By Greer Bates Cordner
Greer Bates Cordner is a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University. Her primary area of research is American Religious History, with Global Christianity and Mission as a secondary area. Greer also holds a Master of Theological Studies degree (Boston University) and a B.A. in History (Brigham Young University). She is a mom to three young kids, all of whom were born during her doctoral program, and who put her academic and gospel studies into perspective with their questions, hugs, and prayers.
A decade ago I heard a BYU history professor share what has become my favorite approach to the Word of Wisdom.
I was a TA in a World History class that covered material from before 1500 CE. During a unit that discussed ancient Israel, the professor mentioned that early Jewish dietary laws prohibited believers from consuming foods that would have been common for people to eat in that area of the world. Later, a student asked why modern Latter-day Saint dietary guidelines (commonly called the Word of Wisdom) don’t match those of ancient Israel. If the Restoration brought back the hallmarks of God’s covenants with Israel, then why not simply reinstate the biblical food laws, as written?
The professor acknowledged that any explanation about why things are the way that they are would require speculation; there simply is no direct revelation that gives a rationale for each aspect of the Word of Wisdom. Under that caveat, the professor pointed out that he found it interesting that the foods banned in the 19th-century LDS dietary laws are quite common in American culture—just like the ancient Israelites abstained from foods that were common in their region.
“Avoiding foods that everyone around you is eating makes you stand out,” he continued. “Maybe part of ‘standing out’ has something to do with the covenant relationship God wants us to remember,” he said, “but maybe another part of it is a way of helping God’s people understand what it’s like to be left out of something everyone else thinks is normal. That way they can better empathize with others who feel left out too.”
He gave the comment in passing, and quickly moved on to the rest of the lecture. But I jotted down his theory in my notebook. It was the first time I had heard a framework for the Word of Wisdom that didn’t attempt to justify the guidelines based on how healthy/unhealthy the foods are, or how addictive substances make it hard to feel the Spirit, or how following the principle is just a test of faith. Each of those explanations can foster interesting discussions too—but like the professor pointed out, they’re speculations.
Why not, then, speculate that the reason (or one of the reasons) for God’s people to avoid common foods is to help them experience otherness? Why not assume that the law could teach believers to love better?
For years I’ve carried that comment with me through Sunday School discussions, personal scripture reading, and graduate theological studies. Although I’m not a Bible scholar or a historian of the ancient Near East, I’ve taken some required Bible and Early Christianity classes, and have occasionally looked for connections to my BYU professor’s remarks.
Ultimately, I’ve come to believe that he’s onto something—especially given the fact that ancient Israelite dietary laws accompanied laws about hospitality.
Ancient Hospitality and Dietary Laws
Jewish hospitality guidelines actually pre-date laws restricting consumption of certain foods. Most famously, Abraham’s decision to host three wandering strangers—not knowing until later that they were actually angels—resulted in the promise that he and Sarah would finally conceive a child (Genesis 18).[1] Many scholars also believe that the cardinal sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was their gross inhospitality; the two wandering angels who visited those cities met violent abuse by everyone except for Lot, whose family was spared because he welcomed the angels into his home (Genesis 19).[2] Building on these examples, plus the Hebrews’ experiences in Egypt, every single book in the Torah instructs believers to love strangers.[3] For instance, Deuteronomy 10:19 is clear: “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Early Christians also adhered to these dictates, including a reminder about Abraham in Hebrews 13:2.
Jewish dietary laws only emerged sometime after the emphasis on hospitality was in place. The scriptural basis for Jewish dietary laws links the restrictions to Moses, but universal enforcement of the laws only began to take hold within Judaism around the Second Temple period (~516 BCE–70 CE).[4] The Second Temple period marked the Hebrews’ return to Judah following Babylonian captivity, although new empires eventually conquered the territory. Jewish customs that arose during this time showed an impulse to cling to a core identity that could bind them to each other, to their history, and to their ability to survive into a new kind of future.[5]
So ancient Jewish dietary laws were not always in place, or always understood the same way, or always enforced consistently.[6] But when they did surface, they marked practitioners as “others.”
Similarly, within Mormonism, the Word of Wisdom has not always been in place, or understood the same way, or enforced consistently. In his fascinating article about early understandings of the Word of Wisdom, Paul Hoskisson points out some discrepancies in how historians have depicted early Latter-day Saints’ relationship to the Word of Wisdom;[7] these discrepancies possibly reflect the fact that historical evidence shows some early Mormons’ strict observance of their dietary code, and others’ lenient takes on the same revelation. Some early Latter-day Saints faced excommunication for failing to keep the Word of Wisdom, while others (including future Church President Joseph F. Smith) sometimes drank alcohol and used tobacco products.
But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Church leaders began to reiterate the Word of Wisdom, even making it (for the first time in 1921) a prerequisite for temple worship.[8] Eventually, a centralized interpretation of Doctrine and Covenants 89 became an identity marker for Latter-day Saints.
Becoming a Hospitable “Other”
But dietary laws can complicate hospitality. After all, offering food and drink is one of the most common expressions of hospitality across virtually every human culture. Religious dietary laws, then, can sometimes put observers in a position to reject acts of kindness by others—potentially driving wedges of “otherness” between neighbors.[9]
These complications especially arise in certain interpretations of dietary laws. David Freidenreich has noted that some ancient Jews were influenced by the dominance of allegories in Hellenistic culture, and began interpreting their dietary codes allegorically in order to justify the prohibitions against specific foods.[10] Similarly, many Latter-day Saints have imposed interpretations on the Word of Wisdom in order to explain why certain foods and beverages are banned.
But ultimately, those explanations just aren’t in the texts. Instead, biblical Jewish dietary laws, and the Latter-day Saint Word of Wisdom, don’t really justify themselves; the laws simply set their practitioners apart from their surrounding cultures by prohibiting foods that others commonly eat.
In short, the laws marginalize observers by making them abstain from things that their neighbors see as normal, common, and even healthy.
When a neighbor offers a Latter-day Saint a glass of wine at a dinner party, then, the Latter-day Saint faces a problem. Turning down the drink means rejecting an act of hospitality, but drinking it violates the Word of Wisdom. Seemingly, dietary laws conflict with hospitality in this scenario.
However, I think the real conflict lies in interpretation. Practitioners of the Word of Wisdom can either focus on the ways that their dietary laws justify their rejection of others’ hospitality, or they can focus on the ways that their dietary laws teach them greater empathy for other marginalized peoples. The first option defies biblical patterns that encourage hospitality. But the second option prepares people to become more hospitable by learning firsthand what it feels like to be an “other.” Viewing the Word of Wisdom as an opportunity to learn compassion for “others” seems much more consistent with biblical precedent.
What would happen in our congregations, in our homes, and in our hearts if we framed the Word of Wisdom as a law that teaches empathy? What would happen if, every time a Latter-day Saint turned down a drink at a networking event, she committed herself to notice others around her who also don’t fit in with social norms?
Instead of framing the Word of Wisdom as a commandment[11] that sets observers above others (making them more holy, more pure), I think we can frame the Word of Wisdom as a revelation that sets observers outside others so that they will know, keenly, what being outsiders feels like. Maybe the “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge” that the Word of Wisdom promises include the knowledge of what it’s like to be at the margins of society, and a commitment to adapt ourselves to “the capacity of the weak” (D&C 89:19, 3). Maybe the “principle with promise” (D&C 89:3) is more about compassion than it is about health.
[1] See Ori Z. Soltes, “Welcoming the Stranger: Introduction,” in Welcoming the Stranger: Abrahamic Hospitality and Its Contemporary Implications, eds. Ori Z. Soltes and Rachel Stern (New York: Fordham University Press, 2024), 1-2.
[2] See Soltes, “Introduction,” 2-3; see also annotations for Matthew 10:15 in Jewish Annotated New Testament (hereafter JANT), which references Ezekiel 16:49 as support that pride and inhospitality caused Sodom’s downfall. See page 30.
[3] Ori Z. Soltes, “Welcoming the Stranger in Jewish Tradition,” in Welcoming the Strangers, eds. Soltes and Stern, 15-16.
[4] Meier Ben Shahar, “Jewish Views of Gentiles,” JANT, 641-642; David M. Freidenreich, “Food and Table Fellowship,” JANT, 650.
[5] David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 52.
[6] Shahar, “Jewish Views of Gentiles,” JANT, 641.
[7] Paul Y. Hoskisson, “The Word of Wisdom in Its First Decade,” Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 1 (Winter 2012), 131-200.
[8] Jana Kathryn Riess, “The Latter-day Saint Word of Wisdom,” in Religions of the United States in Practice, vol. 2, ed. Colleen McDannell, 298.
[9] Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food, 21.
[10] Freidenreich, “Food and Table Fellowship,” JANT, 650.[11] The text of the Word of Wisdom itself says that it’s not a commandment! See D&C 89:2.
[11] The text of the Word of Wisdom itself says that it’s not a commandment! See D&C 89:2.
Red Brocade
The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.
I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.
milk & honey mamas 
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