Heavenly Parents is the term used in Mormonism to refer collectively to the divine partnership of God the Father and the Heavenly Mother who are believed to be parents of human spirits.[1][2] The concept traces its origins to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.
The Heavenly Parents doctrine has been taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church),[3][4] the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ,[5] and branches of Mormon fundamentalism, such as the Apostolic United Brethren.[6] The doctrine of a husband and wife spiritual parents is not generally recognized by other denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement, such as the Community of Christ.
In the largest denomination of Mormonism, the LDS Church, the doctrine of "heavenly parents" is not frequently discussed; however, the doctrine can be found in some publications and hymns.[7][8] In 1845, after the death of Smith, the poet Eliza Roxcy Snow published a poem now used as the lyrics in the Latter-day Saint hymn "O My Father", which discusses heavenly parents.[9][10] The poem contained the following language:
In the heavens are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare.
Truth is reason: truth eternal
tells me I've a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
in your royal courts on high?
Top LDS leaders in the 1800s seemed to accept the idea of a Heavenly Father and Mother pairing as common sense.[11]: 80 [12] According to one sermon by Brigham Young, Smith once said he "would not worship a God who had not a father; and I do not know that he would if he had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other."[11]: 80 [12][13]
In 1995 top LDS leaders released "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", which outlined key teachings on family and gender, and which affirms, "All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny."[14] Since 2019, the LDS church's theme for its Young Women's program says: "I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny."[15] The LDS Church teaches that humanity's Heavenly Parents want Their children to be like Them, and that through the process of exaltation all humans have the potential to live eternally in Their presence, continue as families, become gods, create worlds, and have their own spirit children over which they will govern as divine parents.[16][17][18]
Polygamy has played an important part in Mormon history and multiple Mormon denominations have teachings on the existence of Heavenly Parents meaning a polygamous Heavenly Father married to multiple Heavenly Mothers.[19][20] Brigham Young taught that God the Father was polygamous, although teachings on multiple Heavenly Mothers were never as popular. These teachings disappeared from official rhetoric after the end of LDS polygamy in 1904 (though existing polygynous marriages lasted into the 1950s).[21][22][23]
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Author Charlotte Scholl Shurtz stated that the LDS Church's emphasis on Heavenly Parents as a cisgender, heterosexual couple excludes transgender, nonbinary, and intersex members and enshrines heteronormativity and cisnormativity.[24]: 69 She further said that current teachings ignore transgender, non-binary, and intersex people, and further deny exaltation and godhood to non-cisgender individuals.[24]: 77, 79 Former BYU professor Kerry Spencer Pray stated the teachings on heterosexual, patriarchal Heavenly Parents alienates queer and single people like her, and that Heavenly Mother does not communicate with Her children, and is presided over by Her husband.[15] Mormon scholar Margaret Toscano said LDS teachings frame Heavenly Mother not as an individual, but subsumes her into the Heavenly Parent patriarchal family.[15] Authors Bethany Brady Spalding and McArthur Krishna argued that the idea that a Heavenly Mother is too sacred to speak about in the LDS Church is culturally nonsense.[15]
An LDS Seminaries and Institutes student manual also hints at the possibility of multiple heavenly mothers. In a diagram entitled 'Becoming a Spirit Child of Heavenly Parents,' ... the one parent [is] labeled 'Heavenly Father' (caps), the other labeled 'a heavenly mother' (lower case). Book of Mormon Student Manual, ... 1976, 1:218
Today, an accepted doctrine of the [LDS Church] interprets verses in Doctrine and Covenants 132 as references to the birth of spirit offspring by exalted married couples in the celestial kingdom
They [resurrected and perfected mortals] will dwell again with God the Father, and live and act like him in endless worlds of happiness ... above all they will have the power of procreating endless lives. ... Those who become like him will likewise contribute to this eternal process by adding further spirit offspring to the eternal family.
They [the people who will live in the celestial kingdom] will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done.
A heaven that mirrored earthly process and form required God to have a heavenly female partner to procreate the offspring of God. But polygamy rewrote God as a polygamist, who required multiple partners (thence the meme of Mothers in Heaven) to create His human family. ... With the end of polygamy, any theology on Heavenly Mothers, never as popular as the singular Mother, largely disappeared from official discourse.
During the era of polygamy some suggested that she is only one of many mothers in heaven. They reasoned that procreation of spirit children could be accomplished more efficiently if Heavenly Father could impregnate many heavenly mothers, just as exalted mortals' procreation of spirit children could be accomplished more efficiently if exalted mortal males could impregnate many wives.
Those involved in plural marriages after 1904 were excommunicated; and those married between 1890 and 1904 were not to have church callings where other members would have to sustain them. Although the Mormon church officially prohibited new plural marriages after 1904, many plural husbands and wives continued to cohabit until their deaths in the 1940s and 1950s.
