I.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the World.
GREETING: In the hope of correcting misrepresentation, and of establishing a more perfect understanding respecting ourselves and our religion, we, the officers and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in General Conference assembled, issue this Declaration.
Such an action seems imperative. Never were our principles or our purposes more widely misrepresented, more seriously misunderstood. Our doctrines are distorted, the sacred ordinances of our religion ridiculed, our Christianity questioned, our history falsified, our character traduced, and our course of conduct as a people reprobated and condemned.
In answer to the charges made against us, for ourselves and for those who, under divine direction, founded our religion and our Church; for our posterity, to whom we shall transmit the faith, and into whose keeping we shall give the Church of Christ; and before mankind, whose opinions we respect, we solemnly declare the truth to be:
Our religion is founded on the revelations of God. The Gospel we proclaim is the Gospel of Christ, restored to earth in this the dispensation of the fulness of times. The high claim of the Church is declared in its title—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Established by divine direction, its name was prescribed by him whose Church it is—Jesus the Christ.
The religion of this people is pure Christianity. Its creed is expressive of the duties of practical life. Its theology is based on the doctrines of the Redeemer.
If it be true Christianity to accept Jesus Christ in person and in mission as divine; to revere him as the Son of God, the crucified and risen Lord, through whom alone can mankind attain salvation; to accept his teachings as a guide, to adopt as a standard and observe as a law the ethical code he promulgated; to comply with the requirements prescribed by him as essential to membership in his Church, namely, faith, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost,—if this be Christianity, then are we Christians, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Christian church.
The theology of our Church is the theology taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles, the theology of scripture and reason. It not only acknowledges the sacredness of ancient scripture, and the binding force of divinely-inspired acts and utterances in ages past; but also declares that God now speaks to man in this final Gospel dispensation.
We believe in the Godhead, comprising the three individual personages, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.