A word of wisdom

What does it mean to call D&C 89 a "word of wisdom"? It means that D&C 89 is given as a recommendation, not a commandment. You've probably heard the chestnut about how what Moses brought down from Mount Sinai wasn't the 10 Recommendations. Well, D&C 89 is framed as a recommendation from God, not a commandment. We see the same distinction made in D&C 28:5, where Joseph tells Oliver that he's authorized to write "by wisdom" but not "by way of commandment." D&C 37:3 starts out telling the church that they have a "commandment" to gather to Ohio; but "commandment" in that context may just be a synonym for what today Latter-day Saints would call "a revelation" (there are other instances of the word being used that way), because immediately the text says it's "expedient" that the Saints should gather at Ohio and concludes: "Behold, here is wisdom, and let every man choose for himself." Apparently not enough Saints chose for themselves to move to Ohio, because in the next section (D&C 38), Joseph turns on the heat by explaining that they need to move to escape a conspiracy afoot to destroy them.

I'm intrigued to know why Joseph didn't issue D&C 89 as a commandment. I mean, he clearly didn't have qualms about making demands on his followers: move here, go on a mission there, fund this project, sign over all your property. Of course, the Saints weren't always willing to go along with what he wanted, and he knew that some commands—notably polygamy—had to be introduced secretly and selectively. But despite the precedents I just cited for other "recommendations not commandments" in the D&C, section 89 does stand out for how emphatically it says at the beginning: Now this is just a recommendation, but there are big promises for you if you keep it. Verse 3 intrigues and puzzles me—this business about being adapted to the weakest of the Saints. Is that the reason for making the Word of Wisdom a recommendation not a commandment—because Joseph anticipates some won't be able to give up alcohol or tobacco? His alcoholic father, for instance?

Anyway, whatever the reason, the Word of Wisdom doesn't "become a commandment" until after the Manifesto. And even then, the parts that become mandatory for being a member in good standing are just the prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea—later expanded to include drugs. ("Drugs are bad, mkay?") I immediately need to point out, though, that strictly speaking, only the prohibition on tobacco is explicit in the text. Coffee and tea are a long-standing interpretation of the ban on "hot drinks," though I have a hunch that if I dug around into 19th-century folk notions about health, I'd find that D&C 89 reflects an idea of the time that hot liquids in general are somehow bad for the system by virtue of being hot. And D&C 89 does not sweepingly prohibit alcohol—that's a Prohibition-era interpretation imposed on the text. What the text prohibits is hard liquor and wine, with the exception of the sacrament; but the text says that "mild" grain-based drinks are fine—e.g., beer.

Meanwhile, the contemporary description of the Word of Wisdom as a ban on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea completely ignores the text's ban on eating meat except during winter and times of famine (i.e., when plants don't grow so meat is all you have). It also ignores the peculiar specifications that wheat is intended for people, corn for the ox, oats for the horse, and rye for the fowls and the swine.

So what's going on here? We have a document that recommends, but pointedly does not command, a dietary regime that includes vegetarianism, abstinence from liquor and wine but not beer, abstinence from hot drinks, a statement that tobacco is intended only as medicine for bruises and animals [is it actually useful for that, or is this some kind of folk wisdom?], and an idiosyncratic catalogue of which grains are best for which animals. This odd little document—which looks more anachronistic than prescient when you understand it as more than a ban on tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine—is later converted from a recommendation into a commandment...except only certain portions of it are turned into a commandment. And the parts that are made a commandment are the parts that correspond to an existing social ethos about the impropriety of smoking and drinking, or—in the case of the ban on coffee and tea—that constitute a visible mark of distinction from the rest of society but one that will make the Saints seem quirky rather than radical. Making vegetarianism mandatory would have been more radical.

Two reactions to this:

First, I deeply regret the shift from recommendation to commandment. I regret it because it reflects the authoritarian, homogenizing impulses that drive LDS culture and polity. Imagine what a different kind of place the LDS Church would be if the Word of Wisdom were still a document that people were free to observe or not observe according to their best lights. What if the ban on smoking and drinking was regarded in the same spirit that the ban on meat is—as something people invoke to say, "Sure, of course, it's better for your health," but that no one would think to enforce in a temple recommend interview. What if the church were a place where some members practiced vegetarianism on the basis of the D&C's say-so, and even testified publicly to the benefits that came from doing so, but where it really was a matter of choice, and there was no stigma for people who didn't do it—just as there really isn't any stigma for people who don't read the Book of Mormon every day, or hold family scripture study regularly, or regularly attend the temple, or keep a year's supply of food storage, even though those practices come highly recommended. What if observing the Word of Wisdom were as much a matter of conscience in the Church as the amount you give for a fast offering?

And then imagine extending the principle further. What if Church lesson manuals were offered as useful but not mandatory resources? What if the law of tithing, or the law of chastity, were conceived as principles with promises given by wisdom but not by commandment or constraint?

There are sociologists who predict that a church that allowed that much freedom wouldn't appeal to the greatest "market share" of the population. Maybe—though whether or not something proves popular isn't really the issue from a theological perspective. The question is: What would an institution that allowed that much freedom do for individuals' spiritual well-being? It looks to my lights like it would require people to draw closer to the Spirit to make their own wise choices, and that looks to me like an eminently good thing.

That's my first reaction to the changing status of D&C 89: regret at the loss of autonomy for individual conscience. My second reaction is to point to the selective enforcement and reconceptualization of the Word of Wisdom as a hopeful precedent. It's an example of not taking the text literally. It's an example of adopting those aspects of the text that make sense and are moderate and reasonable by standards of your culture. That's the liberal religious impulse! Of course, there's a danger: the danger of not hearing the voice of God prompting you to be critical of the culture. But there are dangers in swallowing scriptural texts wholesale and standing off from the culture, too.