Footnotes
In the antebellum United States, many Americans believed that creeds, or statements of official denominational belief, constricted rather than illuminated interpretation of the Bible. JS employed anticreedal rhetoric in an 1835 letter to Latter-day Saint elders, arguing that creeds impeded true understanding of scripture. Around the time that JS prepared the answers featured here, he described in his history the confusion he experienced as a teenager because “the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passage of Scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.” JS recalled that after praying for guidance, he received a visitation from God the Father and Jesus Christ in 1820, during which Christ stated that the creeds of contemporary churches “were an abomination in his sight.” (Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 81, 169, 215; Letter to the Elders of the Church, 30 Nov.–1 Dec. 1835; JS History, vol. A-1, 2–3; see also Welch, “All Their Creeds Were an Abomination,” 228–249.)
Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Welch, John W. “‘All Their Creeds Were an Abomination’: A Brief Look at Creeds as Part of the Apostasy.” In Prelude to the Restoration: From Apostasy to the Restored Church: The 33rd Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium, 228–249. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004.
In November 1831, JS dictated a revelation declaring that “this Church . . . [is] the only true & living Church upon the face of the whole Earth with which I the Lord am well pleased.” Baptism by the proper authority was required for membership in the church. The Book of Mormon also used the phrase “repent and work righteousness” to refer to those who entered into the “high priesthood.” (Revelation, 1 Nov. 1831–B [D&C 1:30]; Book of Mormon, 1830 ed., 259 [Alma 13:10].)