Why I Won’t Give Brother Brigham a Break

I recently wrote a lengthy post about the Adam-God Doctrine. When I shared it in a Latter-day Saint group that I’m a part of, one response that I got was why does this issue matter given that it was so many years ago. Why not give Brother Brigham a break?

I wanted to try to briefly explain why this issue was such a shelf breaker for me when I began to seriously study it.

Ultimately it’s a combination of four things

1) The degree to which Brigham Young was so certain that he spoke for God in His teaching
2) The degree to which dissenting views were silenced because the “Prophet” had spoken
3) The vital importance of the doctrinal topic (the nature of God is not a secondary matter) and;
4) The fierceness with which Brigham’s view is now denounced by current church leaders.

Whole posts can be written about each of these. But in this post I want to talk about #2 because I think it’s the least acknowledged piece of the problem.

I had always believed that Brigham Young erred. But because he was speculating about deep and difficult topics, I was willing to give him a pass. (Though I now realize that there Biblically there should be no leeway for a Prophet leading after false Gods — See Deut 13). I especially thought that patience was in order given that I knew that other apostles had disagreed with Brigham and so I imagined a period of vigorous and open debate that eventually led to the right conclusion

But what I found when I really dived into the records was something very different. Almost immediately, I saw leaders like the Apostle Franklin D. Richards declare that since Brigham Young had spoken the debate was over. I saw this heresy heralded as a great revelation from God. I saw those apostles who disagreed like Orson Pratt threatened with removal from the quorum if they did not publicly recant their opposition. I saw dissenters labelled as unfaithful to the Prophet. I saw appeals to the scripture rejected because the living oracles trumped the written word.

I realized as I studied that I had seen these same arguments used to shut down opposition to the teachings of modern Prophets and Apostles. I realized that I had been guilty of many of them myself.

But the problem was that Brigham was wrong, very wrong. In fact he was teaching what would later be called a grievous heresy. Those who spoke out and were called disloyal were in the right. But they were silenced, threatened with punishment or told that they were putting their own salvation on the line by challenging “the Lord’s annointed.”

If he was so wrong and the critics so thoroughly vindicated, then how could I know that it was different today. What teachings would later be repudiated. What dissidents would later prove to have been more prophetic than the Prophet? These concerns fatally undermined my confidence that these leaders are actually speaking for God.