Heavenly Mother

Our Mother in Heaven

The doctrine of our Mother in Heaven is one of the most distinctively Latter-day truths of the Restoration. The ancient Hebrews knew Her. The Temple at Jerusalem held Her sacred symbols for centuries before later reformers cast them out. Joseph Smith taught the doctrine privately to his closest associates in the Priesthood. President Brigham Young proclaimed it openly. Eliza R. Snow versified it. President Wilford Woodruff afterwards affirmed Sister Snow’s hymn as a true revelation. And the Saints of the Restoration have, from the beginning, sung of Her in their hymnody and theology.

Per Article 15 of the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn, our Mother in Heaven is identified by name:

“WE BELIEVE in the WORSHIP of our Mother in Heaven who is the literal Goddess of this Creation; She is our Mother Eve and stands by the side of Her Divine Husband, holding the Keys of Power and Dominion over all Her posterity.”
— Fred C. Collier, Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn: With a Short History, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 18 No. 1 (April 2001), 10

The witness begins with President Brigham Young and expands through Nauvoo hymnody, women’s writings, visionary accounts, and Hebrew evidence.

The Testimony of President Brigham Young

President Young’s most explicit identification of Mother Eve as our Mother in Heaven was given in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on October 8, 1854:

“I tell you, when you see your Father in the Heavens, you will see Adam; when you see your Mother that bore your spirit, you will see Mother Eve.”
— President Brigham Young, October 8, 1854, Salt Lake Tabernacle (Teachings of President Brigham Young 3:363; cf. The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, 2:844–46)

This was not a single, anomalous utterance. President Young returned to the doctrine of Mother Eve in public discourses and in teachings to his closest associates in the Priesthood. As Fred C. Collier’s research in President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity demonstrates, many of the full Adam-God discourses carry Mother Eve alongside Father Adam, and President Young returned to the doctrine of Mother Eve in additional sermons across his ministry.1 The principle is reciprocal with the Adam-God doctrine: as Adam is our Father in the most literal sense, so Eve is our Mother in the most literal sense. (See Adam-God for the corresponding doctrine of the Father.)

The Witness of Eliza R. Snow

Eliza R. Snow — one of the plural wives of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and one of the leading poetesses of the Restoration — gave the doctrine its most enduring public expression in her hymn “O My Father” (originally titled “My Father in Heaven,” first published in Times and Seasons in November 1845):

“In the heav’ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason — truth eternal
Tells me I’ve a mother there.”
— Eliza R. Snow, “O My Father” (1845)

That this hymn expresses revealed doctrine, and not mere poetic speculation, was affirmed by President Wilford Woodruff during the October 8, 1893 General Conference in the Salt Lake Tabernacle:

“That hymn is a revelation, though it was given unto us by a woman — Sister Snow.”
— President Wilford Woodruff, 1893 (reported in the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star 56, no. 15 (April 9, 1894): 228)

Joseph F. Smith, then a Counselor in the First Presidency, addressed the doctrine in 1895, explicitly tracing the underlying revelation to Joseph Smith and Sister Snow’s hymn to her poetic articulation of it:

“God revealed that principle to Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith revealed it to Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a poet, to put it into verse.”
— Joseph F. Smith, Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star 58, no. 12 (March 19, 1896): 180

The companion hymn “Our Mother in Heaven,” published in 1894, stood beside Sister Snow’s “O My Father” as a second public Latter-day Saint hymn witness (Juvenile Instructor, 1894).2

The Witness of W. W. Phelps

W. W. Phelps, one of Joseph Smith’s close associates, left two early Nauvoo witnesses to the doctrine in Times and Seasons:

  • Phelps’s hymn affirming Mother in Heaven, in A Voice from the Prophet (1845; cf. earlier 1845 publication in Times and Seasons).
  • Phelps’s prose allegorical parable “Parecletes,” published under the pseudonym “Joseph’s Speckled Bird” in Times and Seasons. The pseudonym is identifiable from Phelps’s own 1835 patriarchal blessing under the hand of Joseph Smith Sr., in which Phelps was given the appellation “Speckled Bird.”3

The simultaneous appearance of these Nauvoo-period witnesses, together with Sister Snow’s hymn, corroborates what Joseph Smith had already taught privately to his closest associates and what President Young afterwards proclaimed openly: that the doctrine of our Mother in Heaven is integral to the Restoration, not a poetic accretion.

The Witness of Zina D. H. Young

Zina Diantha Huntington Young, plural wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith and afterwards of President Brigham Young, preserved a personal account of the Prophet teaching her the doctrine of Mother in Heaven in the setting of her own bereavement. Father William Huntington had lost his wife, the children were left desolate, and Zina asked the Prophet whether she would know her mother as her mother on the other side. Susa Young Gates — daughter of President Young and prominent Latter-day Saint writer and women’s-rights advocate — recorded the exchange:

“One day, when her daughter Zina was speaking with the Prophet Joseph Smith concerning the loss of her mother and her intense grief, she asked the question: ‘Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the Other Side?’

‘Certainly you will,’ was the instant reply of the Prophet. ‘More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.’

‘And have I then a Mother in Heaven?’ exclaimed the astonished girl.

‘You assuredly have. How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?'”
— Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, 16

The Vision of Zebedee Coltrin

Zebedee Coltrin’s vision is treated more fully on the Adam-God page. For the doctrine of Heavenly Mother, the central witness is that the vision did not present Father Adam alone; Mother Eve appeared with Him in the heavenly manifestation.4

“As I looked I saw the blue sky open; I beheld a throne, and upon the throne sat a man and woman. Joseph asked us if we knew who they were; we answered, no. Joseph answered, ‘That is Father Adam and Mother Eve.’ Their heads were white as snow and their faces shown with immortal youth.”5

Abraham H. Cannon’s 1890 diary report, by way of President Canute Peterson, likewise remembers the vision as a heavenly family manifestation: after successive prayers Joseph, Coltrin, and Sidney Rigdon saw the Father, then “the Mother also,” and then the Savior added to the group.6

The doctrinal point is that the Heavenly Family circle is not complete without the Mother appearing with the Father and the Son.

The Witness of Women of Mormondom

Women of Mormondom (1877) is one of the most extensive nineteenth-century treatments of the doctrine of Mother in Heaven. The book was prepared in close collaboration with Eliza R. Snow — who helped gather materials, supported publication by subscription, and worked with the women’s organizations behind the volume7 — and emerged from the circle of Latter-day Saint women who preserved these teachings. A copy now housed in the Bancroft Library bears a front-matter inscription reading: “The night before he died[,] Brigham Young said he would like a 1000 [copies] of this book distribute[d] at the east[.]” That statement stands as at least circumstantial evidence that the book may have had President Young’s own approval as well.8

“Adam is our Father and God. He is the God ‘of the earth.’ So says Brigham Young. Adam is the great archangel of this creation. He is Michael. He is the Ancient of Days. … When this earth was prepared for mankind, Michael, as Adam, came down. He brought with him one of his wives, and he called her name Eve. … Adam and Eve are the names of the fathers and mothers of worlds.”
— Edward W. Tullidge, Women of Mormondom (1877), 179–80; reproduced in President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity, Appendix D

The Witness of Other Apostles and Editorialists

The witness for our Mother in Heaven among the early Brethren and the early publications of the Church is broad — cutting across hierarchical and editorial boundaries, and including stake leaders, Apostles, mission presidents, and the principal newspapers and periodicals of the Restoration. The list below is not exhaustive; it is offered as representative of how widely the doctrine was held and articulated:

The Hebrew Witness: El and Asherah

The doctrine of our Mother in Heaven did not originate in the nineteenth century. It is the original Hebrew doctrine, preserved in ancient biblical and archaeological evidence and traced in detail by Fred C. Collier in The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess (1991). Ancient Hebrews worshipped El (the Father) and Asherah (the Mother) together. Their sacred symbols — the stone pillar and the wooden pole or living tree — stood together in Solomon’s Temple for centuries before being progressively removed, beginning with the apostasy of Israel in the days of Moses (the Golden Calf episode and its aftermath) and culminating in the Deuteronomic reform under Josiah. The archaeological and textual evidence remains. (See Nature of Deity for the fuller Hebrew witness.)

Why This Matters

The recovery of the doctrine of our Mother in Heaven is not a matter of theological ornament. It is structurally central to the Patriarchal/Matriarchal Order of the Priesthood (Article 6 of the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn): the Eternal Family Structure presided over by Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Priests and Priestesses, Kings and Queens. Without our Mother, exaltation would be a half-truth; with our Mother, it is the restoration of the full divine pattern.

For the Priesthood structure that flows from this doctrine, see the Matriarchal Priestesshood page. For the Hebrew evidence, see Nature of Deity. For the corresponding doctrine of our Father, see Adam-God. For the framework that holds these together, see Two Trinities.

Notes

  1. For example, President Young taught on April 9, 1852, that Father Adam “brought Eve, one of his wives, with him” and is “our Father and our God” (Journal of Discourses 1:50); on October 8, 1854, he identified “your Mother that bore your spirit” as Mother Eve (Teachings of President Brigham Young 3:363; Complete Discourses 2:844–46); and in additional materials gathered by Patriarch Collier he taught that “Eve our common Mother” bore the spirits appointed to this earth (President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity, 35). ↩
  2. The companion hymn appeared as “Our Mother in Heaven” in the Juvenile Instructor 29, no. 17 (September 1, 1894): 263. ↩
  3. H. Michael Marquardt, comp., Early Patriarchal Blessings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2007), 43. ↩
  4. Fred C. Collier dates the setting approximately from the surrounding narrative in History of the Church 2:50ff. For Oliver Cowdery’s January 1, 1834 statement that Michael is Father Adam, see Stanley R. Gunn, Oliver Cowdery: Second Elder and Scribe (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962), Appendix A, 234, printing Oliver Cowdery to John Whitmer, Kirtland, January 1, 1834. The 1875 and 1883 Coltrin reports involve Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Coltrin; the 1890 Abraham H. Cannon diary report, by way of Canute Peterson, names Sidney Rigdon in the same visionary setting. ↩
  5. Zebedee Coltrin testimony, February 5, 1875, Spanish Fork High Priests’ Record, April 29, 1866–December 1, 1898, as printed in Fred C. Collier, comp., Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, volume 2 (Salt Lake City: Collier’s Publishing, 1993), 170. ↩
  6. Abraham H. Cannon, diary entry for August 25, 1890, in Edward Leo Lyman, ed., Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889–1895 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with the Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2010), 123. The entry reports that President Canute Peterson had often heard Coltrin relate that Joseph Smith asked Coltrin and Sidney Rigdon to pray with him in the woods; after successive prayers, “they saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.” ↩
  7. Claudia L. Bushman, “Edward W. Tullidge and The Women of Mormondom,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 4 (Winter 2000), Dialogue Journal archive. See also Augusta Joyce Crocheron, Representative Women of Deseret (Salt Lake City: J. C. Graham, 1884), 6; Susa Young Gates, The Life Story of Brigham Young (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 360. ↩
  8. The Bancroft Library copy of Women of Mormondom contains a front-matter inscription transcribed here as: “The night before he died[,] Brigham Young said he would like a 1000 [copies] of this book distribute[d] at the east[.]” Because the inscription gives no source, date, or identified writer, it should be treated as noteworthy but uncertain-provenance evidence rather than as an independently verified deathbed statement by President Young. Notwithstanding, the fact that President Young’s wife, Eliza R. Snow, worked on the book so heavily prior to his death grounds such a statement within the realm of historical plausibility. ↩
  9. The 1872 article was published in the Deseret News 21, no. 52 (January 31, 1872): 17, with George Q. Cannon as editor and publisher; it was reprinted in the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star 34 (1872), and again in 1910 by Rudger Clawson with expanded commentary in the Millennial Star. ↩