The Word of Wisdom, which outlines the health guidelines of not drinking alcohol and using tobacco, as well as eating less meat, eating more grains; was originally just as the name suggests, words of wisdom.
Joseph Smith drank wine, used tobacco, and drank coffee up to his death.
It wasn’t until the early 20th century when it started to be treated as a commandment. This is around the time when they started codifying a lot of doctrine, stopped practicing polygamy, and started to function more like a mainstream religion and less like a cult.
Source: raised Mormon, went on mission, took religion classes at BYU-Provo on church history.
wjrii@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Growing up Mormon in the 80s (I got better!), they insisted to us kids that it was just grape juice, and for adults they simply put a social stigma on asking too many questions, or any uncomfortable questions.
If there is a theological principal in play it’s that they view their prophets as still able to receive Bible-level revelations, and if their non-trinitarian God committee tells Joseph Smith that wine is bad now, then wine is bad now. If human nature then results in believers feeling like sinners who need to make it up to their community and their church leaders, then oh so sad, but it can result in the Lord’s work being done.
In general Mormon theology is rather literal and childlike, only getting complicated when trying to work around some established Christian doctrine that no new book overrides (yet!). It’s almost like some provincial huckster was making it up as he went along…
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Yeah, just like how black people were bad and the “children of Ham” or whatever. After the Civil Rights Movement, Morman God mysteriously changed his mind and said “black people are ok now”.
wjrii@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That didn’t happen until the Department of Education in the Carter administration started talking about whether students at BYU should be getting federal grants and loans, and I believe the NCAA was making some noise as well.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Lol!
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Paul even writes in his first epistle to Timothy (5:23)
This was because people were getting sick from drinking plain water (as they didn’t have the same water purifying technology then) so it was common to add a bit of wine to cleanse it antibacterial. Grape juice in this context would make zero sense. Would also hark back to what Luke wrote in The Acts of the Apostles 10:9-16 regarding a vision Peter received:
Although, this doesn’t really work in regard to the Mormon thinking that some guy can override the Bible and that the book of Mormon overrides it. Reminds me of a video a mormon made reading through John’s gospel according to Joseph Smith or something where he adds in extra stuff through some claimed revelation/restoration. There were comments of people saying “okay but there are no evidence for these texts existing from the early church” and the guy just responded with “but Joseph smith said”