All about the Word of Wisdom, the health code for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The health code and dietary restrictions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often seems odd by outsiders.This story is an updated version of a previously published article.
A candidate for baptism or admittance to a Latter-day Saint temple must agree to abide by the faith’s Word of Wisdom, a health code that bars the use of these substances.by Mormon founder Joseph Smith, given not as a “commandment or constraint,” but as a “word of wisdom.” By the early 1900s, though, church leaders moved to make the prohibitions mandatory, and now such abstinence has become a hallmark of Mormonism.
“It’s a symbol of willingness to live in obedience to the standards God has revealed through his prophets for members of the church,” says a church spokesperson, qualifying them to participate in sacred rituals. Scholar Patrick Mason, shown in 2019, says the Word of Wisdom helps make Latter-day Saints distinctive.
“There is certainly a spectrum of practice within Mormonism, but they are not connected to formal subdivisions like the orthodox, conservative and reform Jews,” explains Brian Birch, director of the Center for the Study of Ethics and the Religious Studies Program at Orem’s Utah Valley University. “It’s not as easy for someone to self-identify as a ‘reform Mormon’ in terms of how they practice the Word of Wisdom and other tenets of the faith.
She continues to live Latter-day Saint standard on this, she says, and does not judge those who don’t.Riess tells of a member who smoked before and after her baptism. During Sunday school, this woman would drive around in her car with a friend, smoking. It took years for her to break the habit, all the while remaining a committed, participating Latter-day Saint. She later led the women’s Relief Society in her area.
More than three-quarters of baby boomers and the older, so-called silent generation viewed not drinking alcoholic beverages as essential to being “a good Mormon,” while 40% of millennials saw it that way. refused to sign BYU’s Honor Code, because it insisted that he abstain from a cup of coffee or glass of wine — even in his own home.spells out the church’s dietary advice. Besides warning against wine or “strong drinks” and tobacco, this Latter-day Saint scriptural text says to eat meat “sparingly” and have herbs and fruits in their “season.” It also proclaims, albeit vaguely, that “hot drinks are not for the body or belly.
Some have interpreted that paragraph to mean that the church should grow its own grapes, tobacco, tea leaves and coffee beans rather than be vulnerable to enemies through their products, while other historians view it as a warning that these substances could harm Latter-day Saints. Women’s leader Emmeline B. Wells, who became general president of the Relief Society, “drank an occasional cup of coffee, and [future church President] George Albert Smith took brandy for medicinal reasons,” Alexander reports. “Apostle George Teasdale, agreeing with President [Wilford] Woodruff, thought that no one ought to be kept from working in the Sunday school because he drank tea and that eating pork was a more serious breach than drinking tea or coffee.
Utah-born Latter-day Saint missionaries soon circulated these attitudes worldwide, teaching their converts to shun caffeinated soft drinks as part of their commitment. Some bishops even inappropriately asked about Coke in “worthiness” interviews, and, for many years, BYU refused to sell anything with caffeine — even as confused Latter-day Saints guzzled these sodas in large quantities.
Meanwhile, devout Latter-day Saints across the globe have had to assess whether their own drinks might be taboo as well and whether some sodas were healthier than their country’s murkier — and possibly disease-filled — water.Kava is a favorite drink among many Pacific Islanders, but it raises “tricky questions” for Latter-day Saints, says BYU-Hawaii professor Chiung Hwang Chen.
Some argue that “irresponsible socialization [kava parties lasting through the night] among some Polynesian men should be the culprit, not kava itself,” Chen says. Others “embrace the ban fully, teaching/believing that the substance itself is problematic.” When Lee Poulsen, who works for NASA, was a missionary in Sapporo in the early 1980s, every person who invited in the Latter-day Saint elders wanted to serve them tea. So the guest proselytizers began by telling their hosts they couldn’t have any brown, black, green or white tea, but that they could drink roasted barley tea, mushroom tea or seaweed tea.
Heeding the church’s dietary directives, says Belgian Wilfried Decoo, “is often the most obvious sign of breaking away from family traditions and fracturing the cultural cohesion.” From 30 years of overseas experience on five continents in rich and poor countries alike, Utahn Paul Carpenter has observed that these beverages are the “principal means” of putting diverse people at ease and “getting conversations started.”
Local lay leaders, says a church spokesperson, “may provide counsel to their members about practices specific to their region.”
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