Across the standard works
The Family: A Proclamation to the World
What it says, where it comes from, and the doctrine underneath it
Genesis 1:26–28; Genesis 2:24; Moses 3:24; D&C 131:1–4; D&C 132:1940 min4 sections
Nine paragraphs read aloud in September 1995, now among the most quoted Latter-day Saint documents of the last century. This lesson reads it as a text — its claims, its scriptural roots, its status, and the places where applying it well requires more care than quoting it does.
- Author
- The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
- Date
- Read publicly by President Gordon B. Hinckley on 23 September 1995
- Place
- The General Relief Society Meeting, Salt Lake City
- Audience
- 'The World' — the title is deliberate; it is addressed outward, not only to members
- Genre
- Proclamation
By the end you should be able to
- State the document's central claims in your own words.
- Trace each claim back to the scripture it rests on.
- Say accurately what status the Proclamation has, and what that means.
- Read the parts about parental roles as the document itself qualifies them.
The occasion and the status
What kind of document this is, stated before what it says.
President Gordon B. Hinckley read the Proclamation on 23 September 1995 at the General Relief Society Meeting. It carries the signatures of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which is the form the Church uses for its most deliberate collective statements — the same form as the 1916 doctrinal exposition on the Father and the Son and the 1909 statement on the origin of man.
The context matters too. 1995 was the year the Church was first facing sustained legal questions about the definition of marriage, and the document was cited in that context almost immediately. It was written to be quoted publicly. That is not a criticism; it is a fact about genre that shapes how the sentences are built.
The claims, and where each one comes from
Almost every line has a scriptural anchor, and finding it changes how the line reads.
| The claim | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God | Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4–6; D&C 49:15–17 — 'marriage is ordained of God unto man' |
| The family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children | D&C 131:1–4; D&C 132:19; Malachi 4:5–6 — the sealing power exists to bind families, and Elijah restored it for that |
| All human beings are created in the image of God, with a divine nature and destiny | Genesis 1:26–27; Acts 17:28–29; Romans 8:16–17; D&C 76:24 |
| Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal and eternal identity and purpose | Genesis 1:27; Abraham 3:22–23; D&C 132:19–20 — a claim that the premortal self was already gendered, which no other Christian tradition makes in this form |
| The commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force | Genesis 1:28; Moses 2:28; D&C 49:16–17 |
| The sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between a man and a woman, lawfully wedded | Alma 39:5; Exodus 20:14; 1 Corinthians 6:18; D&C 42:22–24 |
| Parents have a solemn responsibility to rear their children in love and righteousness | D&C 68:25–28; Mosiah 4:14–15; Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4 |
| Fathers preside, provide and protect; mothers nurture; they are equal partners | 1 Corinthians 11:11; Genesis 2:18; D&C 83:2, 4; Mosiah 4:14 |
Two Hebrew terms behind the anthropology
Principle
The Proclamation's argument runs from doctrine to practice, not the reverse: because a person's identity is eternal and gendered, and because the sealing power exists, the family is a unit of eternity rather than of mortality.
Read backwards — as a list of behavioural requirements with doctrine attached to justify them — the document is much less interesting and much easier to misuse. Read forwards, the practical counsel is a consequence of a claim about what people are.
"Equal partners"
The paragraph most often quoted in half.
The paragraph on parental roles is the one that gets excerpted most and read whole least. It assigns fathers presiding, providing and protecting, and mothers the nurture of children — and then, in the same paragraph, says: 'In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.' It also states that disability, death or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.
Usually quoted
Fathers preside, provide, protect.
Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of children.
Also in the same paragraph
Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.
Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.
Both are told to rear children in love and righteousness, together.
Reading it with people in the room
A document about families is read by people whose families do not look like the picture.
A study tool can state doctrine accurately and still be used badly, and this is the document where that risk is highest. It is read by the widowed, the divorced, the single at forty, the childless after a decade of trying, those raising children alone, those whose children have left, and those whose experience of gender or attraction does not fit the sentence they have just heard quoted at them. Any reading that does not have those people in view is not a faithful reading; it is a partial one.
- The Proclamation describes a pattern and an eventual promise, not a report on anyone's current circumstances. D&C 137:7–9 and the doctrine of judgment according to the desire of the heart both apply.
- President Russell M. Nelson and others have repeatedly taught that no blessing will be withheld from any faithful person because of circumstances outside their control. That teaching is not a footnote to the Proclamation; it is a condition of reading it rightly.
- The document says the family is central to the Creator's plan. It does not say a person's worth is measured by their family's shape — and Mosiah 4:16–19 and D&C 18:10 both cut hard against that reading.
- Where a scriptural principle and a person's actual situation appear to collide, the counsel of D&C 121:41–42 governs how the conversation is to be had: persuasion, gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, and kindness.
“The worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”
The final paragraph of the Proclamation is a call to citizens and officers of government to promote measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family. It is an outward-facing document with an outward-facing ending, which is worth remembering when it is used inward-facing — as a measure of the people already in the pew.
Where the doctrine is stated in scripture
- D&C 131:1–4The three heavens in the celestial glory, and the order of the priesthood required for the highest — recorded from Joseph Smith's teaching in 1843.
- D&C 132:19The promise attached to a marriage sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise: 'it shall be of full force when they are out of the world.'
- 1 Corinthians 11:11'Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.' A Doctrinal Mastery passage, and the shortest statement of the doctrine in the canon.
- Moses 3:24'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh' — the Genesis line as the JST gives it.
- Malachi 4:5–6The reason the sealing power was restored at all: hearts turned between generations, lest the earth be smitten with a curse.
To consider
- 01Which claim in the Proclamation is doing the most work — that is, which one, if removed, would collapse the others?
- 02The paragraph on roles contains 'equal partners' and 'individual adaptation.' Why are those the parts least often quoted?
- 03The document is addressed to the world. How does reading it as a public statement change how it should be used privately?
What this lesson holds
The family is presented as central to the plan of salvation because identity is eternal and the sealing power exists — the practice follows from the doctrine.
Every human being is created in the image of God, and the Hebrew of Genesis 1:27 supports taking that more literally than most traditions do.
Fathers and mothers are named equal partners in the same paragraph that assigns them roles, and D&C 121 rules out every coercive reading of 'preside.'
The document describes a pattern and a promise, not a measure of the worth of anyone whose present circumstances differ from it.
Check your reading
5 questions01When and where was the Proclamation first read?
02What is the Proclamation's canonical status?
03What does the Hebrew ʿēzer kənegdô in Genesis 2:18 actually describe?
04What else does the paragraph on parental roles contain, besides the roles?
05How does D&C 121 constrain what 'preside' can mean in a home?
Where to go next
Sources
- "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" — The text itself
- Dallin H. Oaks, "The Plan and the Proclamation" — General conference, October 2017 — on the document's status and its relation to the plan of salvation
- Gospel Topics, "Family"
- D&C 131; D&C 132:19; 1 Corinthians 11:11 — The scriptural foundation.