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Scriptures and Theology

Michael R. Ash

Richard Dutcher

Robert A. Rees

Is Breaking the Law of Chastity "Next to Murder”?
Mormon Writers Rethink Traditional Notion

by Seba Martinez
January 2007

In a recent essay in Sunstone magazine, Michael R. Ash, owner of the LDS website MormonFortress.com, proposes a new interpretation to a passage in the Book of Mormon that has been used repeatedly to support the notion that breaking the law of chastity is next to murder in seriousness (Alma 39:5).

"Corianton's sin-next-to-murder was most likely that he led people away from Christ,” writes Ash. "If our joy will be great because we, after all our labors, bring a single soul to Christ (D&C 18:15), it stands to reason that our anguish will be just as great if we lead a single soul away from Christ” (Sunstone, November 2006, pp. 37, 40).

Other Mormons feel that some aspects of the LDS rhetoric on chastity, such as the oft-invoked notion that it is better for a returned missionary to return home dead than to break the law of chastity, could be wrong. In his recent film States of Grace, LDS filmmaker Richard Dutcher has one of the character say that whoever thinks that "is a jerk.”

"I stand by that,” Dutcher is quoted as saying in the same Sunstone issue that Ash's article appeared in. "I've always found that notion repugnant and I have seen how it has caused so much damage and heartache” (p. 68).

In a presentation made on February 27, 2000, former LDS bishop Robert Rees proposed that Mormons rethink their hierarchy of sins. "As I read the New Testament, it seems that Christ's list of truly serious sins would include hypocrisy, selfishness, ingratitude, greed, failure to respond to the needs of the poor, pride, prejudice, an abuse of power, as well as fornication and adultery,” said Rees. "And yet, except for the latter two, these are sins that in general bear no consequence as far as church discipline is concerned” ("In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium,” brochure published and distributed by Family Fellowship).