What Happened to the Sacred Grove?
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).
I remember feeling anxious teaching the Restoration to people when I was a missionary. Not because I didn’t believe it, but because it was paralytically irrational. It was a staggeringly hard sell––this story of God the Father and Jesus Christ visiting a fourteen-year-old boy in Palmyra to answer his inconsequential prayer. During a particular lesson with someone from my first area, we watched the Church’s “The Restoration” video––a twenty-minute reenactment of Joseph Smith’s grand First Vision. During the scene where the pillar of light splits the sky and descends upon Joseph, I remember being stuck in a whirlwind in my head. This is insane, I thought to myself. I had consumed the story hundreds of times prior to this moment, but this time, I really internalized the implications of the tale. When we finished the film, our friend turned to us with a perplexed expression. He wasn’t convinced, and I couldn’t really blame him.
“You really believe this?” he urged.
“We really do,” I responded. And I meant it.
Although Joseph Smith’s theophany inaugurated an expanse of theological, doctrinal, and structural developments of noteworthy importance, I always find myself going back to the fact that, according to Mormonism, God answered the prayer of a teenage boy by visiting him face-to-face. As opposed to today, where we seem to continue to add layers of filtration between us and God, that day, there were no priests, popes, ministers, missionaries, prophets, apostles, or mortal authority figures standing between the God of our universe and Joseph; it was just them––two heavenly figures and a run-of-the-mill farm boy in unadulterated, sacred solitude.
That, to me, has always been the core of being a Mormon: believing that the same God who formed the cosmos and the earth, ordered the planets into their perfect orbit, and crafted the souls of billions, somehow had time in a jam-packed, divine agenda to make a stop in rural New York to answer a prayer. And that meant that all of us––not just Joseph––had a divinely appointed entitlement to talk to our Creator––to ask Them the hardest questions and expect Them, eventually, to respond to us. Consequently, in every season of my life––from the gritty ashes of disillusionment to the lightning strikes of Godly connection––I have always maintained an uncompromising trust in the power of personal revelation, and I cherish and cling to those vivid and rare moments in my life where I have felt or heard God speak to me.
In a 2017 Young Single Adult Face to Face, then-Elder Oaks declared, “If we get an impression contrary to the scriptures, to the commandments of God, to the teachings of His leaders, then we know that it can’t be coming from the Holy Ghost. The gospel is consistent throughout.” (link) This concept is far from a recent development. I have long heard that it is not possible for a person to receive personal revelation that contradicts Church policy or counsel from leaders. After all, a church with that much disorder would likely collapse into a chaotic flurry of tyrannical individualism, until eventually everyone would be claiming to be led solely by “personal revelation” that wasn’t really revelation at all, but rather a cheap justification to act upon flawed human impulses and fallacious reasoning under the guise of divine inspiration. Everyone would become their own prophet, and they’d have the validation to do or say anything under the sun because God told them to do it.
This teaching creates a safeguard for the Church to reasonably dismiss the fanatical and unstable delusions of those who would do their worst in the name of God. There are plenty of examples in Church history of those who abused the claim of personal revelation to commit horrific atrocities, from the Lafferty homicides in 1984––where two brothers brutally murdered their sister-in-law and her fifteen-month-old daughter––to the Vallow-Daybell murders of 2019––where Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell killed their former spouses as well as their two children. The common thread in both of these cases, and several others, is that the Mormon perpetrators assert that they were led by visions, revelations, and urgings directly from God. The history of violence in radicalized Mormonism is well-documented and tragically persistent today. In such cases, the rule that personal revelation should be consistent with Church policy, doctrine, and leadership messages acts as a necessary safety measure rather than a spiritually harmful limitation.
However, this topic becomes complex when we also consider the reality of prophetic fallibility. I’ve heard that Catholics teach that the pope is infallible, but nobody believes it; Mormons teach that the prophet is fallible, but nobody believes it. While I can’t speak to the truthfulness of such a claim for practicing Catholics, I register the Mormon half of that sentiment to be unfailingly true––for better or for worse, with more examples popping up everyday.
Regardless, I can’t help but feel that unconditional obedience to leaders feels illogical and even dangerous if we sincerely believe that they can sometimes be wrong, but questioning this obedience in church contexts is flagged as a signifier of apostasy and heresy. Those who have served missions know that obedience is the ruling law for missionaries; if any of your mission leaders tell you to do something, you do it. And if you don’t do it, it won’t take long for a well-meaning or stringently robotic companion to call you out on your disobedience. After all, “obedience brings blessings!” Missionaries are so often categorized as either “obedient” or “disobedient,” and those daring to part ways with a handbook principle or leadership teaching are commonly viewed as a social and religious pariah. That’s why I was stunned when, the night before I entered the MTC, my cousin who had served a mission in France two decades prior gave me advice I would never forget: break the rules, love the people.
The first time I broke a rule as a missionary was when a family we were teaching invited us over for dinner. Amid the bustling disarray of their messy kitchen, their toddler crawled toward an agape, piping hot oven door within his reach. With his mom tending to stovetop spaghetti sauce and his dad preoccupied in the other room, I made a rapid decision to sweep him off the ground and hold him until dinner was ready. That night, I asked God to forgive me for preventing the kid from viciously burning himself, and in that absurd plea, I understood my cousin’s advice more fully. I knew that his point wasn’t to make it my personal goal to disregard every rule that I agreed to abide by as a missionary; his point was that in cases where charity and “the right thing” became constrained by a rule, the rule was almost always worth breaking.
This not only applies to missionaries, but also to lay members of the Church and its senior-most leadership. In a recent social media controversy, the Church published a post about General Relief Society President Camille Johnson’s decision to pursue a career in law while also balancing her role as a mother. While President Johnson emphasized the divine role of motherhood, she also posited that personal revelation guided her decision to work outside of the home as she and her husband raised their children. The comments were scathing:
“As a woman about your age, I would love to hear you speak more about how you listened to your own personal revelation instead of President Benson, who explicitly told women our age to stay home. I stayed home. I sure wish now I had developed that career. Way to do what was best for you and not what a prophet said you should do.”
“You can not teach generations of women one thing and then switch the narrative and think we won't notice. We were taking notes, we were studying, we were listening, we were obeying. I love that Sister Johnson did all these wonderful things. I LOVE IT FOR HER. And also, she WAS 100% going against the very highest [C]hurch leaders to do so.”
Women across the Mormon belief spectrum expressed their frustrations––not with President Johnson but with the Church for celebrating her choices while refusing to acknowledge the tension between her decision and the prevailing teachings of leaders at that time. In 1987, when President Johnson would have been in her early twenties, President Kimball gave a talk entitled “To the Mothers in Zion” where he admonished, “The counsel of the Church has always been for mothers to spend their full time in the home in rearing and caring for their children. Some of our choice sisters are widowed and divorced and others find themselves in unusual circumstances where, out of necessity, they are required to work for a period of time. These instances are the exception, not the rule” (link). Such counsel held its strength for decades, leading many Mormon women to view careers and motherhood as mutually exclusive.
The problem for these women was not that President Johnson swayed from prophetic counsel (any rational, forward-thinking Latter-day Saint would celebrate her decision and recognize the bravery it would have taken her in that era to do such a thing) but rather that she did so while other women chose to obey the counsel of the prophet only to one day find that the Church no longer deemed it as selfishly and perversely disobedient for a Mormon mother to also maintain a career. Instead, President Johnson’s story was being used to signal to members that the Church seemed to be silently shifting its views on women pursuing careers. It is perplexing to see the Church abandon what it once taught as true to embrace what was once deemed disobedient and erroneous.
Similarly, President Oaks claimed at the “Be One” celebration in 2018 that he could never find truthfulness in the divinity of the Church’s race-based temple and priesthood ban. He remarked, “I observed the pain and frustration experienced by those who suffered these restrictions and those who criticized them and sought for reasons. I studied the reasons then being given and could not feel confirmation of the truth of any of them” (link). At a time when leaders like Bruce R. McConkie and Mark E. Petersen were fiercely defending the ban as a mandate from God, President Oaks was getting a different message from Heaven––and he would go on to share that message decades later despite its clear departure from the teachings of prophets and apostles––leaders which Oaks himself has taught us to obey unconditionally.
These dizzying paradoxes speak to a truth that members of the Church are too unwilling and uncomfortable to acknowledge: it is possible and inevitable to receive personal revelation that contradicts the counsel of a leader. As I look back on my life, I recall countless times where I knew in my heart what I needed to do or believe, even if it disputed the counsel of a leader. When I read excerpts from Boyd K. Packer insisting that queerness is a fixable and temporary perversion rather than an intrinsic part of eternal identity, I can feel the comforting embrace of a Creator telling me that I am exactly as I am meant to be––that no part of me could ever be created sinful. When I hear Church leaders proclaim in general conference that those who leave the Church are choosing not to be with their friends and family for eternity, I can see a vision of a Heaven where there is enough room for everyone I love––because how could it be Heaven if I’m not surrounded by those who matter to me the most? When I hear leaders pulpit pound commands to follow, obey, and conform to every piece of their counsel, I know that I am entitled to receive confirmation from God of whether or not it is true, and I feel comfortable leaving it to the wayside of my spiritual journey if it isn’t.
I have occasionally been labeled a “cafeteria Mormon” or “activist against the Church” by those who feel uncomfortable with my decisions and beliefs that depart from teachings from leaders, even though it is glaringly apparent that all Mormons––including the Church’s leaders––pick and choose as a result of their own preferences. I would argue that that isn’t always a bad thing, either; religious differentiation can be one of the most precious and essential forms of self-determination and spiritual growth.
In fact, I sincerely feel for those who are unable to truly claim their faith as their own––to apply the gospel of Jesus Christ to their personal wounds, circumstances, and discipleship as it was intended. I know from experience that attempting to fit your unique and individual faith into a predrawn, predetermined path––one that is fueled solely by adherence to leaders and an anxiety for fitting in––is nothing short of spiritually malnourishing and exhausting. Worse yet, it neglects the very real possibility that your Heavenly Parents have another plan for you, different from the one that has been prescribed to you by others but not by Them.
When you feel as though you’re being pulled in every conceivable direction by prescriptive plans, it makes the most sense to find God in the turmoil and simply ask. The older I get, the more I realize the necessity of taking ownership and accountability of my capacity to receive personal revelation and act on it confidently.
What happened to the Sacred Grove? What happened to its testament that God speaks to individuals? The genesis of the Mormon faith dared to radically contend that the common person could seek their own inspiration from the purest Source of all truth and knowledge. When we convince ourselves and others that we cannot seek personal revelation on something that has been settled by a leader, we privilege obedience to inspired but flawed humans over obedience to an omniscient, perfect God. Joseph Smith’s experience in the Sacred Grove taught us that God speaks to us one-on-one. But our contemporary Sacred Grove seems to be brimming with the briars of sneering judgment and the thorns of mortal fallibility. That’s why I cling to that question asked of me during that lesson on my mission, because I believed then as much as I believe now that Mormonism is an effort to reveal a Heavenly parentage who loves Their children perfectly, who “giveth unto [them] liberally and upbraideth not.” We just need the courage, wisdom, and grace to let ourselves and others ask of God.
“You really believe this?”
“I really do.”