthly, mortal body at some point—the “ensoulment” or “embodiment.” There is no official church position on when this happens. Keller (1985) listed how leaders have expressed differing personal opinions as to the moment of ensoulment: at conception, at “quickening” (the first movement of life felt by the mother), or at birth. Whatever the moment, since the biological sex is determined at conception, the spirit sent to that embryo or fetus must have the matching gender. It also means that in church rhetoric “gender” has the same binary meaning as related to biological sex: it is male or female. In 1922 apostle Talmage, a key leader in verbalizing Mormon doctrine, stated:

There is no accident or chance, due to purely physical conditions, by which the gender of the unborn is determined. The body takes form as male or female,

1 “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Corinthians 5:1). “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

163 according to the gender of the spirit whose appointment it is to tenant that body as a tabernacle formed of the elements of earth, through which means alone the individual may enter upon the indispensable course of human experience, probation, and training. Man is man, and woman is woman, fundamentally, unchangeably, eternally. Each is indispensable to the other and to the accomplishment of the purposes of God.¹

The gendered nature of mortal birth is thus seen as a duplicate of what happened in the preexistence. That perspective is regularly taught in church:

The scriptures record, ‘And I, God, created man . . . ; male and female created I them.’ This was done spiritually in your premortal existence when you lived in the presence of your Father in Heaven. Your gender existed before you came to earth.²

In a solemn sermon addressed to male teenagers worldwide, apostle Boyd Packer, President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, stated in 2009: “Your gender was determined in the premortal existence. You were born a male. You must treasure and protect the masculine part of your nature.”³ In a similar vein Young Women general president Margaret Nadauld, in a sermon to Mormon female teenagers worldwide, stated in 2000:

“Every girl was feminine and female in spirit long before her mortal birth . . . Daughters of God know that it is the nurturing nature of women that can bring everlasting blessings, and they live to cultivate this divine attribute.”⁴

That message to young women was reinforced as recently as October 2019. In their Sunday classes young women always recite their organization’s theme, which consists of a few sentences. For decades the theme started with the sentence: “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love him.” That opening has now been changed to “I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.”⁵ The change emphasizes the individual above the collective (“I” instead of

“we”), brings in “Parents” instead of “Father” alone, and reminds each young woman of her divine potential geared to an exalted future.

1 James E. Talmage, “The Eternity of Sex,” Millennial Star (August 24, 1922), 539–540.

2 See for example, Richard G. Scott, “The Joy of Living the Great Plan of Happiness,” General Conference (October 1996). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1996/10/the-joy-of-living-the-great-plan-of-happiness. Accessed October 20, 2019.

3 Boyd K. Packer, “Counsel to Young Men,” General Conference (April 2009).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2009/04/counsel-to-young-men.

Accessed October 20, 2019.

4 Margaret D. Nadauld, “The Joy of Womanhood,” General Conference (October 2000).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2000/10/the-joy-of-womanhood.

Accessed October 18, 2019.

5 Church News, “Read the new Young Women theme” (October 5, 2019).

https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders-and-ministry/2019-10-05/general-conference-october-2019-lds-mormon-young-women-theme-163132. Accessed October 11, 2019.

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Mormon doctrine thus sees gender identity in a perspective related to the spirit: the distinction between man and woman does not only apply to the earthly, biological realm, but is an eternal identifier, past and present, for the spiritual essence of each person. Any individual is firmly male or female—before being born on earth, during mortal existence, and in the hereafter.

5.2.1.4. The quandary of homosexuality

If a preexistent spirit that can only be male or female is ensouled in a matching male or female body, where does homosexuality fit in? For church leaders homosexual feelings had to have external causes.

Homosexuality as a sinful choice. The insistence of church leaders on gender as biological sex has directly to do with the rejection of homosexuality as an innate characteristic. If it were innate, it had to be part of the spirit in the preexistence, which was deemed impossible. In the general conference of April 1971, presiding bishop Brown stated:

The Lord defined some very basic differences between men and women. He gave the male what we call masculine traits and the female feminine traits. He did not intend either of the sexes to adopt the other’s traits but, rather, that men should look and act like men and that women should look and act like women. When these differences are ignored, an unwholesome relationship develops, which, if not checked, can lead to the reprehensible, tragic sin of homosexuality.¹

For several decades church leaders continued to insist that homosexuality was a personal, sinful choice, unrelated to innate characteristics. The influential apostle Boyd K. Packer was adamant in that position: “From our premortal life we were directed into a physical body. There is no mismatching of bodies and spirits. Boys are to become men—

masculine, manly men—ultimately to become husbands and fathers.”² For almost forty years apostle Packer would insist on that same message.³ He even refused to speak of

“homosexuality” either as an innate trait or as a sociocultural construct. In a famous

1 Victor L. Brown, “The Meaning of Morality,” General Conference (April 1971).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1971/04/the-meaning-of-morality Accessed October 7, 2019. Published in The Ensign, June 1971.

2 Boyd. K. Packer, “Conference Address,” 146th Semi-Annual Conference, Report of Discourses (October 1976), 101.

3 See Boyd K. Packer, “Cleansing the Inner Vessel,” General Conference (October 2010).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2010/10/cleansing-the-inner-vessel.

Accessed October 9, 2019. The sermon instantly became controversial. The printed version differed from the spoken one, precisely on the issue of homosexual identity.

165 sermon to the student body at Brigham Young University in 1978, Packer dealt specifically with homosexuality. He stated for the term homosexual:¹

To introduce it I must use a word. I will use it one time only. Please notice that I use

To introduce it I must use a word. I will use it one time only. Please notice that I use