Heavenly Mother
Latter-day Saint theology teaches that we are the literal spirit children of Heavenly Parents — a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. This truth, revealed through prophets and confirmed in scripture, shapes how members understand their divine identity and eternal destiny.
The Doctrine
The existence of a Heavenly Mother follows logically from what we know about Heavenly Father and the nature of exaltation. If God is literally our Father — if we are, as Paul taught, “the offspring of God” (Acts 17:29) — then the family relationship is real, not metaphorical. Mortal families have both fathers and mothers. The eternal family of God is no different. Early Latter-day Saint women recalled that the Prophet Joseph Smith taught it to them in private, and prophets and apostles have affirmed it ever since.
The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles declared in their November 1909 statement The Origin of Man (read it): “All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” This is not peripheral theology. It is a foundational declaration about the nature of human beings and their relationship to God.
The Hymn That Introduced the Doctrine Publicly
In October 1845, Eliza R. Snow wrote a poem titled “My Father in Heaven” (printed in the Times and Seasons that November) — today sung as the beloved hymn “O My Father.” Its closing verses made an extraordinary declaration:
Eliza R. Snow — “O My Father,” Hymns no. 292, verses 3–4
“In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there. When I leave this frail existence, when I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you in your royal courts on high?”
Eliza Snow was one of the most gifted and influential women in early Church history. She served as president of the Relief Society under Brigham Young and was a prolific poet and hymn writer. Where did she learn it? NOT from any written revelation, for the recorded writings and sermons of Joseph Smith do not mention a Mother in Heaven, and the Church says so plainly: “While there is no record of a formal revelation to Joseph Smith on this doctrine, some early Latter-day Saint women recalled that he personally taught them about a Mother in Heaven” (Gospel Topics essay, “Mother in Heaven”). The best-known recollection is Zina D. H. Young’s. When her mother died in 1839 she asked the Prophet whether she would know her mother again, and he told her she would also “meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven… How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?” (Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, 1911, 15–16). The account is secondhand and was written down late. It also matches everything the Church has taught since.
President Wilford Woodruff, in general conference on October 8, 1893, said it outright: “That hymn is a revelation, though it was given unto us by a woman—Sister Snow. There are a great many sisters who have the spirit of revelation. There is no reason why they should not be inspired as well as men” (Millennial Star 56:229, April 9, 1894). The doctrine came to the Church through a daughter of God, and a prophet received it as REVELATION.
Scriptural Foundation
The first chapter of Genesis establishes that human beings bear the image of God — not as a vague spiritual metaphor, but as a literal description:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Latter-day Saints interpret this passage straightforwardly: the image of God encompasses both male and female. The text says “our image” — plural. Both man and woman are created in God’s image. If men are created in the image of a Heavenly Father, women are created in the image of a Heavenly Mother. The Apostle Paul reinforced the filial relationship: “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” (Hebrews 12:9). We have a Father of spirits — and where there is a father, there is also a mother.
D&C 76 describes the highest degree of celestial glory as the inheritance of those who are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17) — a glory that includes eternal family relationships. The doctrine of eternal marriage (D&C 132) teaches that the highest exaltation is inseparably linked to the family unit. If the Father is exalted and possesses all that He has in the context of eternal family, it follows that He is not alone.
Teachings of Modern Prophets
The doctrine has been taught clearly across multiple administrations:
President Spencer W. Kimball — General Conference, April 1978
“When we sing that doctrinal hymn and anthem of affection, ‘O My Father,’ we get a sense of the ultimate in maternal modesty, of the restrained, queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here, do we suppose her influence on us as individuals to be less if we live so as to return there?”
Elder Harold B. Lee — Relief Society Magazine, February 1964
“Sometimes we think the whole job is up to us, forgetful that there are loved ones beyond our sight who are thinking about us and our children. We forget that we have a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother who are even more concerned, probably, than our earthly father and mother, and that influences from beyond are constantly working to try to help us when we do all we can.”
Elder M. Russell Ballard — General Conference, April 2017
“I testify there is no greater goal in mortality than to live eternally with our Heavenly Parents and our beloved Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is more than just our goal—it is also Their goal. They have a perfect love for us, more powerful than we can even begin to comprehend.”
What We Know and Don’t Know
The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is established, but detailed revelation about Her is limited. We know that She exists, that we are Her spirit children, and that She is exalted and glorious alongside Heavenly Father. We do not have extensive revealed detail about Her specific attributes, nature, or role beyond these foundational truths.
Latter-day Saints do not pray to Heavenly Mother. This is not because She is unknown or unimportant, but because the pattern established by Jesus Christ is to pray to the Father in the name of the Son (Matthew 6:9; John 16:23). The resurrected Christ gave it as a COMMAND: “ye must always pray unto the Father in my name” (3 Nephi 18:19). President Gordon B. Hinckley, addressing the question directly in 1991, said: “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me.” And in the SAME talk: “The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her” (“Daughters of God”). Elder Dale G. Renlund said the same in April 2022 — “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother comes by revelation” — and that we “direct our worship to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ and do not pray to Heavenly Mother” (“Your Divine Nature and Eternal Destiny”).
The relative silence on specifics is itself instructive. Latter-day Saints do not speculate beyond what has been revealed. The knowledge that we have Heavenly Parents is profound enough to shape the entire Latter-day Saint understanding of human identity and eternal potential — it does not need elaboration to do its work. Why have the prophets guarded this line so carefully, and what was happening each time they restated it? That history has its own page: A Daughter’s Question — Heavenly Mother and the Prophets.
On How Spirit Children Are Created: An Objection That Answers Itself
Some critics raise an objection about the manner in which spirit children are created — implying that the existence of Heavenly Parents entails something troubling about divine sexuality. This objection has a fatal flaw: it requires knowledge that does not exist.
The method, means, and manner by which spirit children come into being has never been revealed. Not in scripture. Not in any prophet’s discourse. Not in any General Conference address. Not in any official Church statement in the entire history of the Restoration. God has simply not told us. The mechanism is completely and entirely unknown.
This is important because the objection works like this: the critic first invents an assumption — that the creation of spirit children must operate in a manner analogous to mortal, physical reproduction — and then objects to the assumption they just invented. But Latter-day Saints have never taught that assumption. It does not appear in any canonized scripture or authoritative teaching. The critic is objecting to their own imagination, not to LDS doctrine.
Celestial realities operate by laws and processes that utterly transcend mortal experience. To insist that the eternal creative power of exalted, glorified beings must conform to the biological mechanics of fallen, mortal bodies is a category error of the first order — like demanding that the process by which God spoke light into existence must resemble the way a candle is lit. The scale and nature are incommensurable.
Consider a parallel: we know that God “created” the heavens and the earth, but the precise mechanism of that creation has never been fully revealed. The fact that we do not know how it was done has never been treated as a reason to doubt that it was done. The same principle applies here. We know we have Heavenly Parents. We do not know how our spirit creation occurred. Those are two separate questions, and only the first one has an answer.
The honest, doctrinally grounded position is this: We are the spirit children of Heavenly Parents. How that occurred is not revealed, and therefore we do not speculate about it. An objection aimed at a speculation that Latter-day Saints themselves do not make is not an objection to anything Latter-day Saints believe. It is a manufactured controversy — a problem built from assumptions, aimed at a doctrine that never made those assumptions in the first place.
Why This Doctrine Matters
The doctrine of Heavenly Parents transforms how Latter-day Saints understand themselves. Every person who has ever lived is not a created being in the theological sense that most Christians use — something fashioned from nothing by an infinite and distant creator. Every person is a literal child of God, organized by Heavenly Parents as a spirit before coming to this earth.
This gives every human life an irreducible worth and dignity. It explains why the Plan of Salvation is so profoundly personal — Is God rescuing His creations? He is bringing His children home. It explains the meaning of “endless lives” and “eternal increase” taught in D&C 132 — the pattern of Heavenly Parents is the pattern offered to the faithful.
In the words of Lorenzo Snow’s celebrated couplet: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” That trajectory is not a solo journey. It is the journey of a family — begun with Heavenly Parents and offered to all who will receive it.