Evolution — The LDS Position
The Church has no official position on biological evolution — only on spiritual truths
What the Church Has and Has Not Said
Many people assume that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strong official position against evolutionary biology. This assumption is wrong. The Church has made no official declaration for or against the theory of biological evolution. It does not require members to reject evolutionary science as a condition of membership, temple attendance, or any ordinance.
What the Church does have official positions on are the spiritual truths that intersect with the question of human origins: that human beings are the spirit children of God, that Adam and Eve were literal, historical persons and the first of the human family, and that the Fall was a real event with real spiritual consequences. On the mechanism by which God created physical life on earth, the Church has remained deliberately silent.
This is a significant distinction. The spiritual facts are settled. The biological question is not something the Church has claimed authority to settle.
What Individual Leaders Have Taught
Individual General Authorities have expressed personal views on evolution across the Church's history, and those views have differed significantly. Elder James E. Talmage and Elder B.H. Roberts, both respected scholars, were willing to accept the possibility of an old earth and the compatibility of evolutionary processes with LDS theology. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Bruce R. McConkie held strong anti-evolution views and expressed them forcefully.
Neither position has ever been adopted as official Church doctrine. The First Presidency has declined to settle the question at a doctrinal level. When individual leaders have expressed strong personal views, subsequent First Presidencies have consistently declined to canonize those views as binding doctrine.
Members are free to hold either position, or to remain genuinely uncertain, without doctrinal penalty. This is not a doctrinal free-for-all — it is a recognition that the question of biological mechanism is not what the scriptures were written to answer.
The First Presidency Statement of 1909
The most significant official statement on this question is the First Presidency message of 1909, titled “The Origin of Man.” Issued under President Joseph F. Smith, it affirms:
First Presidency Statement, 1909
“All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity… Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes.”
The statement affirms the divine origin of humanity in the most emphatic terms. What it does not do is specify the biological mechanism by which God brought human physical bodies into existence. This is the line that has remained consistent across all official Church statements on the subject — the spiritual truth is declared; the biological question is left open.
A supplementary statement from 1910 added: “Whether the mortal bodies of man evolved in natural processes to present perfection, through the direction and power of God; whether the first parents of our generations, Adam and Eve, were transplanted from another sphere with immortal tabernacles, which became corrupted through sin… are questions not fully answered in the revealed word of God.”
The Spiritual Truths That Are Not Negotiable
Whatever one believes about the biological history of human bodies, LDS doctrine requires holding to certain spiritual truths that do not depend on any particular position on evolution:
Non-Negotiable Spiritual Truths
- Divine parentage — Human beings are the literal spirit children of God; this is not metaphorical
- Adam and Eve — Real, literal persons; the first of the human family; their Fall was a real event
- The Fall — Brought mortality and the need for redemption; not a myth or allegory
- The Atonement — Required because of the Fall; operates on real human beings with real spiritual needs
- Moral accountability — Human beings are moral agents, not merely complex animals
These truths are settled. The biological question of how physical bodies developed over time does not touch them, because the spiritual truths concern the soul — the spirit element that God placed in a physical body — not the evolutionary history of that body's physical form.
What Is Open for Discussion
Because the Church has not defined a position on the biological question, Latter-day Saints are free to explore a range of views:
Some hold that evolutionary biology accurately describes the physical history of life on earth, and that God worked through natural processes. Others hold that God created directly and that the evolutionary account is incomplete or incorrect. Others remain genuinely uncertain and do not feel obligated to resolve the question. All three positions are held by faithful, temple-worthy Latter-day Saints.
The Church does not compel a choice. It compels faithfulness to the spiritual truths that are actually at stake — and biological mechanism is not among them.
Why LDS Doctrine Accommodates This Ambiguity
Protestant fundamentalism in the twentieth century made evolution a test of orthodoxy precisely because it was working from a doctrine of biblical inerrancy that required Genesis to be read literally and scientifically. The LDS tradition does not have the same commitment to biblical inerrancy. The eighth Article of Faith acknowledges that the Bible is the word of God “as far as it is translated correctly” — which introduces interpretive flexibility from the start.
Furthermore, LDS scripture introduces additional creation accounts in Moses and Abraham that differ from Genesis in ways that have already required LDS readers to think carefully about what the creation accounts are and are not claiming. This existing flexibility in LDS scriptural interpretation creates natural space for the biological question to remain open.
The Church is not confused about this. It is wisely refusing to bind the consciences of its members on a scientific question it has not received revelation to answer.
Science and Scripture Are Not Enemies
The LDS tradition has always held that all truth is part of the gospel. Joseph Smith taught that truth, wherever it is found — in science, in philosophy, in other religious traditions — belongs to the Latter-day Saints. There is no domain of human knowledge that stands in fundamental opposition to the gospel, because all truth ultimately comes from God.
Science investigates how the physical world works. Scripture reveals why we exist, who God is, what the purpose of mortality is, and how we return to God. These are different questions, and the tools appropriate to answering one are not necessarily appropriate to answering the other.
A Latter-day Saint who studies evolutionary biology is not fighting the gospel. A Latter-day Saint who finds evolutionary biology unconvincing is not opposing science. Both are trying to be faithful to truth as they understand it. The Church respects both positions because neither one touches the spiritual truths that actually constitute the gospel.