LDS Scholar Sees A Path For Same-Sex Temple Sealings That Honors Church Teachings
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 7:19 pm
Interesting article. Just goes to show how much wiggle room there is in the Church for almost any interpretation of doctrine.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/theol ... r-AA12A2RVTo defend his conclusions, Oman traces the history of the sealing practice from its introduction in the 19th century to its current iteration.
In the beginning, church founder Joseph Smith saw sealing as a chance — through “a welding link of some kind or another” — to bond everyone to everyone else, and to connect them all back to God “as the divine king,” Oman writes, “through a series of nested kingdoms created by networks of sealing ordinances.”
Hence, some women — who were never married to or involved with Smith or his immediate successor, Brigham Young — were sealed to the Latter-day Saint prophet-presidents to secure their place in the highest heaven.
Similarly, in a tradition known as “the law of adoption,” adults were sealed to church leaders, Oman reports, as “adopted sons and daughters” even though they weren’t biologically related to them.
This eternal kingdom building dominated the practice from the 1840s to 1894, but after the church abandoned polygamy, starting in the 1890s, it began to instruct members to do proxy work only for their own ancestors.
That was the approach from 1894 to about 1955, the scholar writes. After that, it changed again up until the present, when the nuclear family was seen as the way heaven was organized.