Heavenly Mother — Questions About Who She Is

Her role, the question of plural marriage, where the doctrine came from, and how She is honored. Each answer quotes what has been revealed and stops where revelation stops.

This series

Heavenly Mother — the doctrine

A Daughter’s Question — the history, and why the prophets hold the line

Questions About Who She Is — Her role, plural marriage, origins, worship and prayer

Questions from Her Daughters — silence, revelation, a woman’s place, and what we owe each other

The Rule for Every Answer

Deuteronomy 29:29

“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever.”

Every question on this page gets the same treatment. What has been revealed is stated plainly, with the source. What has not been revealed is called what it is, and left alone. That is not evasion. A daughter who wants to know her Mother deserves the truth about Her, and speculation — however loving, however confident — is not the truth about Her. It is somebody’s guess wearing Her name.

Her Role

“Some say we do not even know whether She has a role.”

The remark is sometimes made, even by people in positions of trust, and it wounds the women who hear it. Are they right to be troubled? Yes — for that remark goes beyond what is revealed, only in the other direction. What IS revealed settles the main thing. She is a parent of every spirit who has lived, exaltation is given to a man and a woman together, and President Oaks put the whole plan in two sentences: “Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them” (“Apostasy and Restoration,” 1995). A plan whose goal is to become like Them does not leave Her without a role. What is unrevealed is the detail of Her work, not whether She has one. Speculation that shrinks Her is still speculation.

“She is not in the Godhead. Does that mean She is doing nothing?”

No. The Godhead is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — the three who carry out the plan with us here, the Holy Ghost being a personage of Spirit so that He can “dwell in us” (D&C 130:22; Articles of Faith 1:1). Not being one of those three tells us how the work is administered to us on earth. It does NOT tell us She is idle. The plan is the plan of our heavenly parents, whose goal is our becoming like Them, and the Church’s own essay on exaltation says our “divine parentage includes a Heavenly Mother as well as a Heavenly Father” (“Becoming Like God”). What She does is unrevealed. That She does nothing is not taught anywhere.

“Is She only a mother? Is eternity for a woman just more childbearing?”

The revealed promise of exaltation is larger than that. Doctrine and Covenants 132 does speak of “a continuation of the seeds forever and ever,” and then goes on: “Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them” (D&C 132:19–20). They — plural, the man and the woman sealed together. ALL power. Nothing in that verse confines a woman to one task. No Church teaching describes eternity that way, and the mechanism of spirit birth has never been revealed (FAIR; see Heavenly Mother).

“Will we see Her?”

Yes. The purpose of the plan is to return to our heavenly parents, and to return to Them is to return to Her. The Proclamation calls every person “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents” (Proclamation), and a child who returns home returns to both.

One Mother, or Many?

This is the question most pages avoid. It should not be avoided, for plural marriage is a true doctrine, it is in the canon, and it has implications. But it is also a question where the Lord has said very little, and the honest answer is short.

“Is Heavenly Father a polygamist? Do I have a Heavenly Mother — or Mothers?”

The record is plain. Doctrine and Covenants 132 is scripture; it revealed eternal marriage and plural marriage in the same revelation (D&C 132). The Church teaches that “the marriage of one man to one woman is God’s standard, except at specific periods when He has declared otherwise” (Gospel Topics essay; Jacob 2:27, 30), and it ended the practice in 1890 (Official Declaration 1). In July 2025, speaking to members in Belgium, President Dallin H. Oaks said on video: “And we know that we are children of Heavenly Parents. So we know that we have a Heavenly Mother or Mothers” (Salt Lake Tribune).

Notice what he did not say. He did not say WHICH. He left the question exactly where the Church’s essay leaves every eternal relationship: “The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise Heavenly Father, who loves His children and does all things for their growth and salvation” (“Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo”). One Mother or several, you are Her child, and She is yours. Anything beyond that is not revealed.

“Is a woman’s highest hope to be one of many silent wives?”

NO such teaching exists. What exists is sealing policy. A living man whose wife has died may be sealed to another woman; a living woman sealed to a husband who has died must have that sealing cancelled before she is sealed to another man. After death the rule is even: “A deceased woman may be sealed to all men to whom she was legally married during her life,” and a deceased man to all the women he married (General Handbook 38.4.1.3; 38.4.1.8). Why the living rules differ has not been revealed.

What is revealed settles the fear. Agency is eternal; the war in heaven was fought because Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3; 2 Nephi 2:27). A plan that began by defending agency does not END by abolishing it. And exaltation is promised to the man and the woman together — “then shall THEY be gods” (D&C 132:20) — and a man with the priesthood “does not have an advantage over a woman in qualifying for exaltation” (Boyd K. Packer, “For Time and All Eternity”). A woman is not an accessory to someone else’s glory.

“Was the doctrine invented to sell polygamy — and is the silence really about hiding it?”

Both doctrines appear together because they came together: the essay on Nauvoo explains that “the same revelation that taught of plural marriage was part of a larger revelation… that marriage could last beyond death” (Gospel Topics essay). Eternal families imply eternal parents. That is the logic, and it points at Her whether marriage is single or plural. As for hiding it, the Church publishes its essays on plural marriage for anyone to read (Plural Marriage in the Church), and a member of the First Presidency said “Mother or Mothers” on camera. A Church trying to bury the question would not do either.

“What about Orson Pratt’s teachings, and the Adam-God theory?”

In 1853 Orson Pratt published, in his own paper, that God the Father “had a plurality of wives” and other speculations (The Seer, 172). In 1865 the First Presidency and the Twelve disowned the whole publication: “They are mere hypotheses, and should be perused and accepted as such, and not as doctrines of the Church” (Millennial Star, Oct. 21, 1865). The Adam-God theory, which made Eve the mother of our spirits, was denounced by President Spencer W. Kimball in 1976: “We warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the General Authorities of past generations. Such, for instance, is the Adam-God theory. We denounce that theory” (“Our Own Liahona”). The Church corrected speculation by men the same way it declines speculation by anyone.

Even Pratt, at his most speculative, drew the line where the prophets draw it now. “If we have a heavenly Mother as well as a heavenly Father, is it not right that we should worship the Mother of our spirits as well as the Father? No” (The Seer, 159).

“Mormon fundamentalist groups have a fuller theology of Her. Doesn’t that show what the Church is missing?”

It shows what happens without keys. Those groups rejected the prophet who ended plural marriage and went on revealing for themselves. A fuller theology produced outside the keys is the Hiram Page pattern again — revelations the Lord said were “not of me” (D&C 28:11). More detail is not more TRUTH.

Where the Doctrine Came From

“Did Joseph Smith teach it, or was it invented after him?”

No written revelation from Joseph Smith mentions Her, 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). The first printed references came months after his death from his closest associates — W. W. Phelps’s hymn, printed January 15, 1845, with the line “Here’s our Father in heaven, and Mother, the Queen” (Times and Seasons), and Eliza R. Snow’s poem, written that October and printed in November. The doctrine does not rest on those alone. It was declared by the First Presidency in 1909 and by the First Presidency and the Twelve in 1995 (Proclamation).

“Isn’t it only inferred by reason? ‘Truth is reason’ is not revelation.”

Reason supports it; President Hinckley said “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven” (“Daughters of God”). But the Church does not rest it on reason alone. “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother comes by revelation” (Dale G. Renlund, April 2022), and it is written into a proclamation issued by prophets, seers, and revelators. The poem gave it words. Prophets gave it standing.

“Is belief in Her optional?”

It is not a private opinion that members may take or leave. It is in the Proclamation, the 1909 First Presidency statement, the Young Women theme, and the Church’s essays, which call it “a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints” (Gospel Topics essay). A member who struggles to believe it is still a member. But the doctrine is the Church’s, and it is taught as true.

“Isn’t it just a nineteenth-century idea — Shakers, Mother Ann, ‘Father-Mother God’? And the Community of Christ does not teach it.”

Other movements of the time spoke of a divine feminine, and none of them taught what the Restoration teaches: an exalted Mother who is a literal parent of our spirits, alongside a Father with “a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” (D&C 130:22). The resemblance is in the vocabulary, not the doctrine. The Community of Christ is Trinitarian (Our Beliefs), so it does not share the doctrine of embodied heavenly parents to begin with; its silence about Her follows from a different doctrine of God, not from an older one.

“Wasn’t ‘gender is eternal’ invented for the 1995 Proclamation?”

No. The 1909 First Presidency statement taught that “all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother” (“The Origin of Man”), and in October 1993, two years before the Proclamation, Elder Boyd K. Packer taught: “Gender existed before, and did not begin at mortal birth” (“For Time and All Eternity”). The Proclamation restated it; it did not start it.

“Jesus never mentioned a Mother. Why should I believe in Her?”

Jesus came to reveal the Father — “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me” (John 17:6) — and He taught His disciples to pray to the Father. He also did not teach, in the Gospels, that intelligence “was not created or made” (D&C 93:29), or that spirits were “organized before the world was” (Abraham 3:22). Much of what Latter-day Saints know about premortal life came by later revelation. Silence in the Gospels is not denial; it is the order in which things were given.

“If intelligence was never created, why do we need a Mother at all?”

Intelligence “was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29). Abraham saw “intelligences that were organized” (Abraham 3:22). And every person is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents” (Proclamation). All three are revealed. How they relate has not been revealed, and we do not speculate. What we may not do is drop the third because we cannot yet explain it.

Who She Is Not

“Is She the Holy Ghost?”

The scriptures call the Holy Ghost “he” — “he shall teach you all things” (John 14:26) — and describe Him as “a personage of Spirit” (D&C 130:22), one member of the Godhead with the Father and the Son. The idea that She is the Holy Ghost has been proposed. It has not been revealed, and the texts point the other way.

“I see Her everywhere in scripture — the Tree of Life, Wisdom, the Asherah.”

Symbols are a real way to ponder, and at least one Latter-day Saint scholar has read Nephi’s tree alongside the ancient sacred tree and connected it to Mary, the mother of the Son. But look at how the vision itself interprets the tree. Nephi is shown the virgin and the Lamb, the angel asks what the tree means, and the answer is “the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men” (1 Nephi 11:21–22; 11:25). A symbol can deepen a truth already revealed. It cannot establish one. And where the Old Testament does record offerings to a “queen of heaven,” the prophet of the day called it provoking the Lord to anger (Jeremiah 7:18). That is a window to look through with great care.

“Isn’t this the same ‘Mother God’ the World Mission Society teaches?”

No. That is a Korean church founded in 1964 which identifies a living woman as “God the Mother” (overview). Latter-day Saints teach no such thing. Heavenly Mother is not a mortal, is not worshipped, and is not anyone’s claim to authority. Articles written against that church are often forwarded to Latter-day Saints as if they applied; they do not.

Worship and Prayer

“She is God. Should we not worship Her too?”

She is divine, exalted, and a parent of our spirits; none of that is in question. Worship is a separate question, and it has a revealed answer — the Father, in the name of the Son (D&C 18:40). Paul knew there are “gods many, and lords many,” and still wrote, “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things… and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:5–6). That is why the Church says, “Although we do not worship Her, we honor Her as a divine parent” (“Heavenly Parents”). Honor Her — the commandment to honor father and mother asks exactly that of every child (Exodus 20:12). The worship the Savior taught still runs to the Father, through Him.

“There is no precedent for praying to Her only because She was taken out of the Bible.”

It is a serious argument, and the restored scriptures answer it. The command to pray to the Father does not rest on the Bible alone, which lost “plain and precious” things (1 Nephi 13:28). It comes from the resurrected Christ in the Book of Mormon — “ye must always pray unto the Father in my name” (3 Nephi 18:19) — and again in the Doctrine and Covenants: “you shall fall down and worship the Father in my name” (D&C 18:40). Neither book passed through the hands that edited the Bible. If a lost pattern of prayer to Her had needed restoring, the Restoration was the moment to restore it, and the restored books repeat the pattern instead.

“‘O My Father’ speaks to Her. Isn’t that already a prayer?”

The hymn is addressed to the Father from its first line, and its closing verse expresses a hope: “Father, Mother, may I meet you in your royal courts on high?” (Hymns no. 292). Singing that hope is not a pattern of prayer. President Hinckley quoted this very hymn in the same talk in which he asked members not to pray to Her, and he saw no contradiction, because there is none. We sing of Her. We pray to the Father.

“I want a relationship with Her.”

So does She. Elder M. Russell Ballard: “there is no greater goal in mortality than to live eternally with our Heavenly Parents and our beloved Savior… But it is more than just our goal—it is also Their goal” (“Return and Receive”). The relationship is not denied, and it does not wait for the next life. The fullest revealed promise concerning it is to return to the presence of our heavenly parents. President Spencer W. Kimball asked the question every daughter who misses Her should hear: “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?” (April 1978). And Elder Harold B. Lee: “We forget that we have a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother who are even more concerned, probably, than our earthly father and mother” (Relief Society Magazine, February 1964). She is not absent from your life because She is absent from your prayers. How does a daughter reach Her, then? The way every blessing reaches us: “We receive guidance and direction from Heavenly Father and His Son through the Holy Ghost” (“Heavenly Parents”). Ask the Father to help you know Her. Ponder Her, honor Her, speak of Her. None of that is forbidden, and none of it is speculation.

“‘Elohim’ is plural. Doesn’t that include Her?”

The word is plural in form and is used as a title, which is why it can take a possessive and a definite article. What that does and does not prove is explained on God — a Title, Not a Name. It does not, on its own, name Her; the doctrine of Heavenly Mother rests on modern revelation, not on Hebrew grammar.

Key References

Deuteronomy 29:29 — the secret things belong to the Lord

D&C 132:19–20 — “then shall they be gods… they have all power”

Jacob 2:27, 30 — one wife, unless the Lord commands otherwise

Moses 4:3 — agency is eternal

D&C 130:22 — the Holy Ghost, a personage of Spirit

D&C 93:29; Abraham 3:22 — intelligence uncreated; spirits organized

D&C 18:40; 3 Nephi 18:19 — worship and pray to the Father in Christ’s name