Another Changed Custom

Today, children are sealed to their parents whether the parent is a member or not (once the ordinance work has been done in the case of non-LDS parents). It hasn’t always been this way. In the early church, if an individual’s parents did not belong to the Church, then the individual could not be sealed to their non-LDS parents (In fact, could not be sealed to the parent at all if the father did not hold the priesthood). If they weren’t sealed to their parents, then they would be adopted to whom?

a.      Abraham

b.      Joseph Smith

c.       A living general authority or the spouses parents (if the spouses parents were members)

d.      Adam

Yesterday’s answer:

B.   The baby was anointed with oil

Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe had participated in the temple rituals before they left for England in 1844. Phoebe gave birth to a son in the following year. As was common in nineteenth-century Mormonism, eight days after he was born, she held the child in her arms while Wilford anointed him and declared [a blessing].

Jonathan A. Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” The Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 37, Summer 2011, 58.