Today it was my privilege to join Ben Lomu and Kimberly Matheson as a special guest on BYUtv’s Come, Follow Up. I spoke about my experience learning from the Restoration Proclamation and finding answers to questions about difficult aspects of Church history.
Episode Information: This week, the “Come, Follow Me” program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints takes us to the bicentennial proclamation on the Restoration. Come Follow Up host Ben Lomu leads the discussion with gospel scholar Kimberly Matheson and special guest Keith Erekson on the following topics: “The Restoration Began with an Answer to a Question” and “The Heavens Are Open”.
Today leaders of two churches announced the transfer of the Kirtland Temple and other historic sites and artifacts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For many months, I have had the singular privilege to assist with this project in several ways:
- Served as historical adviser during contract negotiation. This involved visiting the sites, meeting with leaders, and evaluating historical significance.
- Served on the 8-person strike team responsible for the announcement and transfer. My specific assignments involved planning for the historic documents and artifacts as well as overseeing communication, which led to my writing the FAQ released with the announcement, authoring a brief summary published with the artifact display, and a preparing more detailed summary in BYU Studies.
- Authenticated and transported the historic documents and artifacts. I traveled to Independence before March 5 to prepare to transport the Liberty Jail door and paintings of Joseph and Emma. On the morning of March 5, I authenticated all of the acquired documents and then drove them across country under armed guard.
- Trained missionaries in Nauvoo on how to answer difficult questions. Visitors to Nauvoo now learn about the history of the temple endowment (in the Red Brick Store) and plural marriage (Mansion House), two topics never before addressed at the Church’s historic sites.
- Served as historian for the project by gathering records, conducting interviews, and preparing an internal history.
Over the past year and a half I have spent time researching among the historical sources about the visit of Moroni to the young Joseph Smith. The opportunity for close research enabled several experiences that culminated this week in connection with the 200th anniversary of Moroni’s first visit:
- An article in the Liahona magazine about the visit and its impact,
- A shorter summary with a focus on Lucy Mack Smith’s reaction for the book Revelations in Context,
- An interview with Church Historian and Recorder Elder Kyle S. McKay for the Church News Podcast,
- A newspaper summary of the interview in the Deseret News.
- All of the above was part of a campaign that included social media posts by President Russell M. Nelson and Elder Gary E. Stevenson.
Originally published in From the Desk, by Jerry Winder, February 8, 2023
Making Sense of Patriarchal Blessings
A patriarchal blessing is not meant to be the only communication you ever receive from God. Rather, it is an invitation to ask God for more light and understanding.
Patriarchal blessings have been given in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the time of Joseph Smith. In addition to declaring a person’s lineage, the blessings can also serve as a source of guidance and comfort. In this interview, historian Keith Erekson shares patriarchal blessing examples from history and offers perspectives on how to understand them.
Read the book by Latter-day Saint historian Keith Erekson, Making Sense of Your Patriarchal Blessing.
What is a patriarchal blessing?
A patriarchal blessing is a priesthood ordinance that is not required for salvation, but which can provide an extremely helpful gift of personalized direction, guidance, comfort, and protection. The words of the blessing are recorded by a scribe and archived by the Church.
The term patriarchal blessing is commonly used to refer to both the ordinance and the resulting text.
How is it different from receiving personal revelation?
Personal revelation is communication from God to a specific individual. The ordinance that bestows the blessing provides one form of personal revelation by generating a written text. Subsequently, the acts of reading, remembering, and pondering the promises in the text can serve as a catalyst for additional personal revelation through the Holy Spirit.
The exact wording is less important than the ideas and concepts.
How is a patriarchal blessing like a doorway?
A patriarchal blessing is not meant to be the only communication you ever receive from God. The text itself is not intended to answer every question you will ever have. Rather, it is an invitation to ask God for more light and understanding.
The promises in a blessing point us to more revelation, discovered in scripture and through the communication of the Holy Spirit.
If you assume that your patriarchal blessing is the end of the conversation, then you may incorrectly expect it to provide answers to every problem you encounter. However, if you treat your blessing as the beginning of a lifelong conversation, as the doorway to further enlightenment, you will turn to it for guidance and direction that extends beyond the specific words on the page.
How can ambiguity in our patriarchal blessings be a good thing?
Blessings are divine expressions from a Heavenly Father whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts and who communicates through symbolism and promises with multiple fulfillments.
If we attempt to fix the meaning of the blessing narrowly onto a specific detail in our own understanding, then we close our minds and hearts to so much more that God can reveal to us.
Acknowledging ambiguity is an act of humility that prepares us to learn more.
What can we learn from Makenna Myler’s blessing?
Makenna Myler grew up as a Latter-day Saint with aspirations to run in the Olympics and influence others by her good example. Because running formed such a significant part of her life—thousands of hours and miles of training—she assumed her patriarchal blessing would mention it.
She knew other Latter-day Saint runners whose blessings did mention running, so she looked forward to receiving her own guidance about running and being a role model.
But the blessing did not include a word about running.
She kept running, and succeeded in high school and college, but wondered about the omission in her blessing for more than a decade. She married and, while nine months pregnant, she ran a mile in 5:25 and the video went viral!
She did receive the opportunity to run and be an example, but the path did not go through the Olympics.
She expressed her awe in God’s higher thoughts by saying:
He just connects the dots differently than you would.
Makenna Myler
She also discovered how to think differently about her role in making things happen. “I learned that you get to take action into your own hands,” she noted. “He is not going to tell you, and that was a big switch for me.”
How is my patriarchal blessing like the Liahona?
Lehi’s compass was prepared by God in a manner that was both simple and “curious.” Sometimes it showed Lehi and his family which direction to travel. Other times the ball contained additional messages that appeared and changed from time to time.
It worked according to their faith and did not work when their faith and diligence waned.
President Thomas S. Monson invoked this important metaphor, saying, “Your patriarchal blessing is to you a personal Liahona to chart your course and guide your way.”
Like the Liahona, your patriarchal blessing came to you from heaven in a way that is both “curious” and miraculous. Your blessing points you toward God, but it is not a GPS device that identifies every turn or delay. Further, your blessing can provide new understanding as you exercise faith and diligence each day.
What is the benefit of paying attention to the concepts and symbols in our blessings?
We can gain more from our blessings if we understand that they are given in language that is conceptual and symbolic. One patriarch explained that when a patriarch “places his hands on your head to give you a blessing, Heavenly Father, through the promptings of the Holy Ghost, gives the patriarch ideas, concepts, and sometimes even specific words for you. The patriarch then includes those concepts and ideas in your blessing.”
Elder John A. Widtsoe elaborated:
Different men express the same idea in different words. The Lord does not dictate blessings to them word for word.
John A. Widtsoe
Therefore, the exact wording is less important than the ideas.
How did Gordon B. Hinckley receive more than one fulfillment to his patriarchal blessing?
An eleven-year-old Gordon received a patriarchal blessing that promised, “The nations of the earth shall hear thy voice and be brought to a knowledge of the truth by the wonderful testimony which thou shalt bear.”
Like other young men, he assumed this promise referred to future missionary service, so he was not surprised to be called to England. At the end of his missionary service, he traveled home through the European continent and the Eastern United States.
Arriving home in Salt Lake City, he reflected:
I had borne my testimony in London; I did so in Berlin and again in Paris and later in Washington, D.C. I said to myself that I had borne my testimony in these great capitals of the world and had fulfilled that part of my blessing.
Gordon B. Hinckley
Of course, the Lord meant so much more by that promise! His later call to the Quorum of the Twelve, to the First Presidency, and as President of the Church meant that President Hinckley would spend decades traveling the world and bearing his testimony.
How was George A. Faust’s blessing fulfilled?
George A. Faust was told in his patriarchal blessing that he would be blessed with “many beautiful daughters.” He married Amy Finlinson, and they became the parents of five sons—but no daughters.
Many years later at a family reunion, one of their sons, President James E. Faust, observed his father’s granddaughters “ministering to the young children and the elderly, and the realization came to me that Father’s blessing had been literally fulfilled; he has, indeed, many beautiful daughters.”
Blessings are not predestined to occur.
Your patriarchal blessing may contain promises that extend to your children and grandchildren. This idea runs counter to the modern notion that we are radically separate individuals who live in our moment, and everything revolves around us.
In God’s eyes, we are part of a great family that stretches across time and space. Some of the promises in your blessing may be fulfilled by others. By the same measure, some of the promises given to your ancestors may be fulfilled through your experiences.
Are patriarchal blessings conditional?
All of the promises made by the Lord in scripture are conditioned upon our obedience to His teachings and commandments. President James E. Faust applied this principle to blessings:
By their very nature, all blessings are qualified and conditional, regardless of whether the blessing specifically spells out the qualification or not. Each blessing is absolutely qualified and given upon the condition of the faithfulness of the recipient.
James E. Faust
Some of the promises may also depend on the agency and actions of others, such as promises that a person will get married, stay married, or have children.
If you look closely, you will see that your blessing identifies specific conditions that need to be met for your promises to be fulfilled. The conditions may be listed all together at the beginning or end of the blessing, or they may be scattered throughout the text. They may appear as general statements of guidance or direction. They can also appear as formal if-then statements. Some conditions may be actions that every child of God should do; others may be specific to your life and your character.
If you meet the general condition of faithfulness and the specific conditions outlined in your blessing, then the promises will be fulfilled in the Lord’s way.
It’s supposed to make you know what it is God has in store for you.
How does straying from the church affect a patriarchal blessing?
Some examples from sacred history suggest a range of possibilities. Sometimes the blessings are reserved for a person who recommits. After Jesus was crucified and resurrected, Peter and the Apostles returned to their familiar habits of fishing. The Resurrected Lord appeared again to call them back to His ministry, and they appear to have picked up where they left off.
Other times the promises are modified. In the early days of the Restoration, the Saints settled in Independence, Missouri—a place the Lord had designated as Zion and promised to the Saints—in anticipation of the Second Coming.
Then they were driven from their homes “in consequence of their transgressions.” Those particular Saints never did return to their homesteads but were “chastened and tried.” For them, “the work of the gathering” continued later in “holy places,” in Nauvoo and elsewhere. Today different Saints reside in the same area, with a temple nearby. Any other fulfillments for this promise await a future day (Doctrine and Covenants 101:2, 4, 64).
If you have strayed and returned, then the questions of if or how your promises will be fulfilled become personal mysteries for God to reveal to you.
How intentional should we be in trying to fulfill blessings?
The promises and blessings are not predestined to occur. The fulfillment of the promises depends on your faithfulness and righteousness, and maybe even the faithfulness of others. President Dallin H. Oaks counseled:
Do not rely on planning every event of your life—even every important event. Stand ready to accept the Lord’s planning and the agency of others in matters that inevitably affect you.
Dallin H. Oaks
The promises in your blessing are fulfilled “according to the faith and diligence and heed” given (1 Nephi 16:28).
What if I’m disappointed by what my blessing doesn’t say?
Because God wants to reveal more to us, we need not worry about the things we don’t know right now. In fact, not knowing seems to play an important part in the process of our spiritual growth.
When asked about making sacrifice, Adam responded, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me” (Moses 5:6). And omissions are not necessarily significant. Your blessing does not purport to identify every stopping point on your journey.
Finally, if the Restoration of the gospel continues to be ongoing, then so too can our grappling with the meaning of a patriarchal blessing. The unfinished nature of both the blessing’s meaning and the longer-term process of enlightenment form the very marrow of what it means to live a life of faith.
To persist with Christ-centered faith, hope, and charity in the absence of easy resolution or consolation is what each of us is called to do.
What does Henry B. Eyring say about a patriarchal blessing being a comfort?
President Henry B. Eyring explained that “a patriarchal blessing is whatever the Lord wants it to be for you,” adding that we should “not expect it to be comforting” and “it’s not supposed to make you feel sweet.” Rather, “it’s supposed to make you know what it is God has in store for you.”
So, “if it’s a warning, take that. If it’s comfort, take that. If it’s direction, take that.” (“How Can I Get Comfort from My Patriarchal Blessing?” Face to Face with President Eyring and Elder Holland, Palmyra, NY, March 4, 2017.)
What if promises in my patriarchal blessing seem impossible?
In some cases, you may need to seek peace in the face of promises that seem impossibly beyond reach. You may have to hold on to the promises, even as others around you criticize you and encourage you to give up. You may have to accept some uncertainty, knowing it will only be temporary, though the timeline for its resolution remains unclear.
All promises are conditional, though some may appear to require intervention beyond your control, such as international agreements or significant changes in policies and practices.
One of the titles for Jesus Christ that appears in the New Testament refers to His ability to fulfill even the most impossible-seeming promises—He is a “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 9:11).
Leading People Towards a Patriarchal Blessing | An Interview with Keith Erekson
by Leading Saints | Dec 10, 2022
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
In this podcast, Kurt and Keith discuss receiving and engaging with patriarchal blessings.
Highlights
2:00 Introduction and new book about understanding patriarchal blessings
6:00 Patriarchal blessings are so unique and a special part of our religion
8:00 The history of patriarchal blessings
11:45 Why a patriarchal blessing? Comparing baby blessings and patriarchal blessings
16:00 Apocryphal things people say about patriarchal blessings
18:15 Can we share our patriarchal blessing?
19:45 Be careful about your expectations of your blessing. Some blessings can be very specific and others very general.
23:00 How can Bishops help youth prepare for a blessing?
26:00 Is patriarch an official title?
27:00 Request your direct ancestors or direct descendants blessings
32:40 Keith’s thoughts on lineage. Sometimes we take the lineage too literally or as if it’s biological. Our lineage is a spiritual and a symbolic connection.
37:30 Mysteries of God are just things that He knows and we don’t know. Oftentimes we make it into more than it is, like something magical and spooky.
38:00 Our patriarchal blessing is an invitation from God to learn more about you and your relationship with Him. Our blessing is like a doorway to learn more. It’s not a destination.
40:40 Real vs rumor. It’s a rumor that Joseph Smith’s bloodline is a literal bloodline to Ephraim.
42:30 Keith’s book would be great for the person that just got their patriarchal blessing
45:00 Oldest and youngest blessings in history
46:00 Keith’s favorite stories of patriarchal blessings
49:50 Things that Keith is working on for church history. Joseph Smith Papers, last volume of Saints, Eliza R. Snow sermons, journals, and more.
52:15 Final thoughts on patriarchal blessings
Links
Incorrect Quotes, Urban Legends, and Magical Thinking at Church | An Interview with Keith Erekson
Making Sense of Your Patriarchal Blessing
Real vs. Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-Day Myths
Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast
Listen on YouTube
It’s autumn in an election year, which means it’s rumor time. During the next few weeks, the chances increase dramatically for hearing a member of your family tell a story that goes something like this: Latter-day Saints all belonged to one political party until Brigham Young went around and split congregations down the middle aisle, with those on the left assigned to be Democrats and those on the right as Republicans. Or, maybe a member of your church congregation will tell you about a time when neighborhoods across Utah were divided into two parties, home by home.
From Wallace Bennett to more contemporary politicians, sundry versions of this story have served as both punchlines and benign tales to make sense of how the West became more Republican. But, upon investigation, these stories aren’t just surprisingly hard to verify, they act to obscure the richer and more complicated political history of transition that not only involved religion but larger national partisan forces and personal conscience.
The fact that so many of these tales of arbitrary divisions persist today speaks to an ongoing quest for political meaning in a world increasingly defined by tribalism and party polarization.
The first step to tracing the origin of any story is to look for details that can be linked to specific sources. But many of these stories are frustratingly vague. Which church leader divided a congregation into opposing political ideologies? Where? When?Report ad
A dive into the histories of Utah politics reveals few details about any specific event. Only in digging around in the fringes of folklore did I encounter two relevant rumors: One man in Beaver, Utah, allegedly left an affidavit testifying to such a division, but when critic Josiah Gibbs tracked it down more than a decade later, the document turned out to be somewhat mundane. So Gibbs simply filled in the gap by inventing a congregational division sermon that “would doubtless have continued as follows.”
A second potential source, Joseph Nelson, former head of the Saltair Corporation, was supposedly present when his ward was divided, but the closest we can get to this account is thirdhand knowledge.
Though the details about congregations or neighborhoods being arbitrarily split along partisan lines are hard to pin down, the rumors strongly indicate — something was going on in Utah politics in the early 1890s.
“Utah’s local political parties knew they needed to blend into the national party system if they ever hoped for favors, protection, and statehood.”
Latter-day Saint congregations in the 1800s grew against a backdrop of changing political parties. The church emerged after the nation’s first party system had witnessed the triumph of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party over the Federalists, and early Latter-day Saint votes in the 1830s and 1840s sometimes swung between Democrats and Whigs, with a general tendency toward the Democrats.
The Whig Party soon disintegrated and a new party — Republicans — became the primary opposition to the Democrats. But because Republicans expressly targeted polygamy for eradication and worked 30 years toward that end, the Saints were left with little practical choice in voting if they wanted to maintain their way of life. So they became even more closely aligned with Democrats until most of the Democrats seceded from the nation during the Civil War. In the resulting vacuum, Republicans dominated national politics and the Saints attempted to remain aloof.
When a growing population of non-Latter-day Saint voters in Utah organized the Liberal Party in the territory in 1870, the Saints responded by organizing the People’s Party to protect their local interests. The People’s Party dominated most Utah elections over the next two decades with the vigorous support of the Deseret News. When the end of Reconstruction gave faint new life to Democrats in 1876, both of Utah’s local political parties knew they needed to blend into the national party system if they ever hoped for favors, protection and statehood.Report ad
But how?
The first attempt played out at the grassroots level. Utah’s Democratic Party was organized in 1890 and a local Republican Party followed the next year. In May of 1891, leaders of the People’s Party conferred with the First Presidency, who shared the desire for statehood and encouraged them to dissolve the local party — urging their members to join the national parties. But most Latter-day Saints still remembered the Republican Party’s more than 30-year legislative onslaught against polygamy and the church, so they quickly filed into the Democratic Party.
That year Democrats won two-thirds of the seats and Republicans won none. Even a newly called member of the Quorum of the Twelve — Anthon H. Lund — ran unsuccessfully as a Republican in Sanpete County. The Southern-based Democrats remained markedly weaker on the national landscape and any hope for statehood would require Republican assistance. Republicans had admitted four new states in the West in 1889, and they ratcheted up their aspirations for economic development and imperial expansion.
Leaders of the new statewide political parties as well as church leaders of the time hoped that a more even distribution of party affiliation in the territory would make statehood more likely. For their part, church leaders hoped for neutrality in principle, and parity in practice.
They asked prominent Democratic church members to refrain from active politicking. They also encouraged some of their number to publicly align with Republicans, including both counselors in the First Presidency, four members of the Twelve, and three prominent Relief Society and suffrage leaders. Finally, president of the church, Wilford Woodruff, permitted Republican church leaders to recruit while traveling on church business.
“Leaders of the new statewide political parties as well as church leaders of the time hoped that a more even distribution of party affiliation in the territory would make statehood more likely.”
The man in Beaver, rumored to have remembered a congregational division, actually kept a diary that provided a more tempered view of the approach he witnessed. Elders Francis Lyman and Abraham Cannon of the Quorum of the Twelve convened a meeting to encourage affiliation with Republicans for “those who had not already declared themselves Democrat and could conscientiously do so.” When Lyman got excited in his pitch to meeting attendees, Cannon intervened by saying, “don’t go too far.”Report ad
In a time of shifting national party strength, the dissolution of local parties, and the looming danger of perpetuating former faith-based divisions, church leaders urged parity for the sake of statehood, but also adherence to conscience.
Over the coming decade, Democratic national policies would cripple local farmers and launch a lengthy recession, thus swaying even more Utahns toward the Republican fold.
As affiliations shifted, Latter-day Saints increased politically partisan attacks on each other that employed the same either-or zeal common to sectarian preaching — dueling op-eds, calculated hit pieces, claiming Jesus as a Democrat and Lucifer as a Republican.
The sudden surge of partisan vitriol led President Woodruff to plead at the April 1892 general conference, “Don’t throw filth and dirt and nonsense at one another because of any difference on political matters.” Today, the church has publicly stated that it’s “neutral in matters of party politics,” while encouraging church members to participate in the political process in “an informed and civil manner, respecting the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters.”
So why is the congregational division story retold so often? And what might this story tell us about other rumors that circulate amongst us?
In the first place, the story’s structure is very simple. There is one actor and one simple action carried out in a concrete setting — a church leader divides a congregation in half. Next, the simple story about the past conveniently maps directly onto something of interest in the present — the two modern political parties. Finally, the simplified and present-oriented story offers an explanation of why things are the way they are — it entices us into thinking we know what things mean, especially as we look toward the future with uncertainty. And all the better that this story ends with a snappy little punchline, making it memorable to hear and gratifying to retell.
“But there are dangers in telling oversimplified stories.”
But there are dangers in telling oversimplified stories. This one misrepresents the past by omitting complexities, such as the strange and forgotten local parties — Liberal and People’s — as well as the Saints’ tortured relationship with the Republican Party. It also invents the entire setting of a congregational divide.Report ad
In the end, omission and exaggeration become tools for sharpening present partisan division, making storytellers unwitting pawns in the false cultural script that Americans are equally divided and diametrically opposed. These blinders then hamper our ability to work together to improve our communities and our lives.
Looking back from our era of intense polarization, we might be telling the wrong story. Perhaps, rather than an oversimplified tale about congregations divided down the aisle, we’d be better off remembering Wilford Woodruff’s call to unity in the face of political partisanship.
Originally published in the Deseret News, October 23, 2022.
