If you ever needed proof that Latter-day Saints can generate confusion entirely on our own—no critics required—look no further than the long, winding, strangely durable myth that the Word of Wisdom forbids caffeine. For decades, the Church explained otherwise. Leaders clarified that “hot drinks” meant coffee and tea, not cola. And yet the caffeine theory survived everything short of an official announcement carved into stone.

The story begins early: in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Church leaders consistently taught that “hot drinks” referred specifically to coffee and tea. But as the 20th century progressed, members tried to reverse-engineer why those drinks were forbidden. Caffeine seemed like the obvious answer. After all, it was an identifiable chemical, it stimulated the body, and it made intuitive sense in an era when people increasingly trusted “scientific” explanations even for religious rules.

The problem was that Church leaders repeatedly clarified that caffeine was not the doctrinal issue. Multiple First Presidencies, including in the 1910s and again in the 1970s, reiterated that the Word of Wisdom said nothing about caffeine at all. But culturally, the caffeine explanation had already taken root. And once a folk belief gets entrenched in Mormon culture, it becomes almost impossible to dislodge.

So through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, you had this strange coexistence: official statements saying caffeine wasn’t prohibited, and members confidently believing it was. Seminary teachers repeated it. Parents taught it. Youth talks echoed it.

By the early 2000s, the caffeine misunderstanding had become a self-sustaining feedback loop. Members assumed caffeine was the problem, which made caffeinated soda look vaguely improper, which reinforced the assumption. It wasn’t until the Church’s 2012 newsroom article directly stating—again—that caffeine was not forbidden that the misconception finally began to crack.

Then came the watershed moment: 2017, when BYU finally began selling caffeinated soda on campus for the first time since the 1950s. It wasn’t a doctrinal shift. It wasn’t a new revelation. It was simply a recognition that the old cultural habit of avoiding caffeine had been a cultural practice, not a theological one.

And still, that moment felt monumental. It took more than a century of reminders, clarifications, and reiterations—but only a few generations of persistent folk assumptions—to make such a small policy correction feel like a revelation.

This is the larger lesson: the caffeine myth didn’t survive because critics pushed it. It survived because we repeated it. And it’s worth asking what other well-meaning misconceptions we’re allowing to linger simply because we’ve heard them often enough. If we want a future with clearer doctrine and fewer folk traditions shaping our conversations, we need to be willing to learn, to correct, and to share what’s actually true.

For more on this topic, click here: https://www.latterdaytimes.com/coffee-the-word-of-wisdom-from-beverage-to-covenant/