One observation about Brigham Young—particularly when it comes to his most controversial ideas, like the Adam-God teachings—is that he tended to take ideas from Joseph Smith and then amplify them. The priesthood and temple ban on individuals with black African ancestry, for example, can be seen as an expansion of things Joseph Smith accepted and taught as explanations for slavery, some of which was reflected in the Book of Abraham. Plural marriage originated with Joseph Smith and was stabilized and expanded under Young’s leadership. The Adam God teachings were an amplification of the role Adam held in Joseph Smith’s thought, brought into dialogue with his teachings about apotheosis (humans becoming like God). In a recent interview  at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, Samuel Weber shared more details about the Adam-God theory and how fragments of it still exist in the Church today.

What Did Brigham Young Teach About Adam and God?

Samuel Weber summarized the major components of the Adam-God doctrine:

For a significant portion of his presidency, Brigham Young taught the innovative but controversial doctrine that Adam and Eve had previously experienced mortality, achieved exalted god status, bore spirit children, and became the gods of planet Earth. …

To summarize, Brigham Young taught that:

1. Mortality. Adam and Eve had previously experienced mortality and were exalted beings.
2. Transportation. To seed the earth with human life, Adam-God and Eve-God transported themselves from another world to planet earth.
3. Fruit. To prepare their celestialized bodies to create mortal tabernacles for their children, Adam-God and Eve-God ate the fruit of this earth.
4. Procreation. The physical bodies of mankind were birthed through a natural procreative process.
5. Ancestry. As the progenitors of mankind, humans are literal, physical descendants of gods.
6. Godhood. Humans that eventually attain godhood will likewise have the ability to create both physical and spirit children.

The relevance of the teaching today include the facts that “Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has distanced itself from this teaching, some fundamentalist groups continue to adhere to it, and quotes identifying Adam as God have long been fodder for anti-Mormon publications.” 

To my point about Brigham Young taking ideas from Joseph Smith and then amplifying them, Weber pointed out the ideas in Joseph Smith’s teachings that preceded Young’s Adam-God theory:

Although Joseph Smith never explicitly taught the Adam-God theory, he did make several statements that brought Latter-day Saint conceptions of God and man close to each other. Smith taught that human spirits have existed eternally, “co-equal with God himself.”

Smith described God the Father as having “a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” (D&C 130:22), highlighting God’s similarity with man. This closure of the gap between the human and the divine achieved its fullest expression in Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse. …

Early Latter-day Saints would have considered Adam the first man on earth and father to the human race. Additionally, Joseph Smith received a revelation that gave an expanded celestial role to Adam, dubbing him “prince of all, the ancient of days” and identifying him with the archangel Michael (D&C 27:11).

The role Joseph Smith taught that Adam held, as patriarch and prince over the human race, combined with the idea that human beings were ontologically similar to God laid the seeds of the ideas that Brigham Young would teach about Adam as God.

President Young’s controversial Adam-God teachings did not go over well in some quarters, which would later lead to the idea being discounted by high-ranking leaders of the Church. Orson Pratt actively opposed Young on the point, while other apostles admitted after Young’s death that they felt that “in the promulgation of doctrine he took liberties beyond those to which he was legitimately entitled” (George Q. Cannon Journal, August 29, 1877). Weber points out how Joseph F. Smith backed away from the doctrine, writing a 1897 letter that dismissed the doctrine:

The doctrine was never submitted to the councils of the Priesthood nor to the church for approval or ratification, and was never formally or otherwise accepted by the church. It is therefore in no sense binding upon the Church. Brigham Young’s “bare mention” was “without indubitable evidence and authority being given of its truth.” Only the scripture, the “accepted word of God,” is the Church’s standard.

A few other times might have been cited as well. For example, the treatise by James E. Talmage entitled “The Father and the Son” indirectly targeted the teachings, while Spencer W. Kimball would directly denounce the Adam-God doctrine in general conference in 1976:

We hope that you who teach in the various organizations, whether on the campuses or in our chapels, will always teach the orthodox truth. We warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the General Authorities of past generations. Such, for instance, is the Adam-God theory. We denounce that theory and hope that everyone will be cautioned against this and other kinds of false doctrine.

These are clear statements that despite Brigham Young teaching the idea, it is not accepted as a doctrine of the Church today.

That being said, while the specific idea that Adam is our God is not accepted or acceptable in the Church, there are other parts of the Adam-God teachings that still remain. Weber pointed out several examples from teachers in the Church Education Department throughout the twentieth century, noting that

While the Adam-God theory has been rejected by the mainstream church, fragments of these teachings persist within the Church Educational System (CES). The persistent fragments include:

1. Human life originated on another planet.
2. Human bodies originated via a birthing process.
3. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are the original parents of humankind’s physical form. …

Institute teachers shared these views with me when I was a student between 2004 and 2007. Handouts compiling statements of these Adam-God fragments were downloadable from the BYU-Idaho website in 2016 when I was researching this topic. Although I suspect most church educators would reject the Adam-God theory in its entirety, those who continue to share these statements ensure that shards of the discarded theory endure.

Outside of the CES and the examples Weber shared, other examples of Adam-God doctrinal fragments exist in Church literature. Most blatant among these is Hymn 51, “Sons of Michael, He Approaches”, which was only changed slightly from its original form as an Adam-God hymn in order to survive in the hymnal to the present day. The manual, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young also contains some of Brigham Young’s Adam-God teachings, though not as blatant due to the fact that they are shorn of the full context. For example, on page 50, we read the following:

Things were first created spiritually; the Father actually begat the spirits [see D&C 76:24], and they were brought forth and lived with him. Then he commenced the work of creating earthly tabernacles, precisely as he had been created in this flesh himself, by partaking of the coarse material that was organized and composed this earth, … consequently the tabernacles of his children were organized from the coarse materials of this earth.

So, parts of the Adam-God teachings are still alive and well in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even if the heart of the doctrine has been removed.

How do we make sense of parts of the doctrine remaining in the Church’s teachings today? Samuel Weber offered his insights into the matter:

I view the Adam-God theory as an interesting example demonstrating that revelation is not always a “straight line,” so to speak.

The revelatory process is apparently varied enough to include starts and stops (such as polygamy), the removal of deeply entrenched policy (such as the 1978 priesthood revelation), grassroots insights (such as Eliza R. Snow’s pronouncement of a Heavenly Mother), and expansive epiphanies (such as the vision of the three degrees of glory).

Brigham Young’s radical idea that Adam is God was something of a revelatory detour or a “dead-end,” in the words of Teryl Givens. Ultimately, the teaching proved too theologically dissonant for church members and leadership.

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For more on the Adam-God doctrine, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk to read the full interview with Samuel Weber.