Some Further Thoughts on Sealing Theology and Same-Sex Marriage
It is the great virtue of the Latter-day Saint tradition that it decides the case first and discovers the reason after.
Greetings,
As always I apologize for the irregularity with which I produce these substacks. Life gets away from me at times. (Most of the time, if truth be told.)
Same-sex Marriage and Sealing Rules (again)
A little over a year ago, I posted my essay “‘A Welding Link of Some Kind’: A Minimalist Theology of Same-Sex Marriage Sealings” to substack. I originally wrote the essay at the request of a friend who asked for my thoughts on the prospects for same-sex marriage within LDS theology. Out of respect for his request, I tried to grapple directly with what I think is the greatest theological challenge to a more accepting stance within Mormonism toward same-sex marriage. Having written the essay for my friend, I thought I would post it online. Given my rather plodding and pedantic approach to an esoteric issue, I thought that I would have at most a few dozen readers, perhaps a few hundred.
Boy was I wrong.
The original substack has now been accessed over 20,000 times. It got picked up by RealClearReligion.com and garnered a half-page spread from the Salt Lake Tribune. I was surprised. At the time, both my wife and daughter went into medical crisis, involving extended hospitalizations on opposite sides of Virginia with me shuttling back and forth in-between. I noticed with a bit of surprise and trepidation the response, but frankly I was concerned about other things at the time. The essay spawned a few responses, some critical and some not, and I haven’t had the energy or interest in responding to them.
A few months ago, however, I published an article in the Journal of Mormon History laying out my research into the history of modern marriage sealing rules in Latter-day Saint temples. Given that my approach in the “A Welding Link of Some Kind” essay was to treat the practice of temple sealings as fundamental rather than our current theology of temple sealings, I have been asked about the relationship between my research of temple sealing rules and the essay on same-sex marriage. I’ve wanted to write up my response to this question for some time, and with the end of the semester, I finally have the time to do so.
First, the origin of my interest in temple sealing rules has nothing to do with the theology of same-sex unions. For some years, I have been working on and off on a book manuscript on legal thought and the Latter-day Saint tradition. (I’m hoping to have the book off to a publisher next spring.) It occurred to me that in the post-1890 period Latter-day Saints have developed what amounts to a religious law of marriage in the form of temple sealing rules. I realized that no one had ever systematically studied these rules as an example of religious law, so that is what I set out to do. Hence, my focus was less on theology than on rules and procedures, and I scoured church handbooks, publications, and available diaries of high church leaders to reconstruct the development of those rules. The result was my JMH article. Much of the research in this article will also be included in my book when it is published.
What became clear to me is that contemporary sealing rules of the church do not flow from a single consistent theological vision, whether that be 19th-century polygamy as critics sometimes allege or a sacralized vision of the eternal nuclear family as contemporary church leaders often teach. Rather, the current system consists of multiple strata of rules laid down in different times, in reaction to different concrete problems by leaders whose theological visions differed from one another in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. If one thinks of practice as something that is deduced from an unchanging, foundational theology then this is problematic. On the other hand, if one thinks as a religious lawyer rather than a theologian, then this is unsurprising. The contemporary law always consists of multiple strata of rules laid down over a long period of time, rules that all nevertheless claim contemporary authority.
What I did in my “Welding Link” essay was ask how same-sex sealings would look if we privileged practice over the contemporary doctrines from which we erroneously believe that the the practice is deduced. In doing this, we would try to understand what is the point of the practice and try to “preserve” as much of the practice as we can in our theory of it. This is familiar to legal theorists as the process called interpretive reconstruction. That is just a fancy way of saying, a way of understanding the law that makes sense of why we have it not in historical terms but in normative terms. At a higher level of abstraction, it is what common law judges basically do, trying to fit new cases into the fabric of the law by understanding what that fabric means while tearing it as little as possible even as it changes and adapts. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. put the point, “It is the great virtue of the common law that it decides the case first and finds the reason after.” What I take Holmes to mean by this is that legal practice precedes legal theory in authority, even when there is a feedback between theory and practice.
To lay my cards on the table, I think that it is the great virtue of the Latter-day Saint tradition that it decides the case first and finds the reason after. What I mean by this, is that I believe that the inspiration of God is at work within the church and the Restoration. When I sustain the leaders of the church as “prophet, seers, and revelators,” I am affirming that God gives them revelation not only in what they say but in what they do. Indeed, often I believe that he inspires them to do things and what they say is their own effort to make sense of the practice after the fact. When I look at worship, scripture, ministering, and church government, I don’t see something that happens down stream from revelation which “really” consists of theology. Rather, I see God’s action in the world. Theology is just our attempt to make sense of his work. The work come first.
When I look at the church’s sealing rules, I see a heterogenous set of practices and teachings that justify those practices. Some of the rules and teachings hang together neatly over a broad swath of history and experience. Some of the practices and teachings seem to be groping toward something that hasn’t quite been articulated yet. I believe that all of it comes from God, albeit mediated through human agents who are often flawed and mistaken. I take this to be good doctrine. Seen in that light, I think that same-sex marriage sealings could be fit within a theology that struggles to make sense of the totality of sealing practices rather than one that cherry picks only those bits of practice that fit neatly into a model of eternal, heterosexual, nuclear families. I don’t think that same-sex sealings are somehow “required.” I am simply trying to explore what I think is intellectually possible. In part this is precisely because I don’t think that continuing revelation is an interpretive get out jail free card. Throughout the history of the Restoration, new revelations always build out from previous revelations, asking questions left unanswered or giving new answers in place of old, but always retaining some integrity with what has come before. Thus “‘A Welding Link of Some Kind’: A Minimalist Theology of Same-sex Marriage Sealings” is an exploration of what is possible within what I take to be constrained possibilities, constrained because the Restoration and its past have authority of some kind. It is an essay in the original meaning of that term not a manifesto.
Because my approach begins with practice rather than theology and seeks to operate entirely within the horizon of Latter-day Saint discourse, I think it differs from the approach taken by my dear friend Taylor Petrey in his essay “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology.” Taylor, along with, for example, Blaire Ostler’s recent book, is offering what I take to be a queer theology of Mormonism. As I read their work, they are fundamentally interested in sex and gender. They take the current LDS position on the metaphysics of gender and sex to be mistaken in various ways, and they think that contemporary queer theory and gender theory have a better account of both concepts. They thus want to make sure that Mormonism gets its theory of gender right. From a correct account of gender and sex — one that broadly speaking emphasizes the polymorphous and fluid — they believe that a proper theology and practice of marriage will flow.
My essay is not an effort at queer theology. I don’t have any theology of gender to offer. If anything, my instinct is to be theologically agnostic on the precise metaphysics of gender. I am persuaded by certain lines attack on gender essentialism. I am not convinced by all of the arguments of queer theory and gender studies. Mostly, however, I think that those debates are just beside the point to my project. Rather than arguing about correct first principles with regard to gender and then deducing marriage and sealing ideas from those first principles, I start with the messy reality of sealing practices over the course of the Restoration. I think that those practices — the keys of the priesthood and their exercise to use LDS language — is fundamental, not our theory of gender. My essay is thus fundamentally about the theology of sealings rather than the theology of gender.
Other Readings
A while back, I wrote a substack offering my seat of the pants theory of how technology and the current business model for the media drives people crazy, especially those that are politically motivated and “well informed.” I also offered some rules of thumb for consuming the news: don’t rely on TV, read news for which you must pay, prioritize the financial press over other sources. My substack was sufficiently irritating, that it prompted two real experts on the media -- my friend Ben Peters, a professor of communications at the University of Tulsa, and Seth Lewis, a professor in the journalism school at the University of Oregon — to pen their own diagnosis and suggestions. Their article appears at Wayfare and is definitely worth reading. If you are interested in Mormonism or religious faith and the modern world, you should get a subscription to Wayfare.
Until next time,
Nate Oman