Samuel M. Brown

Writer on early Mormon theology, adoption, kinship, and salvation.

history · religious studies

Affiliation: Professor of Medicine, University of Utah and Intermountain Medical Center
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Professor of Medicine at Intermountain Medical Center
Samuel M. Brown — History and biography
Samuel M. Brown · as of 2026-10-02
Original · Archived
Relationship to the Church: Latter-day Saint
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I believe that he has called me to be a Latter-day Saint, a calling I have chosen to accept, a calling I have given my heart to.
Samuel Brown — Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify
FAIR · as of 2010-10-02
Original · Archived

Positions

How did Joseph Smith practice plural marriage, and how should it be understood?

Kinship and sealing theology

Brown proposes that plural marriage formed part of Smith’s adoption theology, in which salvation meant joining an enduring family of God. He reads marital sealing as a way of building a network of belonging that reached beyond biological families, rather than treating sexuality as the whole explanation.

Samuel M. Brown, “Believing Adoption,” BYU Studies Quarterly 52, no. 2 (2013): 45–65.

Adoption into the family of God was at once the means and the definition of salvation.
Opening account of adoption theology, paragraph beginning “First, a word about adoption” · Original

Corrections