In 1888 the Church organized a General Board of Education to supervise a system of its own schools. From the beginning, spiritual and secular topics were taught hand in hand among the Saints, as illustrated by the wide array of secular topics taught in the early movements of their initial religious structure, the Kirtland Temple.6 As the Church grew and moved to the western United States, education remained a constant within the faith.Īs the nineteenth century progressed, the Church took steps to organize its educational efforts. Revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith admonished members to receive education (see D&C 88:117–26) and proclaimed that “the glory of God is intelligence” ( D&C 93:36). The desire to obtain education, particularly religious education, was a vital part of Latter-day Saint thought from the beginning. Of course, while this simple experience captures some of the revelatory forces leading to the creation of seminary, it must be acknowledged that the seminary program was not created in a vacuum. A few weeks later he presented the rough idea for a new religious education program to the stake presidency.5 He became obsessed with the idea of providing students with a religious experience as part of the school day, regardless of what kind of school they attended. Deeply moved by his wife’s effectiveness as a teacher, Brother Merrill immediately began contemplating how other children attending public schools could receive the same kind of spiritual training as his wife.

Talmage at the Salt Lake Academy, a Church-owned school she had attended as a young girl.

“Her list of these stories were so long that her husband often marveled at their number, and frequently sat as spellbound as were the children as she skillfully related them.”4 When Brother Merrill later asked his wife where she had learned all of the stories, she replied that she had learned most of them in a theology class conducted by Brother James E. Merrill, a newly called member of the Granite Utah Stake presidency, sat listening to his wife, Annie, tell stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon to their children before they went to bed. But in the simplest sense, the program began in the inauspicious setting of a family home evening. Many complex historical forces led to the creation of the seminary program. Joseph and Annie Merrill with their children, about 1912.

Walking papers seminary