history, Elijah, and the Kirtland Temple

9 March 2024 - 8 minutes read - 1512 words - kudos:

As I’ve written before, I don’t necessarily believe that the dubious historicity of a particular religious event ought to undermine its theological significance, but I do strongly believe that dubious historicity undermines the ability of an individual or organization to insist that others agree with their theological conclusions. To take a major example, the unlikelihood of a literal resurrection in scientific terms isn’t going to stop me from finding value in the resurrection story at Easter, but it sure as heck is going to stop me from insisting that my atheist spouse make that story an important part of her life.

One thing that’s come up in a few conversations I’ve had about the recent sale of the Kirtland Temple to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how the tours are going to change when it’s devotionally minded LDS¹ missionaries giving the tours, instead of historically minded Community of Christ employees and volunteers. In his excllent book Kirtland Temple: The Biography of a Shared Mormon Sacred Space, David Howlett draws attention to the ways in which the Biblical figure of Elijah has served as a point of difference and debate between LDS visitors to the Kirtland Temple and RLDS/Community of Christ hosts for over a century.

I suspect that LDS tours of the Kirtland Temple are going to start emphasizing a purported visit of Elijah to Joseph Smith Jr. at that site in a way that Community of Christ tours haven’t (though it would be a mistake to say that Elijah has been absent from tours under the previous ownership). From a devotional view, this makes a lot of sense. As Trever Anderson puts it in a 2010 BYU master’s thesis:

Central to the doctrine of the Mormon temple is the claimed visitation of Jesus Christ, Moses, Elias and Elijah to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple.

Given that centrality, it makes sense that LDS visitors would want to know about that event—and that LDS tour guides would want to talk about it.

However, as Anderson—clearly a devout, orthodox believer in his writing of this thesis—also acknowledges, the history associated with this event is a bit more complicated. Many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are only exposed to “mythological Mormon history,” as Armand Mauss puts it in his classic book The Angel and the Beehive, and as Sara Patterson writes in The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism, “history in the LDS Church often serves as the foundation for theology.” It can therefore be uncomfortable to move beyond this mythological history when LDS theology is on the line.

Yet, while I’m happy to allow the Mountain Saints a temple theology built on Elijah and the Kirtlland Temple, and while I would never encourage visitors to be petty toward LDS tour guides in the way that so many LDS visitors have been petty toward RLDS and Community of Christ tour guides, it’s important to note the way that telling the Elijah story as part of a Kirtland Temple tour risks straying into imposing beliefs by misrepresenting a dubious history. (Note, however, that I’m writing this well before LDS tours at the site start, and I’d be happy for my pessimsim to be unwarranted).

For example, for all the importance that the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints places on Elijah’s visit to the Kirtland Temple, it… doesn’t seem to have been that important to Joseph Smith, Jr. As Anderson notes in his thesis:

[T]here is no record of Joseph Smith publicly teaching that Moses, Elias, or Elijah visited him and Oliver Cowdery. There also are no writings by scribes, writings of close associates, or minutes taken in the meetings where Joseph Smith spoke that reference this vision. Even when he was instructing the newly formed women’s organization, the Relief Society, in their preparation for their temple experience, there is no record of it.

In the next paragraph, Anderson also notes that:

So far as it is known, Oliver Cowdery never made a public statement concerning the vision or that he even discussed the vision privately. Even in his last written testimony before his death, which he wrote on January 13, 1849, Cowdery testified of the validity of the visitation of Moroni, John the Baptist, Peter, James and John, without mentioning the 1836 vision.

This is kind of mind-blowing considering just how important this event is for modern LDS theology. In fact, it’s so counter-intuitive that (as noted in Anderson’s thesis) even Fawn Brodie—writing critically about Smith—seems to have assumed that Elijah’s visit took on more importance at that time than it actually did.

What makes this even more interesting is that it’s not that Smith never talked about Elijah: During the last several years of his life, he frequently taught about Elijah. Greg Prince, in Power from on High, writes:

At the time of Smith’s death in 1844, Elijah’s importance [in Smith’s theology] was second only to that of Jesus Christ.

And yet, Prince also makes the mistake of assuming that it was Elijah’s appearance in the Kirtland Temple that kicks this off. As Anderson documents, Smith repeatedly teaches about Elijah and the sealing power but never associates either with the Kirtland Temple. Writing from a devotional perspective—since he’s pursuing a master’s in religious education—Anderson provides a number of apologetic arguments for how to reconcile this. Whether you find those arguments compelling or not (spoiler alert: I don’t), it’s remarkable that any kind of reconciliation needs to happen in the first place.

Today, it’s obvious to a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that Elijah restored the sealing power during his visit to the Kirtland Temple, but that does not appear to have been obvious to Joseph Smith during his life time. Instead, as Anderson documents, this is an association that didn’t really start until after Smith’s death—perhaps as early as the 1850s, but possibly as late as the 1870s or 1880s. As important as that connection is now, it may have never occurred to Smith!

In fact, Anderson (who is historically honest despite being firm in his faith) notes a couple of instances after purported 1836 Kirtland Temple visitation in which Smith seems to preach that Elijah has yet to come to turn over his keys and restore the sealing power. Here’s an 1840 teaching that Anderson references, but which I copy from the excellent Joseph Smith Papers website:

Elijah was the last Prophet that held the keys of this priesthood, and who will, before the last dispensation, restore the Authority and delive[r] the keys of this priesthood in order that all the ordinan[c]es may be attended to in righteousness.

As a second example, here’s a sermon recorded in an October 1841 issue of Times and Seasons:

The dispensation of the fulness of times will bring to light the things that have been revealed in all former dispensations, also other things that have not been before revealed. He shall send Elijah the prophe[t] &c., and restore all things in Christ.

Today, the LDS Church teaches that Elijah had already “restore[d] all things in Christ” in 1836, but apparently Joseph didn’t believe so. There’s precedent for Joseph not teaching certain things publicly, but that doesn’t seem to me to be a compelling possibility here. As Anderson and Prince both demonstrate in their respective works, Joseph is teaching a lot about the sealing power during the last few years of his life, and he’s also repeatedly associating the sealing power with Elijah.

Why not, then, connect both with Elijah’s visit in the Kirtland Temple? Why never talk about that visit at all? Why not add the account of that visit to the Doctrine and Covenants during Smith’s lifetime rather than wait for LDS leaders to do it in Utah—and having to change the third-person account written by Smith’s scribe into a first-person account?

My purpose here is not to attack or dismiss LDS temple theology by challenging the role of Elijah’s Kirtland Temple visit in that theology. Really! LDS temple theology is not something I hold to anymore, but I honestly don’t have any issue with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holding to it—or even with their associating it with the Kirtland Temple and Joseph’s account of Elijah. However, it would be a misleading imposition for Latter-day Saint tour guides to teach that theology as history as they guide visitors through the Kirtland Temple, and I hope that does not turn out to be the case when the temple reopens on March 25th.

Lest I be accused of disrespect: I use the acronym “LDS” here because it’s a clear reference to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of Community of Christ (and the RLDS Church before it) have historically referred to themselves as “Latter Day Saints,” and despite the differences in punctuation and capitalization, there’s just too much room for confusion if I use the approved nomenclature in settings where I’m writing about both populations. ↩︎

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