It was 1995. Hong Kong had just entered its final two years as a British colony. More than 100 skyscrapers, which now make up Hong Kong’s ever-changing skyline, were nothing more than architectural concepts or blueprints. On 23 September of that year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published a proclamation that would forever say to the world, “This is God’s word about families.” Unlike Hong Kong’s changing skyline, the permanence of “The Family: a Proclamation to the World” would allow it to become an “anchor” to a world quickly losing sight of its bearings.
The proclamation represented only the fifth time in its then 165-year history that the Church’s First Presidency and The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had issued a statement of such magnitude to the entire world. The proclamation begins this way:
“We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”
The 630-word document now stands in stark contrast to the swift current of worldly beliefs threatening the family, but in 1995 it represented only a reinforcement of common societal values rarely at odds with Church teachings. Few members of the Church anticipated how quickly the proclamation would become a pivotal and even controversial voice upholding values that have kept families intact for millennia.
Restored doctrine is evident in the body of the proclamation as it boldly presents male and female roles and the divine purpose of gender in the eternities. It reiterates the Church’s teachings about the purpose of life and how families are not merely important, but eternal and essential to our Creator’s entire plan. The proclamation then puts chastity and fidelity in the context of a divine “appointment,” and that God commands us to use procreative powers righteously. In fact, it declares that children are “entitled” to be born “within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.”
The truths set forth in the proclamation are immutable and constant. Since its publication just twenty years ago, world maps have changed, global ideologies have come and gone, and the Hong Kong skyline has completely transformed. But not a single principle found in “The Family: a Proclamation to the World” has been modified, and never will be.
The proclamation’s prophetic warnings of “calamities” to come to “individuals, communities, and nations” who violate the Godly principles outlined in the document are already poignantly evident in the world today. Likewise, its promises of “happiness in family life” are being fulfilled in great number by successful families who have taken the proclamation’s message to heart.
Click here to read “The Family: a Proclamation to the World.”