Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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Abuse

Summary: Several criticisms and questions have arisen about the Church's approach to and stance on abuse. This page is a compilation of pages that respond to the various questions and criticisms.

Jump to Subtopic:

• Question: What is Mormonism's stance toward the victims of sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape, or incest?
• Question: What was the ritual child or Satanic abuse in the 1990s?
• Question: Do the scriptures endorse child abuse?
• Question: Do Mormons believe that sexual assault victims ought to fight to the death?
• Question: Did Elder Richard G. Scott teach that victims of abuse are responsible for their abuse?
• Question: Are there benefits to having youth do private, one-on-one interviews with Bishops to determine worthiness for participating in certain Church ordinances and activities?
• Question: What was the Indian Student Placement Services program?

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Articles about Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Principles	The Church's position on abuse Bishop interviews with youth Mandatory reporting of abuse Abuse victims and lack of culpability Child abuse in the scriptures
Specific Cases	Ritual child abuse accusations in the 1990s Abuse and the Boy Scouts of America Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case

Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church has a no-tolerance stance toward abuse

The Church's handbooks emphasize that one purpose of Church discipline is to protect the innocent, especially against such crimes as predatory sexual behavior:

The second purpose of Church discipline is to protect the innocent. With inspiration, a priesthood leader should act to protect others when a transgressor poses a physical or spiritual threat to them, such as by predatory practices, physical harm, sexual abuse, drug misuse, fraud, or apostasy (see Alma 5:59–60). (Handbook 1 [2010], 6.1.2)

Likewise, victims of such crimes are innocent of sin:

In instances of abuse, the first responsibility of the Church is to help those who have been abused and to protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse. Victims of sexual abuse (including rape) often suffer serious trauma and feelings of guilt.

Victims of the evil acts of others are not guilty of sin. Church leaders should be sensitive to such victims and give caring attention to help them overcome the destructive effects of abuse. (Handbook 1 [2010], 17.3.2)

Members who are victims of these sins are innocent of any wrongdoing

1. Sexual crimes virtually always require excommunication from the Church, and members guilty of these serious crimes have annotations placed upon their membership record that remain even if they return to full membership. Members guilty of such crimes have a lifetime ban on service with youth, missionary service, and temple service.
2. Members who are victims of these sins are innocent of any wrongdoing. The Church encourages them to seek help, and to receive the healing available to all through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

Help for victims of abuse

Those who have been the victims of the unrighteous acts of others are not guilty of any sin. Latter-day Saints believe that the atonement of Christ can heal all suffering, injustices, and traumas through Christ's grace. Many articles and resources are available, and members with such concerns are encouraged to consult with their local leaders.

One guide for bishops begins:

Abuse includes the physical, emotional, sexual, or spiritual mistreatment of others. The first responsibility of the Church is to help those who have been abused in a kind and sensitive way and to protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse. Abuse not only harms the body, but also deeply affects the mind and spirit. It often destroys faith and always causes confusion, doubt, mistrust, guilt, and fear. Help the member understand that he or she is not responsible for the abuser’s behavior and that faith can be regained or strengthened and hope and healing can come through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Mandatory discipline for the perpetrator of the abuse

Church disciplinary action is required for a small set of sins, such as murder. Sexual abuse and incest are included in this group:

Incest

As used here, incest refers to sexual intercourse between a parent and a natural, adopted, or foster child or a stepchild. A grandparent is considered the same as a parent. Incest also refers to sexual intercourse between brothers and sisters. It almost always requires excommunication. Bishops refer questions on specific cases to the stake president. The stake president may direct questions to the Office of the First Presidency if necessary. If a minor commits incest, the stake president contacts the Office of the First Presidency for direction.

Child Abuse

As used here, child abuse refers to a sexual offense against a child or physical abuse of a child. If priesthood leaders learn of or suspect child abuse, they follow the instructions in 17.3.2 [see above]. If a minor abuses a child, the stake president contacts the Office of the First Presidency for direction....

Transgressor Who Is a Predator

A disciplinary council must be held for a member who commits a serious transgression that shows him to be a predator with tendencies that present any kind of serious threat to other persons.(Handbook 1 [2010], 6.7.3, (italics in original)

Results of discipline

Incest virtually always requires excommunication from the Church:

Excommunication is mandatory for murder...and is almost always required for incest. (Handbook 1 [2010], 6.9.3)

Return to Church membership

The First Presidency must approve any restoration of Church membership for those guilty of particularly serious sins, including:

... 2.Incest

3.Sexual offense against a child or serious physical abuse of a child by an adult or by a youth who is several years older than the child.... (Handbook 1 [2010], 6.12.10)

Flagging Church membership records

Those guilty of abuse of a child and other serious sins which place others at risk have their Church records annotated, and this annotation remains on the record permanently (even in the event of reinstatement in the Church). Only the First Presidency can authorize the removal of such an annotation:

incest, sexual offense against or serious physical abuse of a child,...predatory conduct.... (Handbook 1 [2010], 6.13.4)

Abusers are have lifetime ineligiblity for some callings and assignments in the Church

Even if they repent and return to full time activity in the Church, those who commit some crimes are ineligible for some types of Church service. These include:

Temple ordinance workers must:

5. Never have received formal Church discipline for sexual abuse.

6.Never have had his or her membership record annotated (see above). (Handbook 1 [2010], 3.10.2)

Those wishing to serve full-time missions are ineligible if, among other things, they

[h]ave been convicted of sexual abuse. (Handbook 1 [2010], 4.4)

Service with children or youth is also an area of particular concern:

A person whose membership record is annotated for having abused a child sexually or physically must not be given any calling or assignment involving children or youth. Also, careful consideration should be given to other assignments, such as home teaching or visiting teaching. These restrictions should remain in place until the First Presidency authorizes removal of the annotation. ... (Handbook 1 [2010], 17.3.2)

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Learn more about abuse

FAIR links	Jennifer Roach, "Shedding Light on the Complexities: Understanding Abuse within the LDS Church," Proceedings of the 2023 FAIR Conference (August 2023). link Jennifer Roach, "Why LDS Teens Benefit From a Few Moments Alone With Their Bishop," 2020 FairMormon Conference (video embedded below).
Online	Church hotline for leaders who encounter evidence or suspicion of abuse (for details see Handbook 1, [2010], 17.3.2). "Gospel Topics, "Abuse"," lds.org website. Church publications Responding to Abuse: Helps for Ecclesiastical Leaders (PDF booklet) Preventing and Responding to Spouse Abuse (pamphlet) Preventing and Responding to Child Abuse (pamphlet) Protect the Child: Responding to Child Abuse (DVD) Responding to Abuse: Helps for Bishops (DVD) Bishop's Guide: Helping Victims of Abuse (on-line) Bishop’s Guide: Abuse (Helping the Offender) (on-line) General authority addresses Gordon B. Hinckley, "Save the Children," Ensign (November 1994). Gordon B. Hinckley, "Personal Worthiness to Exercise the Priesthood," Ensign (July 2002). Gordon B. Hinckley, "These, Our Little Ones," Ensign (December 2007). Jeffrey R. Holland, "The Tongue of Angels," Ensign (May 2007). Dallin H. Oaks, "Protect the Children," Ensign (November 2012). Richard G. Scott, "Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse," Ensign (May 1992). Richard G. Scott, "To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse," Ensign (May 1992). Other materials J. Thomas Cearley, "Stop Using Words That Hurt," Ensign (March 2006). Sarah E. Miller, "Hope and Healing in Recovering from Abuse," Ensign (September 2008). Judy C. Olsen, "The Invisible Heartbreaker," Ensign (June 1996).
Video	Load video YouTube YouTube might collect personal data. Privacy Policy ContinueDismiss ""Failure to report sexual abuse Bisbee, Arizona"," BH Roberts Foundation print-link.
Print	C.D. Cunningham, "Are Publicized Abuse Cases Exceptional or Representative of Our Faith?" Public Square Magazine, 4 August 2022. Mical Raz, "Mandatory Reporting Isn't the Solution," Public Square Magazine, 19 September 2022. Tad Walch, "Should a member of the clergy report sex abuse of the penitent? A look inside the priest-penitent privilege," Deseret News, 19 August 2022.
Navigators	Table of contents Abuse Bible Book of Abraham Book of Mormon CES Letter Church history Church finances Doctrine and Covenants First Vision Joseph Smith Latter-day Saint temples Mountain Meadows Massacre Plural marriage Prophets and leaders Scripture Brigham Young

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Articles about Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Principles	The Church's position on abuse Bishop interviews with youth Mandatory reporting of abuse Abuse victims and lack of culpability Child abuse in the scriptures
Specific Cases	Ritual child abuse accusations in the 1990s Abuse and the Boy Scouts of America Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case

What was the ritual child or Satanic abuse in the 1990s?

Accusations by a Therapist in Lehi, Utah

The the ritual child or Satanic abuse scare in the 1990s in Utah began in 1985 in Lehi, Utah, as described by social historian Massimo Introvigne:

During the Summer of 1985 Mrs. Sheila Bowers of Lehi, Utah, contacted Dr. Barbara Snow, a therapist working with the Intermountain Sexual Abuse Treatment Center. Bowers was worried about her three small children, who seemed to talk too freely about sex. Dr. Snow interviewed the children and concluded that they had in fact been sexually abused. Dr. Snow claimed that the children had told her about the perpetrator, a teenage babysitter who was the daughter of Keith Burnham, the respected Bishop of the Lehi Eight[h] Ward of the Mormon Church. Dr. Snow also asked to interview other Lehi children who had been attended by the same babysitter, and most of the families involved decided to comply.

As a result of the interviews, the Burnhams were accused of abusing a number of children in the area, and the Burnham parents were accused of abusing their own children. Utah's Family Services division investigated the Burnham parents and found no evidence of abuse. Additional interviews with other children led to claims that children in the area were being forced to participate in Satanic rituals.

Police began investigating these various claims. "When the police concluded their investigation in 1987, Dr. Snow had accused fourty adults—almost all of them active Mormons in Lehi's Eight[h] Ward—to be ritual child abusers and members of a secret Satanic cult." Only one individual was charged with child abuse, and during his trial a county attorney asserted that Dr. Snow was forcing children to admit to abuse that the children never experienced.

Dr. Snow made additional accusations over the next two years about Satanic cults in Bountiful and Salt Lake City, Utah. An investigation was started in Salt Lake but discontinued after more than a year.

The Glenn Pace Memo and Further Developments

It was in this context that the "Glenn Pace Memo" was created.

On May 24, 1989 the LDS Social Services released a report on Satanism, followed by another report from the U.S. attorney for Utah Brent Ward (an active Mormon) and a further memorandum from Bishop Glen L. Pace, then Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, dated October 20, 1989. All these documents have never been published. A fourth document, a memorandum also authored by Bishop Pace and directed to the Strengthening Church Members Committee on July 19, 1990, although marked "Do not reproduce", came into the possession of Evangelical Salt Lake counter-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner in 1991. . . . In November 1991 the Tanners published the memo.

In the memo, Bishop Pace explained that he had met with 60 purported victims of ritual or Satanic abuse. The victims provided detailed descriptions of their abuse and asserted that the perpetrators of the abuse had been youth leaders, bishops, temple workers, and at least one stake president. As a result of these interviews, Bishop Pace believed there was a high likelihood of a Satanic cult existing in Utah or among the Latter-day Saints. Bishop Pace quoted several scriptures to show that the rise of Satanic cults had been prophesied of in the Book of Mormon.

In the middle of these reports being written, the remains of an infant were discovered in late 1989 in southern Idaho, with the body apparently showing evidence of ritual abuse. In early 1990, a 10 year old boy in southern Idaho whose family were Latter-day Saints claimed that he had been abused and tortured as part of Satanic rituals. Both cases became national news and led to somewhat of a hysteria-like atmosphere in the Mountain West. (The Idaho Attorney General's Office thoroughly investigated both issues and concluded that the remains of the infant did not in fact show signs of abuse but rather animal mutilation, and the boy had in fact never witnessed or been abused as part of a Satanic ritual.)

Utah Attorney General Investigations

It was during this period that the Utah State Task Force on Ritual Abuse was created in March 1990. This task force was created to investigate claims of ritual abuse in Utah and provide education to professionals and the public on the possibility of ritual abuse. To assist with the investigation of claims, the Utah State Attorney General's Office later assigned individuals to investigate these claims and prepare recommendations for future investigations. In a report published in 1995, the Attorney General's Office explained that "during an exhaustive two year search, the Unit has investigated over 125 cases of alleged ritual crime." The investigation report concluded:

The complexity of the problem required detailed planning, tireless research and cooperation. Every police chief, sheriff, law enforcement executive, many of the state's therapists, religious leaders and community leaders were contacted. . . . Investigators statewide were told stories of bizarre sexual and physical abuse. . . . Utah's police officers and their departments have dedicated thousands of hours as they followed up on allegations, searched hillsides for ritual sites, "staked-out" potential ceremonies, etc. Their combined efforts were unable to uncover any phsycial evidence to support the claims of the existence of organized cults. Evidence has been uncovered to support the thought that individuals have in the past, and are now committing crime in the name of Satan or other deity. The allegations of organized satanists, even groups of satanists who have permeated every level of government and religion were unsubstantiated.

The report also warned against "recovered memory" therapy, which had been prominently used by therapists, including Dr. Snow, to "uncover" ritual and Satanic abuses:

Often the reports of victims are based on "recovered memories", which were blocked at an early age and are only recalled after some intensive therapeutic intervention. This therapy often involves hypnosis. The Utah Supreme Court has said unequivocally that a prosecution cannot be based upon testimony that is hypnotically-refreshed or enhanced, dur to the unreliability and suggestibility of that process. State v. Tuttle, 780 P.2d 1203 (Utah 1989), cert. denied 494 U.S. 1018 (1990). Most courts throughout the country which have addressed the issue have ruled that the outcome of hypnotherapy is not reliable enough to be admissible in court proceedings. Even when hynposis is not directly involved, there is enough controversy about the entire issue of "recovered memories" in the field of psychology, that the courts are unlikely to admit such evidence without showing that the memory of the victim is reliable.

Conclusion

The ritual or Satanic abuse scare in the 1990s in Utah failed to reveal any cults or other systemic ritual programs. However, the Church has consistently warned its members against participating in any group or activity that may resemble the occult. A recent addition to the General Handbook states:

"That which is of God is light" (Doctrine and Covenants 50:24). The occult focuses on darkness and leads to deception. It destroys faith in Christ.

The occult includes Satan worship. It also includes mystical activities that are not in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Such activities include (but are not limited to) fortune-telling, curses, and healing practices that are imitations of the priesthood power of God (see Moroni 7:11–17).

Church members should not engage in any form of Satan worship or participate in any way with the occult. They should not focus on such darkness in conversations or in Church meetings.

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Articles about Latter-day Saint scripture

Scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ	The Holy Bible Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants Pearl of Great Price Book of Moses Book of Abraham The Family: A Proclamation to the World
Nature of scripture	Open vs closed canon Understanding revelation
Interpretation of scripture	Tips for studying scripture Leaders on scripture interpretation Common issues in interpretation and proof-texting Alleged contradictions in scripture Violence in the scriptures Slavery in the scriptures Sexism in the scriptures Racism and the scriptures

Violence in the Scriptures

Violence in scripture is troubling for many believers. The following articles address issues related to violence in the scriptures.

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How can we approach confusing, morally disturbing, or other troubling texts from the scriptures?

Read it in context

The scriptures contain a lot that we cannot always understand at first glance without context. Biblical scholars have, for many decades, been trying to understand the original context for the Bible. We advise readers to see "Tips for reading and understanding scripture" for suggestions along these lines for both the Bible and other Latter-day Saint scriptures.

Once read in context, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, many passages that were confusing can become clearer. This is part of "studying it out in our minds" (see D&C 9꞉8).

Read it holistically

When we read the scriptures holistically—that is, being aware of everything that they have to say on a certain topic—their teachings can make more sense as we consider all that God has revealed on the topic.

Description vs. Prescription

We must remember that just because something is described in Scripture that such behavior may not always be prescribed. In other words, describing something is not recommending it to the readers as a course of action.

Just because the scriptures record something that is strange, offensive, or repulsive, does not mean that the scriptures are stating that someone ought to act similarly. Some things mentioned in scripture are there to point out examples of bad behavior that one need not follow (1 Cor. 10꞉1-12). Sometimes the writer will say so directly; in other cases he expects us to draw the proper conclusion for ourselves because of the context.

Adopt a solid interpretive method

There are any ways to read scripture. Sometimes we need to use a different method than the one we are used to. As an example of how to do this, we will use both modern revelation and also combine the insights of two biblical scholars: Paul Copan and Kenton Sparks.

These two men have many views about bible passages that align with each othermdash;but Sparks stands apart from Copan in a key way. Copan agrees that God was inspired even the less-than-ideal laws, Sparks sees no way to provide a "full-orbed, detailed explanation" to trace things back to God.

Despite this difference of opinion, both men agree that the Old Testament contains less-than-ideal circumstances and that scripture progresses by moving beyond its morally inferior context in sometimes startling ways. Despite this, because even that progress can be less than ideal, they still stand in need of redemption—of Christ’s redeeming power.

First, we will consider modern revelation. We suggest readers see "Understanding revelation" for more detail.

Paul Copan on incremental steps for hardened hearts

The Law of Moses: Inferior and Provisional

On Palm Sunday in 1865, the brilliant Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to the tenacious, gritty Northern general Ulysses S. Grant—sometimes called "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. This day at the Appomattox Court House was the decisive end to a costly war. Well over six hundred thousand men were killed in the Civil War—2 percent of the United States’ population—and three million fought in it.

Despite the North’s victory, the Emancipation Proclamation that preceded it (January 1, 1863), and the attempt at Reconstruction in the South, many whites did not change their mind-set in regard to blacks. As a nation, we’ve found that proclamations and civil rights legislations may be law, but such legalities don’t eradicate racial prejudice from human minds. A good deal of time was required to make significant headway in the pursuit of racial justice.

Let’s switch gears. Imagine a Western nation or representatives from the West who think it best to export democracy to, say, Saudi Arabia. Think of the obstacles to overcome! A radical change of mind-set would be required, and simply changing laws wouldn’t alter the thinking in Saudi Arabia. In fact, you could probably imagine large-scale cultural opposition to such changes.

When we journey back over the millennia into the ancient Near East, we enter a world that is foreign to us in many ways. Life in the ancient Near East wouldn’t just be alien to us—with all of its strange ways and assumptions. We would also see a culture whose social structures were badly damaged by the fall [of Adam and Eve]. Within this context, God raised up a covenant nation and gave the people laws to live by; he helped to create a culture for them. In doing so, he adapted his ideals to a people whose attitudes and actions were influenced by deeply flawed structures. As we’ll see with regard to servitude, punishments, and other structures, a range of regulations and statutes in Israel reveals a God who accommodates. Yet contrary to the common Neo-atheists’ caricatures, these laws weren’t the permanent, divine ideal for all persons everywhere. God informed his people that a new, enduring covenant would be necessary (Jer. 1; Ezek. 6). By the Old Testament’s own admission, the Mosaic law was inferior and future looking.

Does that mean that God’s ideals turn up only in the New Testament? No, the ideals are established at the very beginning (Gen. 1–2). The Old Testament makes clear that all humans are God’s image-bearers; they have dignity, worth, and moral responsibility. And God’s ideal for marriage is a one-flesh monogamous union between husband and wife. Also, certain prohibitions in the law of Moses against theft, adultery, murder, and idolatry have enduring relevance. Yet when we look at God’s dealings with fallen humans in the ancient Near East, these ideals were ignored and even deeply distorted. So God was at work in seeking to restore or move toward this ideal.

We know that many products on the market have a built-in, planned obsolescence. They’re designed for the short-term; they’re not intended to be long-lasting and permanent. The same goes for the law of Moses: it was never intended to be enduring. [Latter-day Saint readers can see Mosiah 13꞉29-31, 3꞉14-15, and 2 Nephi 25꞉24-25 for a detailed explanation that agrees with this.] It looked forward to a new covenant (Jer. 1; Ezek. 6). It’s not that the Mosaic law was bad and therefore needed to be replaced. The law was good (Rom. 7꞉12), but it was a temporary measure that was less than deal; it was in need of replacement and fulfillment.

Though a necessary part of God’s unfolding plan, the Sinai legislation wasn’t God’s final word. As the biblical scholar N. T. Wright affirms, "The Torah [law of Moses at Sinai] is given for a specific period of time, and is then set aside—not because it was a bad thing now happily abolished, but because it was a good thing whose purpose had now been accomplished." This is the message of the New Testament book of Hebrews: the old Mosaic law and other Old Testament institutions and figures like Moses and Joshua were prefiguring "shadows" that would give way to "substance" and completion. Or as Paul put it in Galatians 3꞉24, the law was a "tutor" for Israel to prepare the way for Christ.

Incremental Steps toward the Ideal

How then did God address the patriarchal structures, primogeniture (rights of the firstborn), polygamy, warfare, servitude/slavery, and a number of other fallen social arrangements that were permitted because of the hardness of human hearts? He met Israel partway. As Jesus stated it in Matthew 19꞉8, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way." We could apply this passage to many problematic structures within the ancient Near Eastern context: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted servitude and patriarchy and warfare and the like, but from the beginning it has not been this way." They were not ideal and universal.

After God invited all Israelites—male and female, young and old—to be a nation of priests to God, he gave them a simple covenant code (Exod. 20꞉22 – 23꞉19). Following on the heels of this legislation, Israel rebelled against God in the golden calf incident (Exod. 2). High priests would also have their own rebellion by participating in deviant, idolatrous worship (Lev. 0). As a result of Israel’s turning from God, he gave them more stringent laws (Jer. 7; cf. Gal. 3꞉19). In the New Testament, Paul assumes that God had been putting up with inferior, less-than-ideal societal structures and human disobedience

• Acts 17꞉30: Previously, God "overlooked the times of ignorance" and is "now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent."

• Romans 3꞉25: God has now "demonstrate[d] His righteousness" in Christ, though "in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed."

Like two sides of the same coin, we have human hard-heartedness and divine forbearance. God put up with many aspects of human fallenness and adjusted accordingly. So Christopher Hitchens’s reaction to Mosaic laws ("we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human animals") actually points us in the right direction in two ways. First, the Mosaic law was temporary and, as a whole, isn’t universal and binding upon all humans or all cultures. Second, Mosaic times were indeed "crude" and "uncultured" in many ways. So Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely overhauling ancient Near Eastern social structures and assumptions. God "works with" Israel as he finds her. He meets his people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life. [Latter-day Saint readers can again compare this with the Lord's similar strategy for us in D&C 1꞉24-28.] As one writer puts it, "If human beings are to be treated as real human beings who possess the power of choice, then the ‘better way’ must come gradually. Otherwise, they will exercise their freedom of choice and turn away from what they do not understand." Given certain fixed assumptions in the ancient Near East, God didn’t impose legislation that Israel wasn’t ready for. He moved incrementally. As stated repeatedly in the Old Testament and reinforced in the New Testament, the law of Moses was far from ideal. Being the practical God he is, Yahweh (the Old Testament title for the covenant-making God) met his people where they were, but he didn’t want to leave them there. God didn’t banish all fallen, flawed, ingrained social structures when Israel wasn’t ready to handle the ideals. Taking into account the actual, God encoded more feasible laws, though he directed his people toward moral improvement. He condescended by giving Israel a jumping-off place, pointing them to a better path.

As we move through the Scriptures, we witness a moral advance—or, in many ways, a movement toward restoring the Genesis ideals. In fact, Israel’s laws reveal dramatic moral improvements over the practices of the other ancient Near Eastern peoples. God’s act of incrementally "humanizing" ancient Near Eastern structures for Israel meant diminished harshness and an elevated status of debt-servants, even if certain negative customs weren’t fully eliminated.

So when we read in Joshua 10꞉22-27 that Joshua killed five Canaanite kings and hung their corpses on trees all day, we don’t have to explain away or justify such a practice. Such actions reflect a less morally refined condition. Yet these sorts of texts remind us that, in the unfolding of his purposes, God can use heroes such as Joshua within their context and work out his redemptive purposes despite them. And, as we’ll see later on, warfare accounts in Joshua are actually quite tame in comparison to the barbarity of other ancient Near Eastern accounts.

So rather than looking at Scripture from a post-Enlightenment critique (which, as we’ll see later, is itself rooted in the Christian influence on Western culture), we can observe that Scripture itself acknowledges the inferiority of certain Old Testament standards. The Old Testament offers national Israel various resources to guide them regarding what is morally ideal. God’s legislation is given to a less morally mature culture that has imbibed the morally inferior attitudes and sinful practices of the ancient Near East.

Note too that common ancient Near Eastern worship patterns and rituals—sacrifices, priesthood, holy mountains/places, festivals, purification rites, circumcision—are found in the law of Moses. For example, we find in Hittite law a sheep being substituted for a man. In his providence, God appropriated certain symbols and rituals familiar to Israel and infused them with new meaning and significance in light of his saving, historical acts and his covenant relationship with Israel. This "redemption" of ancient rituals and patterns and their incorporation into Israel’s own story reflect common human longings to connect with "the sacred" or "the transcendent" or to find grace and forgiveness. In God’s historical redemption of Israel and later with the coming of Christ, the Lamb of God, these kinds of rituals and symbols were fulfilled in history and were put in proper perspective.

Instead of glossing over some of the inferior moral attitudes and practices we encounter in the Old Testament, we should freely acknowledge them. We can point out that they fall short of the ideals of Genesis 1–2 and affirm with our critics that we don’t have to advocate such practices for all societies. We can also show that any of the objectionable practices we find in the Old Testament have a contrary witness in the Old Testament as well.

The Redemptive Movement of Scripture

The Old Testament’s laws exhibit a redemptive movement within Scripture. It’s easy to get stuck on this or that isolated verse—all the while failing to see the underlying redemptive spirit and movement of Scripture that unfold and progress. For example, William Webb’s book Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals unpacks this "redemptive-movement" perspective found in Scripture. The contrast is the static interpretation that rigidly "parks" at certain texts without considering the larger movement of Scripture.

Some people might ask, "Is this some sort of relativistic idea—that certain laws were right for Old Testament Israel but now there’s another standard that’s right for us?" Not at all! Keep in mind the following thoughts we’ve already touched on:

• God’s ultimate ideals regarding human equality and dignity as well as the creational standard of marriage made their appearance at the very beginning (Gen. 1–2).

• The ancient Near East displays a deviation from these ideals in fallen social structures and human hard-heartedness.

• Incremental steps are given to Old Testament Israel that tolerate certain moral deficiencies but encourage Israel to strive higher.

So the Old Testament isn’t affirming relativism—that was true in the Old Testament but not in the New Testament. God’s ideals were already in place at creation, but God accommodated himself to human hard-heartedness and fallen social structures. Half a loaf is better than none—something we take for granted in the give-and-take of the political process in the West. In other words, the idea that you can make progress toward the ideal, even if you can’t get there all at once, is a far cry from relativism. Rather, your eye is still set on the ideal, and you’re incrementally moving toward it, but the practicalities of life "on the ground" make it difficult to implement the ideal all at once. Likewise, the Sinai laws were moving in the right direction even if certain setbacks remained.

[...]

Israel’s History: Differing Stages, Different Demands

Israel’s story involves a number of stages or contexts.

Stage #1: Ancestral wandering clan (mishpachah): Genesis 10꞉31-32

Stage #2: Theocratic people/nation (‘am, goy): Genesis 12꞉2; Exodus 1꞉9; 3:7; Judges 2꞉20

Stage #3: Monarchy, institutional state, or kingdom (mamlakah, malkut): 1 Samuel 24꞉20; 1 Chronicles 28꞉5

Stage #4: Afflicted remnant (she’erit): Jeremiah 42꞉4; Ezekiel 5꞉10

Stage #5: Postexilic community/assembly of promise (qahal): Ezra 2꞉64; Nehemiah 13꞉1

With these differing contexts come differing ethical demands. Each new situation calls for differing ethical responses or obligations corresponding to them. Don’t get the wrong idea, however. It’s not as though this view advocates "situational ethics"—that in some situations, say, adultery is wrong, but in other situations it might be the "loving thing to do". Rather, the Old Testament supplies us with plenty of permanent moral insights from each of these stages. So during the wandering clan stage, we gain enduring insights about commitments of mutual love and concern as well as the importance of reconciliation in overcoming conflict. The patriarchs trusted in a covenant-making God; this God called for full trust as he guided them through difficult, unforeseeable circumstances. And during Israel’s theocratic stage, an enduring insight is the need to acknowledge that all blessings and prosperity come from God’s hand—that they aren’t a right but a gift of grace. The proper response is gratitude and living holy lives in keeping with Israel’s calling.

Again, what we’re emphasizing is far from moral relativism; it’s just that along with these historical changes came differing ethical challenges. During the wandering clan stage, for instance, Abraham and the other patriarchs had only accidental or exceptional political involvements. And even when Abraham had to rescue Lot after a raid (Gen. 4), he refused to profit from political benefactors. Through a covenant-bond, Yahweh was the vulnerable patriarchs’ protector and supplier.

After this, Israel had to wait 430 years and undergo bondage in Egypt until the bag of Amorite sins was filled to the point of bursting (Gen. 15꞉16). God certainly didn’t act hastily against the Canaanites! God delivered Israel out of slavery, providing a place for her to live and making her a political entity, a history-making nation. A theocracy was then formed with its own religious, social, and political environment.

To acquire land to live as a theocracy and eventually to pave the way for a coming Redeemer-Messiah, warfare (as a form of judgment on fully ripened sin) was involved. God used Israel to neutralize Canaanite military strongholds and drive out a people who were morally and spiritually corrupt—beyond redemption. The Canaanites had sunk below the hope of moral return, although God wouldn’t turn away those who recognized God’s justice and his power in delivering Israel from Egypt (such as Rahab and her family). This settling of the land was a situation quite different from the wandering clan stage, and it required a different response.

Later, when many of God’s people were exiled in Babylon, they were required to handle this situation differently than in the previous theocratic stage. They were to build gardens, settle down, have children, and pray for the welfare of Babylon—the very enemy that had displaced them by carrying them into exile (Jer. 29꞉4-7). Israel’s obligations and relationship to Gentile nations hardly remained fixed or static.

We will now see how our second author treats similar issues.

Kenton Sparks on recognizing that scripture is in need of redemption and not immune from criticism

What we face, I think, is the ethical difficulty I mentioned earlier in passing: the problem of scripture is the problem of evil. Just as God's good and beautiful creation stands in need of redemption, so Scripture -as God's word written within and in relation to that creation, by finite and fallen humans -stands in need of redemption. Scripture does more than witness explicitly to the fallenness of the created order and humanity. Scripture is implicitly, in itself, a product of and evidence for the fallen world that it describes.

[...]

Given what we have said so far, I would join other scholars in suggesting that a robust doctrine of Scripture should not presume that "the text is immune from criticism." [Latter-day Saints will probably be less shocked by this idea than the author's conservative Protestant audience, who often hold views of biblical inerrancy. Latter-day Saints, meanwhile, have always understood—even from the title page of the Book of Mormon—that scripture is part of a human process, and so human errors will probably be inevitable (Ether 12꞉23-29, 1 Nephi 19꞉6, Mormon 8꞉17.]

[...]

Both humanity and Scripture are God's good works and serve a role in his redemptive work. And though this is true, both are marred by the effects of the Fall. The presence in Scripture of this distortion no more compromises its status as God's word than the distortion in humanity compromises its status as God's creation. The Fall's effect on humanity and Scripture remind us that both stand in need of redemption. In each case, we must render thoughtful judgments about where they are rightly ordered and where they reflect the Fall's disordering effects. When we make these judgments about Scripture, true, we follow the admonition of Augustine, who long ago taught that:

Anything in the divine writings that cannot be referred either to good, honest morals, or to the truth of the faith, you must know is said allegorically.... Those things ... which appear to the inexperienced to be sinful, and which are ascribed to God, or to men whose holiness is put before us as an example, are wholly allegorical, and the hidden kernel of meaning they contain is to be picked out as food for the nourishment of charity.

While I do not fully agree with Augustine's allegorical solution, [Latter-day Saints would likewise not find this a terribly compelling solution] I very much agree with his sense of the problem. Scripture's natural meaning sometimes runs contrary to the Gospel and, where it does, begs for a hermeneutical explanation. Unlike Augustine, I would attribute these theological tensions to the fact that the Bible is both sacred and broken, which reflects God's choice to sanctify the broken, human voices of Scripture as his divine word.

"Broken," in Sparks' view, is labeling what he sees as the identification of things in scripture that absolutely cannot be traced back to God in any sense. This can lead to a type of progression:

1. A fallen world, morally inferior context in which certain laws are given.
2. Laws that rise above the fallen and morally inferior context (and with it a need to read the scriptures contextually and holistically).
3. A redemptive move from inferior to better moral law with differing historical contexts that called for differing needs.
4. Because of less-than-ideal laws, a need for redemption and fulfillment in Christ. Also, since less then ideal, the laws don't remain entirely immune from criticism. Though they do deserve our careful attention including a contextual reading that helps us how they fulfill #2.
5. Christ’s atonement covers the sins of all of fallen mankind. God tolerated the fallen structures and hard-heartedness of the Israelites while promising to one day make a new heart of them. Because God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance (Alma 45꞉16; Doctrine and Covenants 1꞉21), and because these passages do not fully accord with the law of love, the Savior, through an act of grace, was needed to atone for the the sins of the Israelites. Thus the Savior can become part of the Latter-day Saint solution to the so-called Old Testament problem.

This approach allows us to both believe in the inspiration of all scripture while also recognizing and acknowledging the fallen aspects of it.

Why does God resort to violence in scripture, especially in the Old Testament?

Latter-day Saints and other Christians often come to ask: "What ethical principles are meant to be taught to modern believers by the existence of violence in the scriptures that is either commanded by God or personally enacted by him?"

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan writes that there are over 600 instances of human violence and over 1000 instances of divine violence scattered throughout the Bible. There are many crimes for which the prescribed punishment is death, even for what we might see as quite trivial offences, such as blasphemy, cursing your parents, divination, and rebelliousness.

How could the Jesus of the New Testament be the God of the Old Testament? The same man that said to "forgive seventy times seven" is also the same God of the Old Testament? One apostate Christian, Marcion of Sinope, went so far as to teach that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament were distinct beings and that the God of the New was superior to the God of the Old.

For Latter-day Saints, the Old Testament can be reconciled with the New Testament and other Restoration Scripture by drawing on all scriptural resources available to us.

We here provide some ideas and "food for thought" that are not new nor unique to Latter-day Saints.

Justification for violent action can be both inside and outside a text

When God either commands or causes violence, certain conditions seem to be required first. The scriptures often provide us with enough background to see why a violent response was appropriate, but sometimes those reasons are not spelled out or are left unsaid.

Mere justice

Are there certain evils to which the proper response is violence or other harsh punishment? Most of us would probably answer, Yes. (One thinks of torture, rape, child abuse, slavery, or premeditated murder as possibilities.) Remember too that the ancient world did not have the resources to keep people in prison for lengthy terms. A prisoner in jail is one more mouth to feed, clothe, and house that the subsistence agriculture of the ancient world could ill afford.

This is what we'll call the idea of mere justice in responding to God's violence.

Christian scholar and apologist Paul Copan writes that "love is God's central attribute, and God's severity flows out of his love. God desires the ultimate well-being of humans, but he will sometimes have to say 'enough is enough.' He will have to act in judgement to stop dehumanization and other evils that undermine human flourishing."

Copan then quotes New Testament scholar and Anglican theologian N.T. Wright:

Face it: to deny God's wrath is, at bottom, to deny God's love. When God sees humans being enslaved . . . if God doesn't hate it, he is not a loving God. . . .When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone's political agenda, if God doesn't hate it, he isn't a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grifting and preying on one another, if God were to say, "Never mind, I love you all anyway," he is neither good nor loving. The Bible doesn't speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures.

The scriptures certainly treat murder as a type of action that deserves violence as the only just punishment. Genesis 9꞉6 reads "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." Modern revelation echoes this idea. Doctrine & Covenants 42꞉19 reads "And again, I say, thou shalt not kill; but he that killeth shall die."

Defensive violence

An important idea is defensive violence. Defensive violence counters violence or the threat of it with violence from the defender. The scriptures record instances of the Lord helping his people in defensive battles. Israel defended against the Amalekites who attacked them while traveling (Exodus 17꞉8) and that the Canaanite king of Arad attacked and captured some of the Israelites (Numbers 21꞉1); Israel countered the efforts of the Midiantes to lead them away from Yahweh through sexual transgression and idolatry (Numbers 5, 31) Sihon refused peace offers from Israel and attacked them (Deuteronomy 2, Numbers 1), and so on.

Doctrine & Covenants 98꞉33-38 clarifies that in any case that the ancient Israelites needed to fight a battle against another, they were first to offer peace and reconciliation to their would-be attackers. This procedure of offering peace is given as a stipulation for other people to follow when they encounter potential death at the hands of another group of people:

And again, this is the law that I gave unto mine ancients, that they should not go out unto battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people, save I, the Lord, commanded them. And if any nation, tongue, or people should proclaim war against them, they should first lift a standard of peace unto that people, nation, or tongue; And if that people did not accept the offering of peace, neither the second nor the third time, they should bring these testimonies before the Lord; Then I, the Lord, would give unto them a commandment, and justify them in going out to battle against that nation, tongue, or people. And I, the Lord, would fight their battles, and their children’s battles, and their children’s children’s, until they had avenged themselves on all their enemies, to the third and fourth generation. Behold, this is an ensample unto all people, saith the Lord your God, for justification before me.

The Lord thus permits defensive violence when certain requirements are met—there are many examples in the Book of Mormon (as well as some examples of violence which were not defensive, and thus condemned by God and his prophets [e.g., 3 Nephi 3꞉20-21]).

Moral disappointment

Latter-day Saints hold that all humans had a pre-mortal existence as spirits in the presence of God our Father. According to the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, there is at least a part of our human spirit that has always existed into infinite past and will always exist (Abraham 3꞉18). This part is called our intelligence in Latter-day Saint scripture. This intelligence is a self-conscious, spiritual, material entity (Doctrine & Covenants 131꞉7-8) that has apparently always existed (Doctrine & Covenants 93꞉29).

All humans thus have a premortal understanding of right and wrong, which continues into this life if we do not reject it (Moroni 7꞉14-16). Could it be that the moral education we have received is sufficient to require that we lose our lives for disobeying that moral law? This is what we’ll call God’s moral disappointment in his children.

Doctrine and Covenants 93꞉30-32 seems to teach this idea:

All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light. And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation.

Proximate motivation

Could it be that the law of Moses and some of the violent punishments attached to it are meant to teach the seriousness with which we should obey these moral laws? This is what we’ll call proximate motivation.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks taught:

We read again and again in the Bible and in modern scriptures of God’s anger with the wicked and of His acting in His wrath against those who violate His laws. How are anger and wrath evidence of His love? Joseph Smith taught that God "institute[d] laws whereby [the spirits that He would send into the world] could have a privilege to advance like himself." God’s love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God’s anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child’s self-defeating behavior.

Under this theory, the violence of the God of the Old Testament and the more non-violent God of the New are the same God teaching his children the seriousness with which he regards sin because of its effect on their eternal future. The atonement and ministry of Jesus Christ are thus a 'new way' of teaching. Christ became the new sacrifice and object of the violen punishment that some sins deserve (instead of animals and humans as in the Old Testament) so that we could have a prolonged period of time to repent.

Generative chastisement

Proverbs, Hebrews, and Helaman teach that God chastens us and even scourges us because he loves us (Proverbs 3꞉11-12; Hebrews 12꞉5-6; Helaman 15꞉3). Hopefully this leads to humility and a decision to turn back to him. Divine punishment may, therefore, serve to restore some people’s connection to God or provide them motivation to establish connection for the first time? Helaman 12꞉3 tells us that "except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him." Perhaps violence turns people to God and humbles them enough be in alignment with his will. This is what we’ll call generative chastisement.

The Lord told Brigham Young that "[m]y people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom." The Lord told the Saints in August 1833 that "I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy. For if ye will not abide in my covenant ye are not worthy of me." In December 1833 he said that "they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son." King Benjamin taught us that "the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

Ethical deterrence

Not all humans will be motivated by a decision to turn to God. Violent punishment is, at the least, a deterrent to those sins, as well as a guarantee that any guilty of such crimes will not commit them a second time. An executed murderer does not murder again.

This is a less noble function, but it certainly matches one of the purposes of human legal punishments.

Scriptural teaching by negative example

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf told a story about Solomon based in Ecclesiastes in the October 2018 General Conference of the Church:

The ancient King Solomon was one of the most outwardly successful human beings in history. He seemed to have everything—money, power, adoration, honor. But after decades of self-indulgence and luxury, how did King Solomon sum up his life?
"All is vanity," he said.

This man, who had it all, ended up disillusioned, pessimistic, and unhappy, despite everything he had going for him.

After using these scriptural words from Solomon, Elder Uchtdorf then declares that "Solomon was wrong, my dear brothers and sisters–and life is not ‘vanity.’ To the contrary, it can be full of purpose, meaning, and peace."

Scripture sometimes intends to give us a negative example about moral behavior so that we can learn from it today. The Book of Mormon offers itself as one such example, urging us to "learn to be more wise than we have been" (Mormon 9꞉31).

This is likewise almost certainly the case with the book of Judges and its chronicle of the fall of Israel. Elder Uchtdorf recognizes the moral impracticality and, indeed, falsity of proclaiming that all is vanity. Jacob informs us that we were created with the end of keeping God’s commandments and glorifying him forever (Jacob 2꞉21).

We’ve already mentioned how Latter-day Saints believe that at least a part of our spirit is eternal both backwards and forwards and how there can be a moral law that we have known from all eternity past and will know to all eternity future that allows us to achieve mutual self-realization. Along with these propositions, scriptural allergism would affirm that God exists, that he reveals his will through mortal messengers such as prophets, that those prophets record their teachings in sacred texts, and that God allows seemingly false moral ideas to be incorporated into scripture (and even allowing those propositions to appear morally inspired) so that readers have an almost allergic reaction to those ideas given the moral law that they have written on their hearts and have known from all eternity past

Like all truth, this idea can be abused if we misuse it—it could be used as an excuse to disregard any prophetic directive that doesn’t immediately appeal to their views or desires. Joseph Smith taught that "[i]f the Church knew all the commandments, one half they would condemn through prejudice and ignorance."

This idea is powerful, however, because it shows that God can use even the mistaken or fallen to teach us Lehi tells us that "it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things" (2 Nephi 2꞉11). Perhaps portions of the Old Testament serves as a kind of "opposition" to the New and other scripture. If we didn't have this stark portrayal of rather disturbing violence and other ethical dilemmas in the Old Testament, then perhaps we wouldn't recognize and appreciate the good and divinity of the moral progress demonstrated in the New Testament and other scripture.

Blake Ostler on categories and the I-Thou relationship

Latter-day Saint theologian and philosopher Blake Ostler offers an interesting possibility for understanding the God of the Old Testament and other scripture.

Ostler begins by citing the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant]. Kant argued that humans come into the world with a set of categories that are pre-loaded and that make sense of all experience. Prior to any experience, there are categories that are ready to take in experience and interpret it; label it and categorize it. These categories include space, time, and quantity.

Ostler next turns to Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber and his thought on the I-Thou relationship. Buber attempts to make sense of how persons can fully and properly relate to one another. Persons cannot be objects but must be full subjects. When two persons encounter each other as full subjects, they are part of the I-Thou relationship. When one of the persons becomes an object, the relationship between one person and the other becomes an I-It relationship.

Ostler suggests that in order to truly encounter God and treat God as a full subject—a true Thou—he must do things that break free of the categories that we impose on him—including moral categories. If he didn't, we would continue to ossify our relationship with him and treat him as an It.

Why would Elisha have two she-bears maul 42 children?

The text is making a lot of rhetorical points that go unnoticed without additional context =

2 Kings 2꞉23-25 has a short account that reads:

And [Elisha] went up from thence unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

The text has a lot more going on that goes unnoticed without additional context. The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible offers the following commentary on these verses:

23-25: The episode of the cursing of the boys of Bethel who jeered at the prophet seems shocking to modern readers. For the ancient reader it demonstrated that it was dangerous to behave disrespectfully toward a man of God. 24: The narrator does not tell the content of Elisha’s curse, and whether or not he intended to kill the boys. Forty-two boys, "forty-two" is a number sometimes associated with death: Jehu kills forty-two victims (10.14), and the Egyptian Book of the Dead mentions forty-two judges of the dead.

Also, the epithet ‘baldhead’ was one of "contempt in the East, applied to a person even with a bushy head of hair."

The phrase "go up" likely was a reference to Elijah, Elisha’s mentor, being taken up to Heaven earlier in 2 Kings chapter 2꞉11-12. These youths were sarcastically taunting and insulting the Lord’s prophet by telling him to repeat Elijah’s translation.

In summary we have:

a) A symbolic representation for death, indicating that there may be more symbolism being used behind the text. b) Clear condemnation and mocking of the prophet, using culturally charged epithets to disparage the prophet. c) No indication from the narrator as to what Elisha’s curse actually was. No indication as to whether he wanted this to happen. d) A clear hint as to what the author’s intent was for the story: to teach ancient readers respect for the prophet.

Why are Old Testament penalties for disobedience so harsh?

The Law of Moses was a very strict law that was designed to teach the Children of Israel obedience

The Law of Moses was a very strict law designed to teach the children of Israel obedience. It was indeed quite harsh when compared to our modern standards, however, for its time (in several aspects at least) it was step forward from the even harsher surrounding Near Eastern cultures.

God reminds us that his ways are not our ways in Isaiah 55꞉8-9:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Capital punishment was required for five reasons in Israel:

1. Sexual purity—Sexual acts were given perhaps the strictest boundaries. This applies for adultery, bestiality, homosexual acts, incest, and rape.
2. The worship of other gods—God's people had to maintain theological purity. Worshipping other gods in the scriptures is most often compared to adultery and/or whoredoms. Anything that usurped the authority of Jehovah was strictly prohibited. This applies to divination, and sacrificing to false gods.
3. Common moral injustices—this applies to theft, murder, kidnapping, and human sacrifice.
4. Maintaining sociological order—This applies to cursing and striking parents.
5. Maintaining ritual purity—God wanted Israel to be a people that was set apart from the rest. They were to show it via moral advances, strict obedience, and setting the world aside. This applies to Sabbath breakers and some of the strict legislation set for the Israelite camp.

The following were defined as crimes worthy of capital punishment under the Mosaic Law:

1. Adultery (Leviticus 20꞉10-21; Deuteronomy 22꞉13-21)—Sexual fidelity was paramount for keeping the family unit intact.
2. Approaching the Ark of the Covenant (20#p15, 20 Numbers 4꞉15, 20; 1 Samuel 6꞉19-20; 2 Samuel 6꞉6-7)
3. Approaching the Tabernacle (Numbers 1꞉48-51)—This applied to non-Israelites who encroached on the tabernacle. This doesn't mean that outsiders weren't welcome (Exodus 22꞉21), just that intruders that disrupted the communal interest in an obviously malicious way were to be punished.
4. Bestiality (Exodus 22꞉19)—Prohibitions against sexual promiscuity and adventurism enforced the familial ideal
5. Blasphemy (Leviticus 24꞉10,23)—God required the fidelity and faithfulness of the Israelites.
6. Cursing your parents (Exodus 21꞉17)—This also enforced the familial ideals of Israel
7. Disobeying the judge or priest that mediates a specific case (Deuteronomy 17꞉8-13) As noted in The New Oxford Annotated Bible,

In the pre-Deuteronomic period, legal cases in which there was an absence of physical evidence or of witnesses were remanded to the local sanctuary, where the parties to the dispute would swear a judicial oath at the altar (19꞉17; Ex 22꞉7-11; 1 Kings 8꞉31-32; note also Ex 21꞉6). These two laws (17.2-7,8-13) thus fill the judicial void created by Deuteronomy's prohibition of the local sanctuaries (ch 12). Now, any case that requires recourse to the altar is remanded to the central sanctuary; all other cases, even capital ones, may be tried locally (vv 19꞉2-7).

8. These cases must be referred to the central sanctuary because, in the absence of witnesses o evidence, local officials cannot make a ruling. Between one kind of bloodshed and another, the legal distinction between murder and manslaughter (Ex 21꞉12-14; Num 35꞉16-23). In each pair, he distinction is between premeditated or unintentional offenses. 9: The tribunal at the sanctuary includes both priestly and lay members. The account of Jehosophat's setting up tribunals throughout Judah composed of lay and clerical judges reflects this law ((5-11#p 5-11 2 Chr 19꞉ 5-11).

1. Divination (Exodus 22꞉18; Leviticus 20꞉27) Witchcraft was equivalent to usurping the power of Yahweh since it convinced people into worshipping other Gods. The worship of other Gods is frequently juxtaposed with themes of whoredom and adultery.
2. False prophecy (Deuteronomy 13꞉1-11; Zechariah 13꞉3) There had to be a way to know who was a true prophet of Jehovah.
3. Fornication (Leviticus 21꞉9)—Sexual fidelity was the primordial factor that enforced Israel's familial ideals.
4. Homosexual acts (Leviticus 18꞉22)—The joining of man and woman ensured the continuation of species and the rising up of a righteous generation of followers to Jehovah.
5. Human sacrifice (Leviticus 20꞉2)—The practice was deplorable as it wasted God's creation and was a frequent practice of neighboring civilizations.
6. Incest (Leviticus 18꞉6-17)—Another law creating strict boundaries around sex. The bounds that God placed on sexual practice were for the specific purpose of fulfilling the ideals of the Plan of Salvation—to bring righteous souls to the earth so that the could participate in the gift of mortality and becoming like God.
7. Kidnapping (Exodus 21꞉16)—Self-evident. This law applied to everyone whether Israelite, non-Israelite, slave, freeman, etc.
8. Murder (Exodus 21꞉12-14)—Self-evident. The taking of innocent life was a very serious threat to creational ideals.
9. Rape (Deuteronomy 22꞉25-27)—Self-evident.
10. Rebelliousness (Deuteronomy 17꞉12)—Another law regarding familial unity and congruency. Rebelliousness upset the family order. Though the laws governing capital punishment here were casuistic.
11. Sacrificing to false gods (Exodus 22꞉19,20; Numbers 25꞉1-9; Deuteronomy 13꞉7-19; 17꞉2-5; 2 Chronicles 15꞉12-13; 1 Kings 14꞉9-16; 1 Kings 18꞉37-40)—Consecrating oneself to God was of the utmost importance. This applied only to Israelites who had covenanted to follow Yahweh and then sacrificed to someone else. Sacrificing to other gods is often juxtaposed with themes of whoredom and adultery.
12. Striking your parents (Exodus 21꞉15)—-Another law regarding familial ideals.
13. Violating the Sabbath (Exodus 31꞉12-15; 35꞉2)—-Strict laws ensured that Israel learned obedience and consecrated themselves to God.

Some have claimed that there was a death penalty for mixing certain kinds of fabrics together. It is true that there was a prohibition for this type of mixing given in Leviticus 19꞉19 and Deuteronomy 22꞉9-11. Yet neither scripture points to a penalty of death for their violation. Why these mixing laws were given has been difficult to explain for biblical scholars though there are a number of different theories.

JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy: "Filial insubordination is a grave offense because respect and obedience toward parents is regarded as the cornerstone of all order and authority"

From the The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy:

Verses 18-21 describe the procedure to be followed if a son is repeatedly insubordinate and his parents conclude that there is no hope of reforming him: they are to bring him before the town elders who will hear the case and, if they agree, order his execution. The law seeks to deter filial insubordination, but, by requiring that the case be judged by the elders, it also places limits on parental authority, as does the preceding law. Earlier, in the patriarchal period, it appears that the father’s authority over his children was absolute, like the patria potestas of early Roman law, even to the point of his being able to have them executed for wrongdoing; this is implied by Judah’s ability to order the execution of his daughter-in-law for adultery, with no trial (Gen. 38꞉24). The present law respects the parents’ right to discipline their son, but it prevents them from having him executed on their own authority. This may only be done by the community at large on the authority of the elders.

Ancient Near Eastern laws and documents also mention legal action by parents against misbehaving children. The grounds include such offenses against parents as disobedience, flight, repudiation, lawsuits against them, failure to respect and provide for them in their old age, and striking them. The punishments range from disinheritance to enslavement and mutilation.

Filial insubordination is a grave offense because respect and obedience toward parents is regarded as the cornerstone of all order and authority, especially in a tribal, patriarchal society like ancient Israel. If the death penalty specified by the present law is meant literally, it implies that biblical law regards insubordination and the danger it poses to the stability of society more severely than do other known ancient Near Eastern laws. The fact that Exodus 21꞉15 requires the death penalty for striking one’s parents, whereas the Laws of Hammurabi require only that the son’s hand be cut off, supports this inference. Nevertheless, some scholars, modern and ancient, believe that the death penalty stipulated in the present law is meant only rhetorically, in terrorem, to strengthen parental authority and deter the young from disobedience. As in the case of the apostate city (13:13-19), halakhic exegesis subjected the law to an exceedingly narrow reading, according to which it could hardly ever be carried out. Several rabbis held that it was never actually applied, but was stated in the Torah only for educational purposes.

Why would a loving God kill the firstborn of Egypt?

This was God's last option, not His first. He took no delight in it.

This had nothing to do with God deriving some sort of pleasure from killing "innocent children for the actions of others." God didn't want to kill anyone. Over and over and over again Moses came to Pharaoh, asking him to let the children of Israel go. The Pharaoh refused the request every time. There were nine plagues the preceded the Passover; Pharaoh could have gotten the message, but he didn't. This was God's last option, not His first. He took no delight in it.

Elder Jeffery R. Holland: "it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much"

Elder Jeffery R. Holland,

Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.

Why would God send poisonous serpents to kill the Children of Israel?

In Numbers 21꞉5-9, God teaches the Children of Israel an important lesson not only about obedience, but about the future atonement of Jesus Christ.

And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.

And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

Jesus Christ actually used this story to foreshadow his own crucifixion John 3꞉14-15:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The moral of the story is that one who looks upon Christ will be saved from spiritual death, not "don't complain or God will kill you." The snake on the pole is a representation of Christ and the atonement. Those that simply looked at it were saved from physical death. Those that look upon and accept Christ are saved from spiritual death. What is amazing is that there were people who simply wouldn't look at it, despite how easy it would have been to do so. They simply refused to take even the most simple action urged by Moses, and man whom they had seen do many miracles already.

Moses lifts up the bronze serpent to the Israelites.

Joseph Fielding Smith: "This was also in the similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ"

Joseph Fielding Smith:

When the Israelites left Egypt, the Lord gave them the passover. They were to take a lamb without blemish; they were not to break any of its bones. They were to kill it, cook it, and eat it with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. This feast they were to remember annually thereafter until Christ should come. This was also in the similitude of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. If you stop to consider it, it was at the time of the passover that our Lord was taken and crucified in fulfillment of the promises that had been made that he would come to be our Redeemer.

Did Nephi commit "cold blooded murder" when he killed Laban?

Nephi did not commit the equivalent of a first-degree murder under the laws of his day

Nephi's action against Laban (found in 1 Nephi 4꞉5-18) certainly seems like a gruesome and extreme scenario. However, this is an example of the problem of cultural differences—modern readers raised in Western culture often fail to connect with Nephi's time and place.

Hugh Nibley recalled:

When in 1946 this writer composed a little treatise called Lehi in the Desert from limited materials then available in Utah, he had never knowingly set eyes on a real Arab. Within the last five years Aneze tribesmen and citizens of Mecca, including even guides to the Holy Places, have been his students, in Provo, of all places, while Utah has suddenly been enriched with a magnificent Arabic library, thanks to the inspired efforts of Professor Aziz Atiya of the University of Utah.

As if it were not enough for the mountain to come to Mohammed, those sons of the desert who came to Provo found themselves taking a required class in the Book of Mormon from [me]. Naturally [I] was more than curious to see how these young men would react to the Book of Mormon treatment of desert themes, and invited and even required them to report frankly on their impressions. To date, with only one exception, no fault has been found with Nephi on technical grounds. The one exception deserves the attention of all would-be critics of the Book of Mormon.

It was in the first class ever held in "Book of Mormon for Near Eastern Students," and the semester had barely begun when of course we ran smack into the story of how Nephi found Laban dead drunk in a dark alley and cut off his head—a grisly tale that upsets Nephi himself in telling it. As we rehearsed the somber episode, I could detect visible signs of annoyance among the Arab students—whispered remarks, head-shakings, and frowns of dissent. Finally, toward the end of the hour, a smart young man from Jordan could hold out no longer. "Mr. Nibley," he said, plainly speaking for the others, "there is one thing wrong here. It doesn't sound right. Why did this Nephi wait so long to cut off Laban's head?" Since I had been expecting the routine protests of shock and disgust with which Western critics react to the Laban story, I was stunned by this surprise attack—stunned with a new insight into the Book of Mormon as a message from another age and another culture.

John Welch has also argued that Nephi's action should be understood as protected manslaughter rather than criminal homicide. The biblical law of murder, under which Nephi and Laban operated, demanded a higher level of premeditation and hostility than Nephi exhibited or modern law requires. Other factors within the Book of Mormon as well as in Moses' killing of the Egyptian in Exodus 2 support his conclusion that Nephi did not commit the equivalent of a first-degree murder under the laws of his day.

Laban himself was clearly guilty of at least two crimes, both of which carried the death penalty:

• He had tried to have Nephi and his brothers killed (1 Nephi 3꞉25). Premeditaed murder for gain was a capital crime.
• He had charged Laman with being a robber, and threatened to kill him (1 Nephi 3꞉13). To be a robber was a capital crime, and so the false charge put Laman at risk of death. (Laban's status as a millitary leader who could command soliders makes this charge and threat even more serious.)

The Mosaic law held that someone who knowingly made a false accusation against someone should suffer the penalty that the falsely accused would have suffered—in this case, death (Deuteronomy 19꞉19).

Thirdly, Laban may have been part of the group that sought to kill Lehi and declared him a false prophet (also a capital crime).

Finally, Laban was a military leader in Jerusalem, which was soon to be overrun by the Babylonians. Laban's end in battle, or the torture and death with which the Babylonians would have punished a military leader were far more harsh that the end the Lord gave Laban—a painless stroke to the neck while he was passed out drunk. Had Laban been offered a choice, he would have taken the execution by Nephi in the dark Jerusalem streets.

Why didn't God simply preserve Nephi's life using divine power instead of requiring him to kill Laban?

The Lord actually did preserve Nephi and his brothers two times from being killed by Laban

The Lord actually did preserve Nephi and his brothers from being killed by Laban—twice.

God is not a magician who waves his wand and removes all obstacles. He expects us to do as much as we can. For example, God could have caused Laban to have had a heart attack and die before Nephi got there, but that is simply not how God works.

If Joseph were making the story up, then why not just have Nephi just find Laban already dead in the street? Nephi's account actually seems to have been written to deliberately provide all the proper legal justification for the act, according to ancient Israelite law. This may not appease the ethical concerns, but, the point is, how did Joseph Smith know ancient Israel law so well? This is evidence that it was written by someone familiar with the legal code of that time and place.

Jeffery R. Holland: "It is wrong to assume that Nephi in any way wished to take Laban’s life"

Jeffery R. Holland:

It is wrong to assume that Nephi in any way wished to take Laban’s life. He was a young man, and despite a 600 B.C. world full of tensions and retaliations, he had never "shed the blood of man." (1 Ne. 4꞉10.) Nothing in his life seems to have conditioned him for this task. In fact the commandments he had been taught from childhood declared, "Thou shalt not kill"; and he recoiled, initially refusing to obey the prompting of the Spirit. . . .

Laban, lying before Nephi in a drunken stupor, has not been guiltless in his dealings with Lehi’s family. In what little we know of the man, Laban has at least: (1) been unfaithful in keeping the commandments of God; (2) falsely accused Laman of robbery; (3) coveted Lehi’s property as a greedy, "lustful" man; (4) stolen that property outright; and (5) sought twice to kill Nephi and/or his brothers. He was, by the Holy Spirit’s own declaration, a "wicked" man delivered unto Nephi by the very hand of the Lord.

Does God command us to be violent today?

One of the biggest reasons that people are concerned by the violence of God in scripture because humans are all too willing to use examples of divine violence as an excuse for their own violence.

Scripture tells us that vengeance is God's (Deuteronomy 32꞉35; Romans 12꞉19; Mormon 3꞉15 Mormon 8꞉20). Save in very specific circumstances (e.g., self-defence, or defence of another innocent), violence is not ours to inflict.

The scriptures condemn the taking of innocent life

A small sampling includes:

• Exodus 20꞉13
• Deuteronomy 5꞉17
• Matthew 5꞉21
• Mark 10꞉19
• Mosiah 13꞉21
• D&C 42꞉18-19. According to this scripture, murder is an unforgivable sin.
• D&C 59꞉6

Does the Bible endorse human sacrifice?

The Bible condemns, multiple times, any practice of human sacrifice or similar practices

Some have claimed that the Bible promotes human and infant sacrifice. This is contradicted by several passages in the Bible (Leviticus 18꞉21; 20꞉2-5; Deuteronomy 12꞉31; 18꞉10). Additionally, this is seen in a negative light in the Book of Mormon (Mormon 4꞉14).

The Challenging Texts

Passages that some claim endorse human sacrifice come from 2 Kings 3꞉27; Judges 11꞉30-40, and Exodus 22꞉29.

Some of these have been addressed by Evangelical scholar and Christian apologist Paul Copan whom we quote below.

Paul Copan: "Infant sacrifice in Israel?"

Infant Sacrifice in Israel?

Not a few critics will point out that the Old Testament assumes that infant sacrifice was acceptable in Israelite society and demanded as an act of worship by the God of Israel. Some will showcase Abraham and Isaac (though hardly an infant) as one such example. Such criticisms are off the mark, however.

For one thing, the Mosaic law clearly condemns child sacrifice as morally abhorrent (Lev. 18꞉21; 20꞉2-5; Deut 12꞉31; 18꞉10). As Susan Niditch points out in War in the Hebrew Bible, the "dominant voice" in the Old Testament "condemns child sacrifice" since it opposes God’s purposes and undermines Israelite society.

Let's look at a couple of passages that allegedly suggest that human sacrifice was acceptable.

Mesha, King of Moab: 2 Kings 3꞉27

Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel, and they departed from him and returned to their own land (2 Kings 3꞉27)

Here, Mesha, king of Moab, sacrifices his firstborn son on the wall of Kir Hareseth (in Moab). After this, the Israelite army withdrew because of "wrath." Some think this is God’s wrath and that God is showing his approval of Mesha’s sacrifice of his son by responding in wrath against Israel. This view, however, has its problems:

• This notion is at odds with clear condemnation of child sacrifice earlier in the Pentateuch (Deut 12꞉31; 18꞉10) as well as repudiation of it within Kings itself (2 Kings 16꞉3; 17꞉7; 21꞉6).

• The word fury or wrath (qetseph) isn’t divine wrath Elsewhere in 2 Kings, a cognate word (coming from the same root as qetseph) clearly refers to human fury (5꞉11; 13꞉19).

• Typically, commentators suggest several plausible interpretations:

(1) This was Moab’s fury against Israel because their king, Mesha, forced by desperation, sacrificed his son; Mesha’s goal was to prompt Moab’s renewed determination to fight.

(2) The Israelites were filled with horror or superstitious dread when they saw this human sacrifice, causing them to abandon the entire venture.

(3) Even though Mesha, had failed in his attempt to break through the siege (perhaps to head north for reinforcements), he was still able to capture the king of Edom’s firstborn son, whom he sacrificed on the wall, which demoralized Edom’s army. The wrath of Edom’s army ended the war because they withdrew from the military coalition of Israel, Judah, and Edom.

Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11꞉30-40

Israel’s judge Jephthah made a rash vow: "Whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon [who were oppressing Israel], it shall be the Lord’s and I will offer it up a burnt offering" (Judg. 11꞉31). Perhaps he was thinking it might be one of his servants, who would most likely come out to attend him. Yet he was horrified to see that "his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing" (v. 34).

Some Old Testament scholars argue that Jephthah didn’t literally sacrifice his daughter. Most, however, are convinced that the text asserts this. So let’s take for granted the worst-case scenario. Then come the inevitable questions: Wouldn’t Jephthah have clearly known that child sacrifice was immoral and that God judged the Canaanites for such practices? Why then did he go ahead with this sacrifice? Was it because God really did approve of child sacrifice after all?

We’ve already affirmed that is doesn’t mean ought in the Old Testament; just because something is described doesn’t mean it’s prescribed as a standard to follow. Certain behaviors are just bad examples that we shouldn’t follow (cf. 1 Cor. 10꞉1-12). So let’s make the necessary changes and apply our questioner’s reasoning to another judge—Samson. As a judge of Israel, wouldn’t he have clearly known that touching unclean corpses was forbidden (Judg. 14꞉8-9), especially given his (permanent) Nazarite vow (Num 6)? Wasn’t he fully aware that consorting with prostitutes was prohibited (Judg. 16꞉1)? You get the idea. Keep in mind that we’re talking about the era of Israel’s judges. To borrow from Charles Dickens, this was in large part the worst of times, an age of foolishness, the season of darkness, and the winter of despair. So critics should be careful about assuming Jephthah (or Samson) was in peak moral condition.

Some might wonder, "Didn’t the Spirit of the Lord’ come on Jephthah?" (Judg. 11꞉29). Yes, but we shouldn’t take this as a wholesale divine endorsement of all Jephthah did—no more so than the Spirit’s coming on Gideon (Judg. 11꞉29) was a seal of approval on his dabbling with idolatry (Judg. 8꞉24-27), or of Ehud’s, for that matter (Judg 3꞉26). Yes, these judges of Israel would surely have known idolatry was wrong. Likewise, "the Spirit of the Lord" came upon Samson to help Israel keep the Philistines at bay (Judg. 14꞉6, 19; 15꞉14). Yet his plans to marry a Philistine woman, cavorting with a prostitute, and getting mixed up with Delilah all reveal a judge with exceedingly poor judgement! We can surely find a lesson in here somewhere about how God works despite human sin and failure.

The theology of Judges emphasizes a remarkable low point of Israelite morality and religion, with two vivid narratives at the book’s end to illustrate this (chaPs. 7꞉21). Israel continually allowed itself to be "Canaanized." And in light of Judges’ repeated theme, "every man did what was right in his own eyes" (17꞉6; 21꞉25; cf. 2꞉10-23), we shouldn’t be surprised that Israel’s leaders were also morally compromised. We don’t have to look hard for negative role models in Judges, when Israel was in the moral basement. The Jephthah story needs no explicit statement of God’s obvious disapproval.

Some might press the point: doesn’t the Old Testament refer to offering the firstborn to God (Exod. 22꞉29-30)? Following Ezekiel 20꞉25-26, they claim that God literally gave harmful ("not good") statutes by which Israel could not "live"—commands involving sacrificing the firstborn child in the fire. They assert that Yahweh just didn’t like it when Israel sacrificed children to other gods!

However, no such distinction is made; infant sacrifice—whether to Yahweh or to Baal or Molech—is still detestable. Yes, this was a common practice in Israel and Judah (e.g. 2 Kings 17꞉17; 23꞉10), and kings Ahaz, Manasseh, and others made their sons and daughters "pass through the fire" (2 Kings 16꞉3; 2 Chron 33꞉6). But commonality here doesn’t imply acceptability. Exodus does refer to the "redemption"—not sacrifice—of the womb-opening first-born child; God himself redeemed his firstborn Israel by bringing them up from Egypt (Exod 13꞉13; cf. 4꞉23).

What then is Ezekiel talking about? The text clearly indicates that God gave the Sinai generation "statutes" (chuqqot) (e.g. Sabbath commands) by which an Israelite might "live" (20꞉12-13). Israel rejected these laws given at Sinai; they refused to follow them (v. 20꞉21). So God "withdrew [His] hand." God responded to the second (or wilderness) generation as he does in Romans 1: he "gave them over to statues that were not good and laws they could not live by" (Ezek. 20꞉25 NIV). Ezekiel not only distinguishes this word statutes (the masculine plural chuqqim) from statutes elsewhere in the context (the feminine noun chuqqot). The text also involves quite a bit of irony. God sarcastically tells Israel to "go, serve everyone his idols" (Ezek 20꞉39); to put it another way, "go, sacrifice your children." This ironic "statute" to stubborn Israel to continue in idolatry and infant sacrifice is comparable to God’s sarcasm in Amos 4꞉4: "Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more" (NIV). The same is true of the prophet Micaiah, who tells the disobedient, Yahweh-ignoring king of Israel, "Go up and succeed, and the Lord will give it unto the hand of the king" (1 Kings 22꞉15). These are the sorts of sarcastic "commands" that aren’t "good" and by which Israel can’t "live".

The Value of Unborn Life

One of the big differences between Old Testament laws and their ancient Near Eastern counterparts is the value of human life. Despite this, it’s not unusual to hear that in ancient Israel unborn life wasn’t as valuable as life outside the womb. Indeed, certain proabortion advocates have sought theological justification for permitting abortion in the following passage:

If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [some advocate an alternate reading: "she has a miscarriage"] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is a serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (Exod 21꞉22-25 NIV).

The key issue is this: should the Hebrew word yalad be translated "give birth prematurely" or "have a miscarriage"? If the mother miscarries, then the offender only has to pay a fine; the implication in this case is that the unborn child isn’t as valuable and therefore isn’t deserving of care normally given to a person outside the womb. Apparently, this Old Testament passage shows a low(er) regard for unborn life.

Let’s skip to another passage, Psalm 139, which strongly supports the value of the unborn:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My fame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (vv. 139꞉13-16 NIV)

Keep this text in mind as we go back to the Exodus 1 passage. Contrary to the above claims, Exodus 1 actually supports the value of unborn human life. The word yalad means "go forth" or "give birth," describing a normal birth (Gen. 25꞉26; 38꞉28-30; Job 3꞉11; 10꞉18; Jer 1꞉5; 20꞉18). It’s always used of giving birth, not of a miscarriage. If the biblical text intended to refer to a miscarriage, the typical word for "miscarry/miscarriage" (shakal/shekol) was available (e.g., Gen 1; 38; Exod 23꞉26; Job 21꞉10; Hosea 9꞉14). Miscarry isn’t used here.

Furthermore, yalad ("give birth") is always used of a child that has recognizable human form or is capable of surviving outside the womb. The Hebrew word nepel is the typical word used of an unborn child, and the word golem, which means "fetus," is used only once in the Old Testament in Psalm 139꞉16, which we just noted: God knew the psalmist’s "unformed body" or "unformed substance."

This brings us to another Who is injured? The baby or the mother? The text is silent. It could be either, since the feminine pronoun is missing. The gist of the passage seems to be this:

If two men fight and hit a pregnant woman and the baby is born prematurely, but there is no serious injury [to the child or the mother], then the offender must be fined whatever the husband demands and the court allows. But if there is a serious injury [to the baby or the mother], you are to take life for life, eye for eye.

These verses then actually imply the intrinsic value of the unborn child—that the life of the offender may be taken if the mother’s or the child’s life is lost. The unborn child is given the same rights as an adult (Gen 9꞉6).

New Atheists and other critics often resort to caricatures or misrepresentations of the Old Testament laws. While Mosaic laws do not always reflect the ultimate or the ideal (which the Old Testament itself acknowledges), these laws and the mind-set they exhibit reveal a dramatic moral improvement and greater moral sensitivity than their ancient Near Eastern counterparts.

Do the scriptures endorse child abuse?

Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy #412: How Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac Illuminates the Atonement (Video)

Some claim that God’s command of Abraham to slay Isaac is an example of divinely-endorsed child abuse. Anyone who knows the story is aware that the story is not about abusing Isaac. Rather, it is about God’s desire for Abraham to be willing to follow him despite hard trials. It also foreshadows the offering of God’s only begotten son—Jesus Christ—saving us in Gethsemane and on the cross.

It is also claimed that God’s sending of Christ to be crucified instead of himself is such an example

In the case of Christ, some secular critics claim that God is an abuser by sending his son to die on the cross. The short answer is that Christ was foreordained to come to earth to redeem all mankind. He voluntarily gave himself in the pre-mortal council to become our Savior (Moses 4꞉1-2; Rev 13꞉8; 1 Peter 19꞉21). Upon coming to earth, his agency was not taken away from him. He had the ability to lay down his life and to take it back up (John 10꞉18). It was God’s plan from the beginning, through the supernal gift and voluntary sacrifice of a loving Savior.

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To learn more about violence in the scriptures

Online	Jeff Chadwick, Did Joshua ‘Utterly Destroy’ the Canaanites?, Interpreter Foundation, 10 May 2018 (accessed 13 February 2019). The Bible Project off-site NET Bible off-site
Video	Load video YouTube YouTube might collect personal data. Privacy Policy ContinueDismiss
Print	Gregory Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Volumes 1 & 2 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017). Paul Copan, Matthew Flanagan, Did God Command Genocide? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2014). Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011). Richard Holzapfel, Dana Pike, David Rolph Seely Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company, 2009). Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne Publishing, 2015). Kenton Sparks, Sacred Word Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012); God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship(Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). Christopher J.H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic Press, 2004). Adelle Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd Ed. (New York City, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). Michael Coogan, Marc Z. Brettler, Carol A Newsom, Pheme Perkins (ed.) The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th ed (New York City, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010).
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Articles about Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Principles	The Church's position on abuse Bishop interviews with youth Mandatory reporting of abuse Abuse victims and lack of culpability Child abuse in the scriptures
Specific Cases	Ritual child abuse accusations in the 1990s Abuse and the Boy Scouts of America Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case

Does the Church teach that sexual assault victims ought to fight to the death?

As far as we can determine, no senior Church leader has ever used the words "fight to the death" to describe how members should respond to sexual assault or abuse

Critics of the Church have complained that Church leaders have commanded members – particularly women—to "fight to the death" in order to protect ourselves from sexual assault. The claims go on to insist that LDS survivors of sexual abuse and assault must feel guilty to be alive.

As far as we can determine, no senior Church leader has ever used the words "fight to the death" to describe how members should respond to sexual assault or abuse. The Church's position is that victims are not guilty. Past Church leaders have compared the value of "virtue" to the value of one's life. However, current Church statements are clear that victims of sexual assault and abuse are to be treated with love and compassion, not condemnation.

Statements from Church Sources

As far as we have been able to determine, there is no record of the phrase "fight to the death" ever being used by a senior Church leader when counseling members about how to respond to sexual assault. This exact phrase is a sensationalized exaggeration that does not reflect current church teachings on this sensitive topic.

The Church’s position on the culpability of victims of sexual assault is available on the official Church website:

Victims of abuse should be assured that they are not to blame for the harmful behavior of others. They do not need to feel guilt. If they have been a victim of rape or other sexual abuse, whether they have been abused by an acquaintance, a stranger, or even a family member, victims of sexual abuse are not guilty of sexual sin.

Speaking in the Church’s General Conference in 1992, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Richard G. Scott restated the Church’s position in strong and personal terms:

I solemnly testify that when another’s acts of violence, perversion, or incest hurt you terribly, against your will, you are not responsible and you must not feel guilty.

In the early Church, violent opponents of the Church in Missouri used rape as a weapon. Crimes like these are alluded to in the Doctrine and Covenants (See DC 123:1-17) and are utterly denounced as "dark and hellish."

The Church’s most basic statement of beliefs, The Articles of Faith, states that people are accountable for their own sins and not for mistakes made by others. AoF 1:2

Elizabeth Smart and the Stick of Chewing Gum

On May 1, 2013, kidnap and rape survivor, Elizabeth Smart, gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University. She was invited there for a conference on sexual abuse and human trafficking. She spoke of the crimes committed against her when she was fourteen years old and living in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the time of her abduction and rape, and at the date of this writing, Smart was and is a member of the Church.

In her speech, Smart recalled a lesson taught in school where a used stick of chewing gum was put forward as an analogy for a person who had chosen not to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage. The analogy is grim and loathsome. "No one should ever say that," Smart said. As Smart herself stated, the chewing gum analogy was not part of her religious education. In the Church, parents are considered the chief spiritual educators and guides of their own children. Smart recalled being taught by her LDS parents that virginity was precious but, she added,

I remember thinking of my parents and after, realizing that they would still love me; that just because I had been chained, just because I had been kidnapped, just because all these things had happened to me—that wouldn’t change their love. And I feel so fortunate in that I was able to realize that.

Some media have characterized Smart's 2013 speech as an indictment of her religious roots. It was touted in headlines as a speech denouncing abstinence education and advancing the idea that sexual purity is dangerous and universally untenable. However, a full examination of Smart's speech reveals the details wherein lie the truth. Her speech did not address issues of consensual sexual behavior. It was about reaching out to victims of violence and abuse and affirming their worth. It was about offering hope and healing to people like herself who'd had their choices taken from them. As seen in quotations from LDS leaders noted above, Smart's comments were exactly in line with Church teachings about victims of sexual abuse being free from guilt and being precious to God, their church community, and everyone else.

Spencer W. Kimball’s The Miracle of Forgiveness

The following statement does appear in the 1969 book The Miracle of Forgiveness written by member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Spencer W. Kimball.

Also far-reaching is the effect of loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained. Even in forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position. There is no condemnation where there is absolutely no voluntary participation. It is better to die in defending one's virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.

Kimball would later be called as President of the Church and The Miracle of Forgiveness was widely read among LDS membership. It is the statement quoted above that is most often used to support the claim that the term "fight to the death" was expected in a sexual assault.

The phrase is used by critics of the Church but it also sometimes appears as a folk-saying among members. Particularly people of the Baby Boom generation who lived in the American heartland of the Church may remember hearing this phrase when they were young.

Sometimes it came complete with clumsy but colorful and memorable object lessons similar to the stick-of-gum Elizabeth Smart mentioned in her 2013 speech. However, it’s important to distinguish unofficial slogans and crude demonstrations from what Church leaders in positions to pronounce an official stance on the issue actually said.

Well-meaning but badly mangled interpretations passed around by provincial teachers and leaders aren’t uncommon in an organization like the Church which turns most of its administration over to non-professional volunteers. But being common doesn’t make these interpretations into official Church positions.

Feminist scholars outside the Church have noted that the notion of victims of sexual assault being expected to fight to the death existed outside the Church in mainstream American social and legal culture.

White men ... had a virtual license to rape, as the law required "true" victims to be ultimately innocent ladies who would rather fight to the death than give up their virginity.

Further, the argument is made that this underlying assumption about victims was powerful and prevalent enough to shape sexual assault laws up until the Women's Movement demanded something better. Though LDS leaders spoke of sexual integrity in terms of life and death they cannot be held responsible for inventing it. The idea had a cultural momentum that existed independently of the comments of LDS leaders.

By now, Kimball and the other twentieth century Church leaders he quoted in The Miracle of Forgiveness have been dead for decades. They are no longer available to clarify what they meant when they spoke about chastity in general and about the innocence of victims of sexual assault in particular. This uncertainty means there can be more than one interpretation of what their comments could mean.

One interpretation does indeed seem to suggest that people who have survived sexual assault ought to have gone to extreme lengths to resist. It’s true that colorful and sometimes exaggerated rhetorical devices were used by past Church leaders to impress upon members the importance of preserving virtue and to describe the heinousness of sexual abuse and assault.

The Lord himself used rhetorical hyperbole when teaching about sexual morality. In the section of the Sermon on the Mount where he denounced adultery and lust, Jesus told his disciples "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Mat 5:29 This passage is not taken literally. We understand that Jesus was using powerful figurative language to convey a message about how dangerous and damaging sexual sin is. Hyperbole like this is a common device in all kinds of rhetoric and particularly in religious rhetoric.

Other interpretations of Kimballs’ statement also exist. For instance, Kimball recommends "a struggle" against sexual assault but he does not demand that the struggle continue until the victim dies in order for her or him to escape "condemnation." Perhaps Kimball was saying it might be easier for the victim to avoid future feelings of guilt and regret if he or she decisively resisted the attack. As a longtime ecclesiastical minister, Kimball would have been familiar with the typical feelings of guilt and shame that often afflict victims of sexual assault and abuse. In order for victims to be better able to overcome these feelings, he may have wanted victims to be able to assure themselves there was "absolutely no voluntary participation" on their part.

This interpretation springs on the fact that Kimball did not say it is better to die defending one’s virtue than it is to live. Precisely what he said was, "it is better to die defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle." Perhaps Kimball was warning that it is better to die than to not resist an assault. This is a very different thing than saying it is better to die than to survive a sexual assault.

The second interpretation may sound jarring to twenty-first century readers. However, Kimball was not writing from the best of all possible worlds but from a real-world social and legal climate that was much more steeped in sexism than the one most of us inhabit today. A look at American rape law during Kimball's time shows a disturbingly sexist system where courts would not convict men of sexual assault when the complaint was uncorroborated. Complaints of sexual assault are often uncorroborated since they usually happen in private where there are no witnesses besides the attacker and the victim. This meant the courts could demand more gruesome and concrete evidence than a woman's testimony alone in order to convict.

As a non-LDS feminist scholar explains:

Sexist gender norms were woven into the very fabric of rape law in the form of iniquitous obstacles to prosecution such as resistance and corroboration requirements...these rules tended to privilege rape defendants.

It may be disgusting, but if a victim could show she was injured in the course of the attack, her attacker was less able to claim he had her consent and less likely to be acquitted. That was the reality of rape laws in America for most of the twentieth century. Kimball did not invent these laws. He did not foresee any change in them. He could only speak of the reality of world in which he lived. And the reality was that, before the law, the victim of sexual assault who had physically resisted her attacker was "in a more favorable position."

Other Church Leaders

Other quotations by other early and mid-twentieth century Church leaders are also referred to by critics insisting the Church wants victims of sexual assault to "fight to the death."

In The Miracle of Forgiveness, Kimball quotes Church President David O. McKay saying:

Your virtue is worth more than your life. Please young folk, preserve your virtue even if you lose your lives. Do not tamper with sin . . . do not permit yourselves to be led into temptation. Conduct yourselves seemly and with due regard, particularly you young boys, to the sanctity of womanhood. Do not pollute it."

President McKay does not directly address a situation of sexual assault in this passage from a section of the book called "Dangers to Youth". In introducing the quote, Kimball addresses normal social situations like dating relationships where normal urges and temptation are the issues, not violent criminal acts.

In this context, McKay is making a point about not mistaking feelings and behaviors that may be acceptable to the rest of society as being acceptable to the Church’s moral code. He is concerned that the true gravity of sexual misconduct has been lost and he’s trying to restore it by comparing it to a life-or-death situation. In McKay’s view, sexual sin was worse than physical death since, unrepented of, it brought on a more lasting and tragic spiritual death. In that way, it was a life-or-death situation.

Apostle J. Reuben Clark also made comments comparing the value of chastity to the value of life.

Mothers in Israel, teach your sons to honor and revere, to protect to the last, pure womanhood; teach your daughters that their most priceless jewel is a clean, undefiled body; teach both sons and daughters that chastity is worth more than life itself."

Clark speaks of the value of an "undefiled body" but it’s accepted in religious parlance that people are able to defile themselves. (See Dan 1:8, Matt 15:11) It’s also possible for people to defile other people’s bodies with their full consent. Like McKay, Clark is not necessarily speaking of protecting ourselves from sexual assault. Rather, he’s warning us to choose righteously. Those who are assaulted remain chaste and "not guilty."

Virtue vs. Virginity

Critics point to a place where the issue of sexual assault gets murky in the Book of Mormon. To fairly understand this passage (See Moro 9:9-10) we must try to see the situation as Mormon, the writer, saw it himself. We do not usually refer to the Law of Moses in the modern Church. It was discontinued over two thousand years ago and has never been used in the restored Church. However, the non-Jaredite peoples of the Book of Mormon had both cultural and religious roots in the Law of Moses and these must be accounted for when making sense of their history.

According to the Law of Moses, when a woman was sexually assaulted, she was considered innocent by God and her fellow men and women (See Deut 22:25-26). The prophet Mormon lived about 400 years after the end of the Law of Moses. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the Book of Mormon to show to what extent the Law of Moses once practiced by Mormon’s people might have still been influencing the way he understood and spoke about the world. The old law might have had no influence at all or it might have retained some power to color his interpretations and his expressions. If the Law of Moses was still part of Mormon’s cultural memory, he might have had an understanding of the state of a rape victim’s virtue – her state of moral cleanliness – that’s nuanced differently than the understanding we have now. When mourning the violent sex crimes of his people at Moriantum, Mormon used the words "chastity and virtue" to describe what the daughters of the Lamanites had lost when they were assaulted instead of simply saying "virginity."

And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue— And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery. Moro 9:9-10

Even though the wording might be muddled by the limited vocabulary or perhaps by the sensibilities of the times in which Mormon or his translator lived in, Mormon’s sorrow for what happened to the women is unmistakable. He wrote of an atrocity. Mormon did not condemn the women for being kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered, and cannibalized. He did condemn the "great abominations" of their attackers.

If Mormon was influenced by cultural traces of the Law of Moses, he would have believed that when a woman was forcibly deprived of her virginity, she remained innocent. Despite the wording, he would have believed they had lost their virginity, not their virtue. In the Law of Moses, penalties against attackers were put in place to serve a purpose similar to restitution. (See Deut 22:25-29) Once the Law was satisfied, it was as if the victim’s former state – her "chastity and virtue"—was restored. However, the men who victimized women at Moriantum were never lawfully penalized.

Perhaps part of what Mormon lamented was the fact that the injustices would remain unaddressed. Maybe, as he saw it, the crimes against the women were deepened because no legal version of "restitution" would ever be made. In this way, the legal construct of the women’s "chastity and virtue" was never restored even though their true spiritual virtue could remain intact. Perhaps the problem with this passage is not, as critics suggest, that Mormon equated virtue with virginity but that his cultural sense of the efficacy of legal restitution prompted him to overstate what was lost.

Lingering Controversy

As we have progressed through history, people in general – both inside and outside the Church—have become more sensitized to sexual crimes. We use a more sympathetic vocabulary and much of the societal stigma that victims of sexual crimes have suffered has disappeared. What was once cloaked in flowery rhetoric can now be discussed in more precise and compassionate terms. This shift in language has been critical in assisting victims in the necessary healing after sexual assault and abuse.

Despite the current clarity of the Church’s position on sexual assault, the controversy still flares to life. Although older statements from church leaders have been interpreted in various ways and are of historical interest, it is incumbent upon those addressing this topic to keep original contexts in mind and to ultimately use current statements when describing the position of the modern church.

Did Elder Richard G. Scott teach that victims of abuse are responsible for their abuse?

In a discourse given in the April 1992 General Conference of the Church, Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks to victims of abuse.

During the course of his talk, Elder Scott stated the following:

The victim must do all in his or her power to stop the abuse. Most often, the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender. At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse. Your priesthood leader will help assess your responsibility so that, if needed, it can be addressed. Otherwise the seeds of guilt will remain and sprout into bitter fruit. Yet no matter what degree of responsibility, from absolutely none to increasing consent, the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ can provide a complete cure. (See D&C 138:1–4.) Forgiveness can be obtained for all involved in abuse. (See A of F 1:3.) Then comes a restoration of self-respect, self-worth, and a renewal of life. As a victim, do not waste effort in revenge or retribution against your aggressor. Focus on your responsibility to do what is in your power to correct. Leave the handling of the offender to civil and Church authorities.

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Is Elder Scott teaching that victims of abuse are responsible for their abuse?

We count on the patience and maturity of our readers as we briefly explore this deeply sensitive question. We affirm unequivocally to those who have faced abuse that "[t]he abuse was not, is not, and never will be your fault, no matter what the abuser or anyone else may have said to the contrary. When you have been a victim of cruelty, incest, or any other perversion, you are not the one who needs to repent; you are not responsible." That said, there may very well still be important things that we can glean from Elder Scott's talk.

Elder Scott's Meaning May be Obscured by Clunky Wording

The first thing that we might strongly claim is that Elder Scott's meaning needs to be evaluated within the course of the talk. Otherwise, it's likely that his admittedly clunky wording here is obscuring what he actually meant to say. Earlier in his discourse, Elder Scott slowly and pointedly underscores "that when another’s violence, perversion, incest cause you deep harm, against your will, you are not responsible and you must not feel guilty." How can Elder Scott simultaneously claim that a person is not responsible and that the victim may hold "a degree of responsibility for abuse"? There's a good chance that Elder Scott meant to say something that we're not understanding.

Not A Good Word for the Type of 'Responsibility' that Elder Scott May Have Been Referring To

The abuse victims face is not their fault. One of the big problems surrounding these discussions is that there is not a good word to refer to the type of 'responsibility' that Elder Scott was likely referring to. We'll illustrate that with a couple of scenarios below.

Those That Are Faced With Abusive Situations Should Feel Empowered to Leave Those Situations

The abuse victims face is not their fault; but those who face it should feel empowered to leave abusive situations. We don’t need to stay in abusive situations and it’s not our fault that we are in them. Elder Holland has told us that we may be in the midst of an abusive or violent marriage and that abuse/violence may justify exiting it.

There Are Things We Can Do To Avoid Abusive Situations

The abuse victims face is not their fault; but there are times where we do things that aren’t wise that might put us in dangerous situations and we should do what we can to avoid those situations. There’s a reason that, when walking or jogging somewhere at night, we should try and stay in lit areas. There's a reason that a Trump supporter would be wise to not show up to a Black Lives Matter rally in full MAGA regalia. There's a reason that a black person would be wise to not show up at an alt right or Nazi rally. While we aren’t at fault for whatever kind of harm or action comes on us during those moments (since that would be the product of another’s choices), there are still dumb things that we can do that more likely put us in harm’s way. We should take appropriate measures to reduce the likelihood of that happening to us. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry about the many types of dangers that could come upon us and we would be able to go wherever we like, dress however we want, and act however we please. We don't live in a perfect world, though, and thus can't act, dress, and go where we please. We have to take precautions.

The Abused May Abuse Their Abuser

As Elder Scott rightly points out in the course of his talk, the abused may begin to abuse their abuser. The abuser should, in this instance, reflect on how their actions contributed to the retaliation that they are facing. The abuse that such a person faces is not their fault, but there must be some recognition of how their actions contributed negatively to their chances of not facing retaliation from their victim.

Notes (click to expand)

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Articles about Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Principles	The Church's position on abuse Bishop interviews with youth Mandatory reporting of abuse Abuse victims and lack of culpability Child abuse in the scriptures
Specific Cases	Ritual child abuse accusations in the 1990s Abuse and the Boy Scouts of America Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case

Does the Church teach that sexual assault victims ought to fight to the death?

As far as we can determine, no senior Church leader has ever used the words "fight to the death" to describe how members should respond to sexual assault or abuse

Critics of the Church have complained that Church leaders have commanded members – particularly women—to "fight to the death" in order to protect ourselves from sexual assault. The claims go on to insist that LDS survivors of sexual abuse and assault must feel guilty to be alive.

As far as we can determine, no senior Church leader has ever used the words "fight to the death" to describe how members should respond to sexual assault or abuse. The Church's position is that victims are not guilty. Past Church leaders have compared the value of "virtue" to the value of one's life. However, current Church statements are clear that victims of sexual assault and abuse are to be treated with love and compassion, not condemnation.

Statements from Church Sources

As far as we have been able to determine, there is no record of the phrase "fight to the death" ever being used by a senior Church leader when counseling members about how to respond to sexual assault. This exact phrase is a sensationalized exaggeration that does not reflect current church teachings on this sensitive topic.

The Church’s position on the culpability of victims of sexual assault is available on the official Church website:

Victims of abuse should be assured that they are not to blame for the harmful behavior of others. They do not need to feel guilt. If they have been a victim of rape or other sexual abuse, whether they have been abused by an acquaintance, a stranger, or even a family member, victims of sexual abuse are not guilty of sexual sin.

Speaking in the Church’s General Conference in 1992, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Richard G. Scott restated the Church’s position in strong and personal terms:

I solemnly testify that when another’s acts of violence, perversion, or incest hurt you terribly, against your will, you are not responsible and you must not feel guilty.

In the early Church, violent opponents of the Church in Missouri used rape as a weapon. Crimes like these are alluded to in the Doctrine and Covenants (See DC 123:1-17) and are utterly denounced as "dark and hellish."

The Church’s most basic statement of beliefs, The Articles of Faith, states that people are accountable for their own sins and not for mistakes made by others. AoF 1:2

Elizabeth Smart and the Stick of Chewing Gum

On May 1, 2013, kidnap and rape survivor, Elizabeth Smart, gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University. She was invited there for a conference on sexual abuse and human trafficking. She spoke of the crimes committed against her when she was fourteen years old and living in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the time of her abduction and rape, and at the date of this writing, Smart was and is a member of the Church.

In her speech, Smart recalled a lesson taught in school where a used stick of chewing gum was put forward as an analogy for a person who had chosen not to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage. The analogy is grim and loathsome. "No one should ever say that," Smart said. As Smart herself stated, the chewing gum analogy was not part of her religious education. In the Church, parents are considered the chief spiritual educators and guides of their own children. Smart recalled being taught by her LDS parents that virginity was precious but, she added,

I remember thinking of my parents and after, realizing that they would still love me; that just because I had been chained, just because I had been kidnapped, just because all these things had happened to me—that wouldn’t change their love. And I feel so fortunate in that I was able to realize that.

Some media have characterized Smart's 2013 speech as an indictment of her religious roots. It was touted in headlines as a speech denouncing abstinence education and advancing the idea that sexual purity is dangerous and universally untenable. However, a full examination of Smart's speech reveals the details wherein lie the truth. Her speech did not address issues of consensual sexual behavior. It was about reaching out to victims of violence and abuse and affirming their worth. It was about offering hope and healing to people like herself who'd had their choices taken from them. As seen in quotations from LDS leaders noted above, Smart's comments were exactly in line with Church teachings about victims of sexual abuse being free from guilt and being precious to God, their church community, and everyone else.

Spencer W. Kimball’s The Miracle of Forgiveness

The following statement does appear in the 1969 book The Miracle of Forgiveness written by member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Spencer W. Kimball.

Also far-reaching is the effect of loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained. Even in forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position. There is no condemnation where there is absolutely no voluntary participation. It is better to die in defending one's virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.

Kimball would later be called as President of the Church and The Miracle of Forgiveness was widely read among LDS membership. It is the statement quoted above that is most often used to support the claim that the term "fight to the death" was expected in a sexual assault.

The phrase is used by critics of the Church but it also sometimes appears as a folk-saying among members. Particularly people of the Baby Boom generation who lived in the American heartland of the Church may remember hearing this phrase when they were young.

Sometimes it came complete with clumsy but colorful and memorable object lessons similar to the stick-of-gum Elizabeth Smart mentioned in her 2013 speech. However, it’s important to distinguish unofficial slogans and crude demonstrations from what Church leaders in positions to pronounce an official stance on the issue actually said.

Well-meaning but badly mangled interpretations passed around by provincial teachers and leaders aren’t uncommon in an organization like the Church which turns most of its administration over to non-professional volunteers. But being common doesn’t make these interpretations into official Church positions.

Feminist scholars outside the Church have noted that the notion of victims of sexual assault being expected to fight to the death existed outside the Church in mainstream American social and legal culture.

White men ... had a virtual license to rape, as the law required "true" victims to be ultimately innocent ladies who would rather fight to the death than give up their virginity.

Further, the argument is made that this underlying assumption about victims was powerful and prevalent enough to shape sexual assault laws up until the Women's Movement demanded something better. Though LDS leaders spoke of sexual integrity in terms of life and death they cannot be held responsible for inventing it. The idea had a cultural momentum that existed independently of the comments of LDS leaders.

By now, Kimball and the other twentieth century Church leaders he quoted in The Miracle of Forgiveness have been dead for decades. They are no longer available to clarify what they meant when they spoke about chastity in general and about the innocence of victims of sexual assault in particular. This uncertainty means there can be more than one interpretation of what their comments could mean.

One interpretation does indeed seem to suggest that people who have survived sexual assault ought to have gone to extreme lengths to resist. It’s true that colorful and sometimes exaggerated rhetorical devices were used by past Church leaders to impress upon members the importance of preserving virtue and to describe the heinousness of sexual abuse and assault.

The Lord himself used rhetorical hyperbole when teaching about sexual morality. In the section of the Sermon on the Mount where he denounced adultery and lust, Jesus told his disciples "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Mat 5:29 This passage is not taken literally. We understand that Jesus was using powerful figurative language to convey a message about how dangerous and damaging sexual sin is. Hyperbole like this is a common device in all kinds of rhetoric and particularly in religious rhetoric.

Other interpretations of Kimballs’ statement also exist. For instance, Kimball recommends "a struggle" against sexual assault but he does not demand that the struggle continue until the victim dies in order for her or him to escape "condemnation." Perhaps Kimball was saying it might be easier for the victim to avoid future feelings of guilt and regret if he or she decisively resisted the attack. As a longtime ecclesiastical minister, Kimball would have been familiar with the typical feelings of guilt and shame that often afflict victims of sexual assault and abuse. In order for victims to be better able to overcome these feelings, he may have wanted victims to be able to assure themselves there was "absolutely no voluntary participation" on their part.

This interpretation springs on the fact that Kimball did not say it is better to die defending one’s virtue than it is to live. Precisely what he said was, "it is better to die defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle." Perhaps Kimball was warning that it is better to die than to not resist an assault. This is a very different thing than saying it is better to die than to survive a sexual assault.

The second interpretation may sound jarring to twenty-first century readers. However, Kimball was not writing from the best of all possible worlds but from a real-world social and legal climate that was much more steeped in sexism than the one most of us inhabit today. A look at American rape law during Kimball's time shows a disturbingly sexist system where courts would not convict men of sexual assault when the complaint was uncorroborated. Complaints of sexual assault are often uncorroborated since they usually happen in private where there are no witnesses besides the attacker and the victim. This meant the courts could demand more gruesome and concrete evidence than a woman's testimony alone in order to convict.

As a non-LDS feminist scholar explains:

Sexist gender norms were woven into the very fabric of rape law in the form of iniquitous obstacles to prosecution such as resistance and corroboration requirements...these rules tended to privilege rape defendants.

It may be disgusting, but if a victim could show she was injured in the course of the attack, her attacker was less able to claim he had her consent and less likely to be acquitted. That was the reality of rape laws in America for most of the twentieth century. Kimball did not invent these laws. He did not foresee any change in them. He could only speak of the reality of world in which he lived. And the reality was that, before the law, the victim of sexual assault who had physically resisted her attacker was "in a more favorable position."

Other Church Leaders

Other quotations by other early and mid-twentieth century Church leaders are also referred to by critics insisting the Church wants victims of sexual assault to "fight to the death."

In The Miracle of Forgiveness, Kimball quotes Church President David O. McKay saying:

Your virtue is worth more than your life. Please young folk, preserve your virtue even if you lose your lives. Do not tamper with sin . . . do not permit yourselves to be led into temptation. Conduct yourselves seemly and with due regard, particularly you young boys, to the sanctity of womanhood. Do not pollute it."

President McKay does not directly address a situation of sexual assault in this passage from a section of the book called "Dangers to Youth". In introducing the quote, Kimball addresses normal social situations like dating relationships where normal urges and temptation are the issues, not violent criminal acts.

In this context, McKay is making a point about not mistaking feelings and behaviors that may be acceptable to the rest of society as being acceptable to the Church’s moral code. He is concerned that the true gravity of sexual misconduct has been lost and he’s trying to restore it by comparing it to a life-or-death situation. In McKay’s view, sexual sin was worse than physical death since, unrepented of, it brought on a more lasting and tragic spiritual death. In that way, it was a life-or-death situation.

Apostle J. Reuben Clark also made comments comparing the value of chastity to the value of life.

Mothers in Israel, teach your sons to honor and revere, to protect to the last, pure womanhood; teach your daughters that their most priceless jewel is a clean, undefiled body; teach both sons and daughters that chastity is worth more than life itself."

Clark speaks of the value of an "undefiled body" but it’s accepted in religious parlance that people are able to defile themselves. (See Dan 1:8, Matt 15:11) It’s also possible for people to defile other people’s bodies with their full consent. Like McKay, Clark is not necessarily speaking of protecting ourselves from sexual assault. Rather, he’s warning us to choose righteously. Those who are assaulted remain chaste and "not guilty."

Virtue vs. Virginity

Critics point to a place where the issue of sexual assault gets murky in the Book of Mormon. To fairly understand this passage (See Moro 9:9-10) we must try to see the situation as Mormon, the writer, saw it himself. We do not usually refer to the Law of Moses in the modern Church. It was discontinued over two thousand years ago and has never been used in the restored Church. However, the non-Jaredite peoples of the Book of Mormon had both cultural and religious roots in the Law of Moses and these must be accounted for when making sense of their history.

According to the Law of Moses, when a woman was sexually assaulted, she was considered innocent by God and her fellow men and women (See Deut 22:25-26). The prophet Mormon lived about 400 years after the end of the Law of Moses. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the Book of Mormon to show to what extent the Law of Moses once practiced by Mormon’s people might have still been influencing the way he understood and spoke about the world. The old law might have had no influence at all or it might have retained some power to color his interpretations and his expressions. If the Law of Moses was still part of Mormon’s cultural memory, he might have had an understanding of the state of a rape victim’s virtue – her state of moral cleanliness – that’s nuanced differently than the understanding we have now. When mourning the violent sex crimes of his people at Moriantum, Mormon used the words "chastity and virtue" to describe what the daughters of the Lamanites had lost when they were assaulted instead of simply saying "virginity."

And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue— And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery. Moro 9:9-10

Even though the wording might be muddled by the limited vocabulary or perhaps by the sensibilities of the times in which Mormon or his translator lived in, Mormon’s sorrow for what happened to the women is unmistakable. He wrote of an atrocity. Mormon did not condemn the women for being kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered, and cannibalized. He did condemn the "great abominations" of their attackers.

If Mormon was influenced by cultural traces of the Law of Moses, he would have believed that when a woman was forcibly deprived of her virginity, she remained innocent. Despite the wording, he would have believed they had lost their virginity, not their virtue. In the Law of Moses, penalties against attackers were put in place to serve a purpose similar to restitution. (See Deut 22:25-29) Once the Law was satisfied, it was as if the victim’s former state – her "chastity and virtue"—was restored. However, the men who victimized women at Moriantum were never lawfully penalized.

Perhaps part of what Mormon lamented was the fact that the injustices would remain unaddressed. Maybe, as he saw it, the crimes against the women were deepened because no legal version of "restitution" would ever be made. In this way, the legal construct of the women’s "chastity and virtue" was never restored even though their true spiritual virtue could remain intact. Perhaps the problem with this passage is not, as critics suggest, that Mormon equated virtue with virginity but that his cultural sense of the efficacy of legal restitution prompted him to overstate what was lost.

Lingering Controversy

As we have progressed through history, people in general – both inside and outside the Church—have become more sensitized to sexual crimes. We use a more sympathetic vocabulary and much of the societal stigma that victims of sexual crimes have suffered has disappeared. What was once cloaked in flowery rhetoric can now be discussed in more precise and compassionate terms. This shift in language has been critical in assisting victims in the necessary healing after sexual assault and abuse.

Despite the current clarity of the Church’s position on sexual assault, the controversy still flares to life. Although older statements from church leaders have been interpreted in various ways and are of historical interest, it is incumbent upon those addressing this topic to keep original contexts in mind and to ultimately use current statements when describing the position of the modern church.

Did Elder Richard G. Scott teach that victims of abuse are responsible for their abuse?

In a discourse given in the April 1992 General Conference of the Church, Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks to victims of abuse.

During the course of his talk, Elder Scott stated the following:

The victim must do all in his or her power to stop the abuse. Most often, the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender. At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse. Your priesthood leader will help assess your responsibility so that, if needed, it can be addressed. Otherwise the seeds of guilt will remain and sprout into bitter fruit. Yet no matter what degree of responsibility, from absolutely none to increasing consent, the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ can provide a complete cure. (See D&C 138:1–4.) Forgiveness can be obtained for all involved in abuse. (See A of F 1:3.) Then comes a restoration of self-respect, self-worth, and a renewal of life. As a victim, do not waste effort in revenge or retribution against your aggressor. Focus on your responsibility to do what is in your power to correct. Leave the handling of the offender to civil and Church authorities.

Here is a video of the address:

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Is Elder Scott teaching that victims of abuse are responsible for their abuse?

We count on the patience and maturity of our readers as we briefly explore this deeply sensitive question. We affirm unequivocally to those who have faced abuse that "[t]he abuse was not, is not, and never will be your fault, no matter what the abuser or anyone else may have said to the contrary. When you have been a victim of cruelty, incest, or any other perversion, you are not the one who needs to repent; you are not responsible." That said, there may very well still be important things that we can glean from Elder Scott's talk.

Elder Scott's Meaning May be Obscured by Clunky Wording

The first thing that we might strongly claim is that Elder Scott's meaning needs to be evaluated within the course of the talk. Otherwise, it's likely that his admittedly clunky wording here is obscuring what he actually meant to say. Earlier in his discourse, Elder Scott slowly and pointedly underscores "that when another’s violence, perversion, incest cause you deep harm, against your will, you are not responsible and you must not feel guilty." How can Elder Scott simultaneously claim that a person is not responsible and that the victim may hold "a degree of responsibility for abuse"? There's a good chance that Elder Scott meant to say something that we're not understanding.

Not A Good Word for the Type of 'Responsibility' that Elder Scott May Have Been Referring To

The abuse victims face is not their fault. One of the big problems surrounding these discussions is that there is not a good word to refer to the type of 'responsibility' that Elder Scott was likely referring to. We'll illustrate that with a couple of scenarios below.

Those That Are Faced With Abusive Situations Should Feel Empowered to Leave Those Situations

The abuse victims face is not their fault; but those who face it should feel empowered to leave abusive situations. We don’t need to stay in abusive situations and it’s not our fault that we are in them. Elder Holland has told us that we may be in the midst of an abusive or violent marriage and that abuse/violence may justify exiting it.

There Are Things We Can Do To Avoid Abusive Situations

The abuse victims face is not their fault; but there are times where we do things that aren’t wise that might put us in dangerous situations and we should do what we can to avoid those situations. There’s a reason that, when walking or jogging somewhere at night, we should try and stay in lit areas. There's a reason that a Trump supporter would be wise to not show up to a Black Lives Matter rally in full MAGA regalia. There's a reason that a black person would be wise to not show up at an alt right or Nazi rally. While we aren’t at fault for whatever kind of harm or action comes on us during those moments (since that would be the product of another’s choices), there are still dumb things that we can do that more likely put us in harm’s way. We should take appropriate measures to reduce the likelihood of that happening to us. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry about the many types of dangers that could come upon us and we would be able to go wherever we like, dress however we want, and act however we please. We don't live in a perfect world, though, and thus can't act, dress, and go where we please. We have to take precautions.

The Abused May Abuse Their Abuser

As Elder Scott rightly points out in the course of his talk, the abused may begin to abuse their abuser. The abuser should, in this instance, reflect on how their actions contributed to the retaliation that they are facing. The abuse that such a person faces is not their fault, but there must be some recognition of how their actions contributed negatively to their chances of not facing retaliation from their victim.

Notes (click to expand)

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Articles about Abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Principles	The Church's position on abuse Bishop interviews with youth Mandatory reporting of abuse Abuse victims and lack of culpability Child abuse in the scriptures
Specific Cases	Ritual child abuse accusations in the 1990s Abuse and the Boy Scouts of America Bisbee, Arizona — Adams abuse case

Some individuals wonder if one-on-one interviews between youth and adult leaders is appropriate. This is especially relevant regarding discussions about chastity sexuality.

Jennifer Roach, a convert to the Church and therapist, explained many reasons for allowing one-on-one interviews between youth and adult leaders.

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Roach has also talked about this in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune. She has also published about some of the unique protections offered by the Church against abuse at Public Square Magazine.

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Articles about Race and the Church of Jesus Christ

Priesthood ban	Combating racial prejudice Origin Policy or doctrine Racist statements Neural or less valiant Curse of Ham Scripture and the ban Ending the ban Social pressure First Pres statements Testimonies of the revelation Repudiated ideas Brigham Young Mark E. Petersen Official Declaration 2
Native Americans	Indian placement program

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What was the Indian Student Placement Services program?

Introduction to Question

Many have become concerned with the past existence of a program designed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Indian placement. It is known as the Indian Student Placement Services Program.

In this article, we introduce what it was and address some common concerns/criticisms that have arisen in recent years because of it.

Response to Question

Encyclopedia of Mormonism, "Native Americans"

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992) relates the following information about the program. The entry was written in 1992, four years before the program was officially disbanded in 1996. Thus the entry, while it treats the program as still existing, is partially incorrect:

The Indian Student Placement Services (ISPS) seeks to improve the educational attainment of Native American children by placing member Indian children with LDS families during the school year. Foster families, selected because of their emotional, financial, and spiritual stability, pay all expenses of the Indian child, who lives with a foster family during the nine-month school year and spends the summer on the reservation with his or her natural family. Generally, the children enter the program at a fairly young age and return year after year to the same foster family until they graduate from high school.

From a small beginning in 1954, the program peaked in 1970 with an enrollment of nearly 5,000 students. The development of more adequate schools on reservations has since then reduced the need for the program and the number of participants has declined. In 1990, about 500 students participated. More than 70,000 Native American youngsters have participated in ISPS, and evaluations have shown that participation significantly increased their educational attainment.

In the 1950s, Elder Spencer W. Kimball, then an apostle, encouraged Brigham Young University to take an active interest in Native American education and to help solve economic and social problems. Scholarships were established, and a program to help Indian students adjust to university life was inaugurated. During the 1970s more than 500 Indian students, representing seventy-one tribes, were enrolled each year. But enrollment has declined, so a new program for Indian students is being developed that will increase the recruiting of Native American students to BYU and raise the percentage who receive a college degree. The Native American Educational Outreach Program at BYU presents educational seminars to tribal leaders and Indian youth across North America. It also offers scholarships. American Indian Services, another outreach program originally affiliated with BYU, provides adult education and technical and financial assistance to Indian communities. In 1989, American Indian Services was transferred from BYU to the Lehi Foundation, which continues this activity.

In 1975, George P. Lee, a full-blooded Navajo and an early ISPS participant, was appointed as a General Authority. He was the first Indian to achieve this status and served faithfully for more than ten years. Elder Lee became convinced that the Church was neglecting its mission to the Lamanites, and when he voiced strong disapproval of Church leaders, he was excommunicated in 1989.

Was the Program an Attempt at Turning Native Americans "White and Delightsome"?

Kevin Barney, a Latter-day Saint apologist, wrote the following in response to a criticism of the ISPS given by critics Thomas W. Murphy and Simon Southerton. The criticism of Murphy and Southerton practically mirrors the concerns/criticisms of other critics today.

Murphy comes down extremely hard on the Church’s Indian Student Placement Program. He writes: "The Placement Program, deemed cultural genocide by critics, removed over 70,000 Native American children from their homes from 1954-96 and placed them with urban white Mormon families in systematic efforts to turn Indians ‘white and delightsome.'" The shrillness of this statement is irresponsible and reflects a lack of scholarly balance and detachment. The Placement Program grew out of informal arrangements between Utah beet farmers and children of Navajo migrant pickers in the 1940s. Eventually it became a formal program, whereby Native American children were housed with Mormon families during the school year so that they could attend school; they returned to live with their families during the summers. The goals of the Program were both educative and acculturative. Now, perhaps trying to help Native American children gain the tools to succeed in the dominant anglo culture was not an appropriate or worthy goal. Certainly there is plenty of room for responsible criticism of the aims, administration and effects of the Program. But to evoke images of the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia with the incredibly hyperbolic "cultural genocide" is in my judgment an irresponsible way to go about it. To the contrary, many Native Americans have been upset that the Church has terminated or greatly scaled back both the Placement Program and other programs intended to serve Native American interests. So the Church is damned if it tries to help, and damned if it does not. To say that the children were "removed" in the passive voice ominously suggests to the uninformed reader that this was somehow done against their parents’ wishes. This is simply not true. For the reader interested in a more balanced anthropological consideration of the Placement Program, I recommend the studies indicated in the accompanying note.

Barney recommends the following resources in order to get a balanced treatment of the ISPS:

• Bruce A. Chadwick, Stan L. Albrecht and Howard M. Bahr, "Evaluation of an Indian Student Placement Program," Social Casework 67, no. 9 (1986): 515–24.
• Bruce A. Chadwick and Stan L. Albrecht, "Mormons and Indians: Beliefs, Policies, Programs and Practices," in Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives, ed. Tim B. Heaton and Lawrence A. Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 287–309.
• Tona J. Hangen, "A Place to Call Home: Studying the Indian Placement Program," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 53–69.
• James B. Allen, "The Rise and Decline of the LDS Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-1996," Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, ed. Davis Bitton (Provo: FARMS, 1998), 85–119.

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Notes (click to expand)

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