The Adam-God doctrine is one of the most controversial doctrines in Mormonism. Has it always been that way? Christ’s Church apostle David Patrick and Seventy Benjamin Shaffer will talk about why it is popular, and which LDS leaders have embraced and opposed it.
Benjamin: If somebody’s struggling with this, we don’t say, “Oh, no, you have to accept this.” If you’re not getting it, that’s okay. But I believe that as your faith progresses, as Franklin D, Richard said, you’ll find a place eventually, where you kind of have to realize, am I really a child of God or not? Then it starts making more and more sense and eventually it’ll come into its place and you’ll get it. But in the meantime, don’t worry about it. Don’t let it trouble you too much. One of the last things I do want to say about Adam-God, is that I believe that–and the purpose of my presentation yesterday was really about Joseph Smith being the origin of Adam-God teachings. The more you don’t like it, the more….
GT: Because a lot of people attribute it to Brigham Young, is that right?
Benjamin: That is right. So the more you don’t like this doctrine, the more you want to compartmentalize it, make it as fringe and as small as possible because you want to keep the rest of the stuff. You want to keep singing “I Am a Child of God” in primary, but you just but you don’t want…
GT: So all the bad things go with Brigham.
Benjamin: All the bad things go with Brigham and we say, “Brigham, there was some bad stuff here. You take the bad stuff, we’re keeping the rest.” Whereas I view this as an expansive doctrine, which I think I can teach out of the New Testament very effectively, even without Joseph Smith. But Joseph Smith, as the origin of the Adam-God teachings can really challenge people, because they want to say this was just Brigham Young. So the last thing I kind of want to say is that I believe that it’s very clear from the historical and the doctrinal record, that Joseph Smith was the origin of these Adam-God teachings.
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Benjamin: We don’t deny that polygamy is part of this great big, beautiful, diverse mess we call Mormonism. We, to a certain extent have to take ownership of that and understand it, we believe, and so it is part of our doctrine.
David: Yeah, and we recognize, however, that people, when they start to research things, and they say, “Well, wait a minute, why isn’t my church teaching me this? Apparently, it was once taught, and now they’re not teaching it? That leads to other doctrines that have been put aside. But we say, we’re taking those off the shelf and here they are for you. We realize that that can be a conflict and why they would then say, “Well, this gateway doctrine of the Adam-God Doctrine, we’d better shut that down.”
GT: I’m going to call Adam-God the Marijuana of fundamentalism.
David: Cannabis. We prefer cannabis. {Chuckling}
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