Across the library

The Word of Wisdom

Everybody knows Latter-day Saints don't drink coffee. Almost nobody knows the revelation behind the rule says, in its own text, that it is not a commandment — or that it took ninety years to become one. The steps are all on the record. Every quote links to its source.

The health code is the thing outsiders know about the church: no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee or tea. The revelation behind it was given in 1833, and its own opening verses say it is not a commandment. It became one anyway, in stages, over ninety years. Each stage is in the library, and this page walks through them.

1833: not by commandment

The setting was the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, where the elders met in a small upstairs room over the Smith family kitchen. By the church's own account of the school:

The clouds of smoke were so thick the men could hardly even see Joseph through the haze.

Jed Woodworth, "The Word of Wisdom", Revelations in Context

On February 27, 1833, Joseph Smith recorded the revelation now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 89. Read what it says about itself:

To be sent greeting; not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom, showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days… Given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints.

Doctrine and Covenants 89:2–3

Not by commandment or constraint. That is the text, and it has never been revised. For decades observance matched it: hot drinks and tobacco were preached against, and plenty of members, including leaders, were inconsistent about both.

The promise

The revelation ends with what obedience buys, and the promise is broader than health:

And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones; And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint. And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen.

Doctrine and Covenants 89:18–21

1851: the vote

The first big tightening came in Utah. At the general conference of September 1851, Brigham Young put observance to a vote: he called on the sisters to leave off tea and coffee and on the men to covenant to give up tobacco and whiskey, and the vote carried unanimously. The proceedings were published to the whole church in the Millennial Star. Historians still argue about what that vote meant — it reads as a personal covenant by the members present, not a canonization — and practice stayed uneven for decades afterward. Sermons in the Journal of Discourses spent the next thirty years urging Saints to actually live it, which tells you how many didn't.

1921: the requirement

The line everyone lives with today was drawn under Heber J. Grant. Grant became church president in 1918, taught the revelation as a commandment, and in 1921 observance became a requirement for a temple recommend. That is the moment the Word of Wisdom stopped being counsel you were urged to follow and became a standard you were asked about. It has been one ever since. The sermons of that campaign are in the Conference Report, year by year.

So the text has not changed since 1833. What changed is what the church asked its members to do about it: counsel in 1833, a covenant vote in 1851, a temple requirement in 1921. All three steps are in the library, in the words of the people who took them.