A Developing Church

An Ontogenetic Perspective on Latter-day Saint History

“Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we try to pervert this order we shall produce a forced fruit that will have neither ripeness nor flavor and that will soon spoil. . . . I would like no more to require a young child be five feet tall than that he have judgment at the age of ten.” —Jean-Jacques Rousseau¹

David F. Bjorklund is an evolutionary developmental psychologist who has devoted much of his research to the study of ontogeny, or early human development. A large portion of his work has been focused on the delineation between different types of adaptations that aid human development during childhood.² Two kinds of adaptation are of particular interest to him and his colleagues: the first he describes as deferred adaptation, which are those that “serve to prepare infants and children for life as an adult or for acquisition of important skills that will be useful throughout life.”³ Examples of this in early human childhood include crawling, walking, and play. They appear during childhood to fulfill a need at that moment in development and stay with the organism through the rest of their life. That seems to be the most common way to think about adaptations.

Ontogenetic adaptations are less frequently addressed. As Bjorklund describes them, “they are designed by evolution to adapt the child to its current environment but not necessarily to a future one.”⁴ These adaptations serve a specific purpose at one point in life, then disappear once that purpose is fulfilled. Examples of this kind of adaptation in humans include the placenta and umbilical cord during prenatal development, rooting and grasping reflexes during the first year of life, and mental egocentrism (the inability to perceive others as having their own perspectives) during the toddler and early childhood phases. Some researchers refer to them as disposable adaptations or adaptive immaturities.³ They aren’t needed throughout an organism’s life. If they never disappeared, they might even hinder healthy development. But if they were not present during the appropriate period, the organism’s survival would be impossible.

True and Living

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am accustomed to hearing that I belong to a “true and living church.” I interpret this to mean that it is a divine vehicle for human growth and consecration, living and growing in real time and space. Since it accomplishes this through real human bodies and collectives, it seems appropriate that it would unfold as said human bodies do. To belong to a living church is to belong to a developing church. Many leaders in the Church have echoed a similar sentiment in the form of recent shifts from talking about the Restoration as an event to talking about it as an ongoing process.⁵ In other words, we are witnessing the ongoing development of Christ’s Church. Many readers, especially parents, will know that it is common to track milestones and adaptations as young children develop; and, while we may not always recognize it, the arrival of one milestone often heralds the passing of a previous one. That is, reaching the milestone of walking virtually always signals the end of the previous phase of crawling, and so on. I invite you now to consider which episodes in Church history might likewise have been necessary and for the good—but also to recognize that some of those episodes may have resulted in lasting changes, while some led to changes that were temporary.

Many of these milestones are familiar and comfortable to us because they blessed us in the past and continue to bless us still. We see the benefit of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of priesthood keys, and the organization of the Relief Society because they continue to form a large part of our modern-day practice. These are the deferred adaptations of our developing church. But what of the time when the Church lived under the formal ecclesiastical implementation of the law of consecration? Or the longstanding tolerance toward and use of the nickname “Mormon”? Were these adaptations or missteps? Both of these practices were considered by many to be important aspects of our cultural and religious practice. How is it possible that the Lord’s restored Church has abandoned teachings and practices that were at one point considered to be meaningful aspects of what it meant to be members of that church?

If we are looking at Church history through an ontogenetic lens, it opens up the possibility that some teachings and practices may have been key only to a certain time in the Church’s development. Maybe the ongoing Restoration will include vital manifestations of maturity alongside sporadic occurrences of adaptive immaturity. In other words, it will develop by way of both deferred and ontogenetic adaptations. This idea might feel uncomfortable because we are accustomed to thinking of immaturity as a negative thing—can a true church be incomplete? I would like to suggest the answer is “yes.” Just as certain childhood behaviors can be adaptive during certain phases in a child’s life and then fall out of use when those same behaviors are not needed, I assert that we need to make room for the possibility that certain events and episodes in Church history were necessary for the stage the Church was in but were not meant to be permanent additions to it. By adopting this paradigm, I believe Latter-day Saints can avoid two pitfalls that are common when examining our past. 

Despising the Past

Imagine how absurd someone would sound if they expressed contempt toward a fetus for obtaining nutrients via the umbilical cord during the early months of development. Then imagine this person said, “When I have children, they will chew and swallow food from the moment they form a mouth so that they have that skill right out of the gate.” No one in their right mind would think that was a good idea! We all acknowledge that the skill of chewing and swallowing solid food is an important skill for survival, but we are also fairly understanding of the fact that certain mechanisms are in place to help children survive until that skill is developed. Nevertheless, certain periods of Church history tend to be examined without similar acknowledgments.

For example, let us consider a time during the early twentieth century that historian Leonard Arrington referred to as a “period of anti-intellectualism”⁶ in the Church. This period coincided with many Christian denominations’ rejection of scientific advancements in biology, geology, and genetics on the grounds that they were commonly being framed as alternative explanations to the biblical creation accounts (or at least long-held interpretations of those accounts). Along with many other Christian churches, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became suspicious, in the words of Joseph Fielding Smith, of “dangers lurking in modern thought.”⁷ Their response was to draw a line between secular and spiritual teaching, with an emphasis on the superiority of the words of Church leaders over the words of secular experts. This emphasis gave rise to a belief in many members that Church leaders ought to have the final word on all subjects, secular or spiritual. As a result, there was widespread suspicion and even rejection of the perspectives of many secular subject experts that did not align with the opinions of apostles or prophets, including experts who belonged to the Church. Perhaps no work is more emblematic of this period than Bruce R. McConkie’s seminal work Mormon Doctrine, an attempt at making an encyclopedic commentary on all topics related to the gospel, which also included teachings on seemingly secular subjects, such as psychiatry and Darwinian evolution.

Although you find remnants of this period in our church language, Church leaders now largely encourage members to rely on those with appropriate secular expertise. In 2016, President M. Russell Ballard encouraged CES employees to “ask those with appropriate academic training, experience, and expertise for help” when students ask difficult gospel questions, even saying that he himself sought help from both his fellow apostles and “others with expertise in Church history and doctrine.”⁸ President Russell M. Nelson even more recently proclaimed the Church “embraces all truth that God conveys to His children, whether learned in a scientific laboratory or received by direct revelation from Him.”⁹ Quotes like these are occurring alongside efforts from various Church-supported organizations to take scholarly approaches to studying Church history and engaging in conversation with the world of science rather than wholly rejecting it. This appears to me to be a concerted effort on the part of the leadership to be more accommodating of secular expertise.

So how are we to view the dissonance caused by this shift in approaches to learning? Many point to this period of Church history as a step backward for the Church and as evidence for prophets’ and apostles’ lack of divine guidance. They thus see the Church’s recent shift as a course correction influenced not by revelation but by increasing secular pressure. That is one way to interpret this shift, and certainly a perspective I understand. However, I am intrigued by the perspective of Thomas Wirthlin McConkie, the great-nephew of Elder Bruce R. McConkie. Speaking of his great-uncle’s book, which I believe to be emblematic of this era in the Church, he said, “If we are more generous about our treatment of [Elder McConkie] and Mormon Doctrine, we might . . . say something like, ‘That book had to happen in that moment in Mormon history to help us solidify a more basic identity, . . . and once we had that foundation to work from, we could elaborate and we could become more nuanced.’”¹⁰ To me, that is a striking perspective. This treatment of Mormon Doctrine is not just an olive branch to give grace to Elder McConkie, but an assertion that McConkie’s voice and others like his had far-reaching effects on the Church’s identity. In other words, what many view as a mistake and still others defend as a deferred adaptation is framed here as an ontogenetic adaptation, with a time-limited role to play.

This era in Church history was certainly riddled with human error and difficult moments, but so is human development. For example, the brains of teenagers are hardwired to be hyper focused on social information from their peers. While this helps them assimilate to their new social responsibilities and benefits their identity development and metacognitive abilities, it also contributes to insecurities about what others are thinking about them. I don’t find it far-fetched to believe that it may have been necessary for our church to undergo a period of anti-intellectualism in order to not further damage an already frayed relationship with mainstream protestant Christianity while still asserting the uniqueness of the restored gospel. I’m not suggesting this is the definitive explanation of why such a temporary adaptation may have been needed, but I am simply suggesting that some such explanation might be appropriate and true. I believe this perspective helps us forgive any imperfections and see our history in a kinder, more complete way.

Clinging to the Past

Let’s now consider the ontogenetic adaptation colloquially known as the “terrible twos.” Many parents are familiar with the phase most toddlers go through involving hair-trigger tantrums and an affinity for the word “no!” in response to adults’ suggestions. As uncomfortable as this phase is for parents, psychologists mostly agree that this phase helps children develop early forms of autonomy and independence. Imagine that someone understood the benefits of this stage in childhood while also feeling that tantrums and overreactions to minor disagreements would be beneficial for us throughout the entire lifespan. Like the anti-umbilical cord individual discussed earlier, this person also misunderstands the function of this vital phase, but in the opposite direction, not considering how our social and emotional development would be restricted if we never learned to exercise independence and autonomy in less extreme ways. Similarly, in assuming that the only adaptations that exist in our church are deferred adaptations, we come to conceptualize any letting go of past practices as a falling away from the truth. In sum, we run the danger of clinging to practices or teachings that no longer serve us.

I’d like to specifically highlight a cultural phenomenon that historian Patrick Mason refers to as the “fortress church.”¹¹ From Mason’s perspective, the fortress church is a cultural mentality that came about as a response to very real persecution in the nineteenth century. During a time when it seemed the whole world was bent on attacking the Church, its members developed a cautious attitude toward associating with and learning from the world. They looked upon the outside world and its ideas with fear, caution, and maybe a degree of superiority. I think the period of anti-intellectualism discussed earlier was likely a product of this paradigm, which viewed the world’s intellectuals as attackers of the faith. We still see evidence of this cultural attitude today, with talk about members being in “a battle for righteousness,” or descriptions of certain secular ideas as being “tactics of the adversary.” We as a church still speak as though we are under attack because we inherited the language and mindset of a church that was literally under constant attack. No one claims that there aren’t real attackers of our faith or people with deceptive intentions in modern days. But the fortress mentality tends to paint all outside philosophies and teachings as cunning, deceptive attackers. This mentality has also led to rather extreme applications of our faith, like the lifestyle lived by the Westover family as depicted in Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated.

Despite this, Mason’s treatment of the phenomenon gives grace to its progenitors and their situation while still acknowledging its counterproductivity in modern day. His description seems to point to the fortress church as an ontogenetic adaptation. He explains, “In our people’s history, there have been moments when the most expedient thing to do was to retreat into the fortress and raise the drawbridge. Having been hounded by mobs, our pioneer forebears thought they could outrun the world. . . . In our twenty-first century information age, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. . . . Despite its temporary utility, defensive withdrawal cannot be our long-term mode of operation.” The fortress church mentality had its benefits during a time when the Church was in earlier stages of development, but just as adaptive immaturity ceases to be adaptive when it continues too far, we’re seeing the harm of prolonged time spent in the fortress. In Mason’s words, “Having flourished in our fortress, the Restoration’s third century is our time to range widely in the world, to both learn from and contribute to it. . . . It’s time to lower the drawbridge, open the shutters, and let the air in. It’s time to take the precious gifts that God has entrusted us with, and that we have been carefully stewarding for two centuries, and use them to bless the world.”

It has not been my intention to point out every ontogenetic adaptation in the Church’s development nor to claim that every change in Church history has benefited us in some way. The notion of ontogenetic adaptation does not rule out the possibility that mistakes happen, as leaders have acknowledged. Rather, I offer a new model for understanding changes in the Church. Thinking in terms of ontogenetic adaptation, we can understand two false ideas that arise when we don’t understand the reality of ontogenetic changes: the idea that the abandonment of certain teachings and practices is evidence that the Church is not divinely led, and the idea that the abandonment of certain teachings and practices is not compatible with staying “true to the faith.” By acknowledging our church’s ontogenetic adaptations alongside its deferred adaptations, we adopt a broader view of our past and present and a better understanding of what it means to belong to a “living church.” This insight takes us beyond the work of forgiving and giving grace to our past (which is certainly necessary) to a holistic view of understanding how our immaturities helped us to arrive at the place where we are now. Additionally, we can look with both the patience to endure our current immaturities and the courage to move on to higher and holier stages.

Suddenly, what once presented itself as an imperfection can be seen for its importance and necessity to our people. What we once saw as a shameful moment manifests itself to us as a moment of growth. Outside perspectives that we once perceived as devilish snares can be recognized as the Savior’s outstretched hand, waiting to lead us to a better place. We can more fully engage in the work of appreciating Zion’s immaturities while also moving forward to a more developed body of Christ.

Travis Hicks is a doctoral student of developmental psychology.

Art by Leonardo da Vinci.

1. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On Education.

2. See David F. Bjorklund and Bruce J. Ellis, “Children, Childhood, and Development in Evolutionary Perspective,” and David F. Bjorklund, “Ontogenetic Adaptations.”

3. Carlos Hernandez Blasi, “Ontogenetic Versus Deferred Adaptations.”

4. David F. Bjorklund, “The Role of Immaturity in Human Development.”

5. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Are You Sleeping Through the Restoration?,” and “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

6. Quoted in Terryl Givens, Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism, 140.

7. Quoted in James B. Allen, “The Story of The Way, The Truth, The Life,” BYU Studies 33:4.

8. M. Russell Ballard, “The Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers in the 21st Century.”

9. Russell M. Nelson, “What Is True?,” Liahona, November 2022.

10. Faith Matters Podcast Episode 16, “Waking Up, Growing Up: A Conversation with Thomas McConkie Part 2.” See also Thomas Wirthlin McConkie, Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis.

11.  See Patrick Q. Mason, Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st-Century World.