In the nation of promises: Mormon political thought in modern America

Especially after the murder of their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and their exodus to the Salt Lake Valley, nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints were committed to establishing a righteous new nation called Zion, a nation they hoped would soon supplant the United States and the other wicked nations of the earth. At the turn of the twentieth century, in an effort to heal their contentious relationship with their countrymen, the Mormons began to recast Zion as a patriotic church that would now play an active role in restoring America to its rightful place as God's favored nation. This shift in Mormon thought from Zion nationalism to American exceptionalism engendered a new political mentality among the Latter-day Saints. In contrast to early Mormonism's parochial focus on God's kingdom and commitment to political unity, the primary characteristics of modern Mormon political thought were integration into the mainstream and, especially before the 1980s, partisan and ideological diversity. Twentieth-century Mormons mostly agreed that they had a special responsibility to work for the good of the American nation but, no different from other Americans, they frequently disagreed over how best to do this. iv After uncovering their nineteenth-century roots, this dissertation then explores the major strands of Mormon political thought that took shape over the course of the twentieth century. It does so through an examination of the writings and public discourse of a wide variety of Latter-day Saint leaders and lay members as they responded to some of the most important national and international issues of the century, namely the various reform movements of the Progressive Era, the League of Nations, the New Deal, World War II and American militarism, domestic anticommunism, compulsory union membership, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the arms race, among several others. Along the way, this study shows how and why Mormons went from resisting political pluralism in the nineteenth century, grudgingly and then enthusiastically welcoming it at the start of the twentieth, and then, during the final quarter of the century, entering a new era of political homogeneity now tied to the Republican Party.

IN THE NATION OF PROMISE: MORMON POLITICAL THOUGHT IN MODERN AMERICA by Nathan L. Jones A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History The University of Utah December 2019 Copyright © Nathan L. Jones 2019 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Nathan L. Jones has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Walter P. Reeve and by , Chair 03/06/2019 Eric A. Hinderaker , Member 03/06/2019 Colleen M. McDannell , Member 03/06/2019 Rebecca Horn , Member 03/06/2019 Benjamin D. Crowe , Member Benjamin Cohen the Department/College/School of and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved , Chair/Dean of History ABSTRACT Especially after the murder of their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and their exodus to the Salt Lake Valley, nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints were committed to establishing a righteous new nation called Zion, a nation they hoped would soon supplant the United States and the other wicked nations of the earth. At the turn of the twentieth century, in an effort to heal their contentious relationship with their countrymen, the Mormons began to recast Zion as a patriotic church that would now play an active role in restoring America to its rightful place as God’s favored nation. This shift in Mormon thought from Zion nationalism to American exceptionalism engendered a new political mentality among the Latter-day Saints. In contrast to early Mormonism’s parochial focus on God’s kingdom and commitment to political unity, the primary characteristics of modern Mormon political thought were integration into the mainstream and, especially before the 1980s, partisan and ideological diversity. Twentieth-century Mormons mostly agreed that they had a special responsibility to work for the good of the American nation but, no different from other Americans, they frequently disagreed over how best to do this. After uncovering their nineteenth-century roots, this dissertation then explores the major strands of Mormon political thought that took shape over the course of the twentieth century. It does so through an examination of the writings and public discourse of a wide variety of Latter-day Saint leaders and lay members as they responded to some of the most important national and international issues of the century, namely the various reform movements of the Progressive Era, the League of Nations, the New Deal, World War II and American militarism, domestic anticommunism, compulsory union membership, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the arms race, among several others. Along the way, this study shows how and why Mormons went from resisting political pluralism in the nineteenth century, grudgingly and then enthusiastically welcoming it at the start of the twentieth, and then, during the final quarter of the century, entering a new era of political homogeneity now tied to the Republican Party. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………………………… iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………………………….. vii Chapters 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 2. THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ZION NATIONALISM……………………………………….. 27 Sacred Land, Sinful Nation……………………………………………………………………… 30 A New Role for the Republic…………………………………………………………………… 38 Zion Exceptionalism……………………………………………………………………………….. 56 Resistance and Compromise…………………………………………………………………… 68 3. THE AMERICANIZATION OF MORMON POLITICAL THOUGHT………………………… 79 The End of Theodemocracy…………………………………………………………………….. 84 In Search of Righteous Reform……………………………………………………………… 100 To “Save the World”: The Great War and the League of Nations……………… 126 4. THE HIERARCHY AND THE PEOPLE IN THE 1930s………………………………………. 139 Conservatism, Progressivism, Communism: Mormons and the New Deal.. 145 Shades of Zion Nationalism: The Church Welfare Plan…………………………… 177 5. ENEMIES AT HOME AND ABROAD……………………………………………………………….. 192 American Militarism in War and Peace………………………………………………….. 199 The Evolution of Mormon Anticommunism………………………………………..…. 215 Republicanism Resurgent: Utah’s Shift to the Right in the 1950s……………. 231 6. THE CONSTITUTION BY A THREAD……………………………………………………………... 248 Continuing the War in Heaven: Right-Wing Mormons and Their Critics….. 254 The Troubling War: Mormon Responses to Vietnam……………………………… 269 Civil Rights in Zion and America……………………………………………………………. 284 7. THEODEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF REAGAN………………………………………………… 305 Defending the American Family: Abortion, Homosexuality, and the ERA… 309 “The Most Republican State in the Union”……………………………………………… 337 8. CONCLUSION: THE NATION OF PROMISE IN A GLOBAL ZION……………………….. 357 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………. 379 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would be guilty of having a shallow memory if I did not first recognize several supportive scholars at California State University, Fresno, where I earned a Master’s degree in American history in 2009. During my first semester, Mark Arvanigian allowed me to write my first academic paper on Mormonism for his course on ancient and medieval historiography. After reading my paper, he encouraged me to consider a PhD as a long-term objective. As I made my way through the program, Bridget Ford, William Skuban, and Brad Jones were all extremely generous with their office hours and insights. My advisor Ethan Kytle patiently waded through drafts of my very imperfect thesis and later, as I underwent the loathsome process of applying to PhD programs, he wrote many letters of recommendation on my behalf. I will always be grateful to the History Department at Fresno State. I did not have a dissertation advisor when I first set foot on the University of Utah campus. Fortunately, one of my first graduate classes was Paul Reeve’s colloquium on the American West. In addition to loving the course, I immediately found in Paul the ideal person to guide me through the program. Even as he was smack in the middle of researching and writing his now completed, award-winning book, Religion of a Different Color, teaching courses on American, Western, Utah, and Mormon history, and advising a multitude of other graduate students, he always found the time to shepherd me through every stage of the program, from my opening course work and comprehensive exams to my dissertation defense and final revisions. All that time, I never saw him act or appear even moderately stressed out. Thank you, Paul. I could not have done this without your help. With their distinct personalities and wide-ranging expertise, the other members of my PhD committee added variety to my educational journey and ensured that I did not pursue depth at the exclusion of breadth. From two courses with Eric Hinderaker I learned a great deal more about the colonial and revolutionary periods. He also offered timely suggestions on how best to maneuver through the program and was always willing to write letters of recommendation on my behalf. He has also been a great teammate in pickup basketball. Colleen McDannell contributed her vast knowledge of American religions to my study of Mormonism and American politics and was never hesitant to offer direct and always helpful criticisms of my work. Rebecca Horn enhanced my understanding of Latin American history and, during the dissertation phase, provided the fresh perspective of a historian working outside of U.S. history. As my extra-department advisor, Benjamin Crowe, now in the Philosophy Department at Boston University, generously met with me on a number of occasions to discuss the relationship between religion and philosophy. In my fourth year I was blessed to be the recipient of the annual Tanner Humanities Center Mormon Studies Fellowship, under the direction of Robert Goldberg. In addition to providing much needed financial support, the fellowship also gave me the opportunity to share some of my work with Bob and a small group viii of professors and graduate students from several departments. Their thoughtful feedback played an important role in the shaping of my fourth chapter. Brent Rogers at the Joseph Smith Papers graciously read two drafts of my second chapter and provided extremely helpful suggestions. Since I conducted the bulk of my research at the LDS Church History Library, Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, and the Utah State Historical Society, I owe to their respective staffs a great deal of thanks. I sent the first full-length draft of my dissertation to several family members and friends who had long expressed interest in my work. Many of them provided thought-provoking feedback and spotted embarrassing factual and grammar errors. More importantly, their enthusiastic reception confirmed my suspicion that this topic’s appeal goes far beyond the academy. There are too many names to list here and I fear accidentally leaving someone out. But you know who you are. Thank you. My most important thanks go to my family. Midway through writing, we relocated from Salt Lake City to El Dorado Hills, California where I grew up. This put us closer to my parents and sister and helped us save a bit of money, but it also forced me to take brief trips back to Utah to research and write. My in-laws Hayli and Ben Nelson generously offered me their guest room in their home in South Jordan, not to mention an occasional trip to the movies whenever my writer’s block got exceptionally bad. I attribute my love of history to childhood conversations with my grandfather, Robert Lassen, a devoted Latter-day Saint who bravely served in the United States Navy in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. In my mind he ix embodied the best of both Mormonism and Americanism. Another source of inspiration from an earlier generation was my mother’s uncle, Jay R. Lowe, an excellent scholar of Latter-day Saint history. I owe more to my parents than I could ever possibly repay. My father Dennis has been a great example to me. More than ever, I appreciate and admire his passion for teaching and love of truth. My mother Sylvia has always been a humble and charitable listener. Like Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, she has spent her life stepping out of the spotlight in order to give more attention to others, especially her children. I was single when I moved to Salt Lake City in the fall of 2010. I am now married with a beautiful little boy, a rambunctious dog, and a baby girl on the way. Far exceeding the intellectual growth I have experienced over the past nine years has been the personal, social, emotional, and spiritual growth. That has only been possible because, just a few days after moving to Salt Lake City where I knew almost no one, I met my wife, Emmily Dickey. Along with being the best mom in the world to Theo, she has kept us financially afloat throughout our marriage, although I have definitely put in my time as an assistant wedding planner. As I have told her time and again over the past few years, I could not have written this dissertation without her by my side. Yet this pales in comparison to the countless other ways in which she has blessed me. From the moment she came into my life, I have never once felt lonely. She’s done so much that I may even give her a pass from having to read the lengthy work that follows. x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In early 1967 an outspoken graduate student at Stanford University named Eugene England published a fiery condemnation of America’s ongoing military campaign in Southeast Asia. Like many Americans who came to oppose their country’s involvement in Vietnam by the second half of the 1960s, England had earlier accepted his government’s assurances that this war was a necessary line in the sand in the existential struggle between the free world and communist enslavement. “Now, six years later,” he confessed, “I find myself, despite (or actually because of) an enduring and growing love for America and her traditional values and contributions to the world, deeply alienated from the policies and practices of my government.” If American leaders did not quickly change course and do everything in their power to end the bloodletting in this tormented part of the world, he warned, the United States risked forfeiting its “sources of moral power as an ‘ensign to the nations,’” and even losing sight altogether of its very “sense of that purpose.”1 By 1967 England was just one of many Americans who was willing to publicly castigate the nation’s political and military establishment for precipitating 1 Eugene England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam and the Responsibility of Mormons,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 2, no. 4 (Winter 1967): 71-72. 2 what he and many others regarded as a misguided and even immoral war. However, as the title of his article, “The Tragedy of Vietnam and the Responsibility of Mormons,” as well as the journal in which it was published, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, both indicate, England’s message was intended not for government bureaucrats in Washington, but for his fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.2 America’s violent intervention in Vietnam, he told them, was a clear violation of “Mormon concepts of a just war.” Yet very few Mormons had dared to speak out, he lamented. By remaining silent, his article implied, most Latter-day Saints had been to some degree complicit in this national sin. Even worse, they had failed in their unique mission to promote a righteous America.3 England’s Jeremiad to his fellow Americans and especially to his fellow Latter-day Saints provides an illuminating starting point to this comprehensive study of Mormon thinking on politics, government, along with many important national and international issues, over the course of the twentieth century. Although his perspective on Vietnam and his penchant for chastising his fellow church members were far from typical, what does make England’s mindset representative of a wide range of modern Mormon political thought was his conviction that Latterday Saints, more than any other group of Americans, had a sacred responsibility to ensure that what he called an “ensign to the nations” remained a righteous republic 2 England and four other LDS graduate students at Stanford started Dialogue in 1966. It quickly gained a reputation as a platform for religious, social, and political perspectives that Latter-day Saints did not normally receive from their leaders or their weekly church meetings. G. Wesley Johnson, “Editorial Preface,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring 1966): 6. 3 England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam,” 72-75. 3 in which their church could thrive, and from which, it could expand. In dozens of political controversies over the course of the century, from prohibition and women’s suffrage to the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, and the arms race, Mormons on the right, in the center, and on the left of the political divide demonstrated the degree to which they had jettisoned the apolitical separatism that had characterized much, though by no means all, of their nineteenth-century past. For the most part, modern Mormons no longer followed Brigham Young’s earlier admonition to focus exclusively on God’s kingdom and allow the rest of America to “go to hell.”4 *** The political thought of nineteenth-century Mormonism largely grew out of a phenomenon that historian Mark Ashurst-McGee calls “Zion nationalism.”5 The earliest expressions of Zion nationalism were articulated in the Book of Mormon, published only a few days before Joseph Smith officially founded the Church of Christ on April 6, 1830.6 The book sacralized the American continent as a “land of promise” whereupon the scattered remnants of ancient Israel would some day reunite and, with help from their Gentile “nursing fathers” and “nursing mothers,” 4 Brigham Young, Aug. 31, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London and Liverpool: LDS Booksellers Depot, 1855-86), 4:40. 5 Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political Thought” (PhD dissertation, Arizona State University, 2008), 207-249. 6 Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 16. The Church of Christ was renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838. Ibid., 20-21. 4 construct a righteous new nation called Zion (1 Nephi 2:20, 21:23).7 By 1831 the Mormons were gathering in Ohio and, more importantly, along the borderlands of Missouri, intent on becoming a unified people governed by a mixture of theocratic and democratic ideals, a form of government they later called theodemocracy.8 In the beginning, Joseph Smith and his followers were so consumed by their mission to build Zion that they largely overlooked the possible role the United States might play in God’s plan. They were also quick to consign the nation of their birth to the same awful fate as the other wicked nations of Babylon.9 Early Mormons’ dualistic outlook could not survive, however, in the face of vicious anti-Mormon persecution. Desperate for protection, they began to see America as an inspired Gentile nation that could serve as Zion’s closest ally.10 In a final quixotic attempt to forge this alliance, their founding prophet launched his own bid for the U.S. presidency in 1844.11 Following Smith’s murder and their forced exodus to the Great Basin in the late 1840s, the Mormons came to the conclusion that their fellow countrymen had 7 Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 10, 14, 68, 676. 8 On Mormon theodemocracy, see Patrick Q. Mason, “God and the People: Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,” Journal of Church and State 53, no. 3 (Jan. 28, 2011): 349-375. 9 Mathew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, Vol. 2 of the Documents series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Mathew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2013), 330-331. 10 Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, Vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 268-269. 11 On Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential campaign, see Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius and Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005); and Richard L. Bushman, “Joseph Smith’s Presidential Ambitions,” in Randall Balmer and Jana Riess, eds., Mormonism and American Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 3-12. 5 abandoned the God-given principles contained in their Constitution, a Constitution to which the Mormons still swore their utmost allegiance. Among the many articulations of this budding Mormon narrative of American declension was apostle Parley P. Pratt’s 1844 tract, The Angel of the Prairies. “The injured and persecuted friends of law and order,” the book’s angel-narrator declares in a clear allusion to the disenfranchised Saints, “finding no protection or redress, were forced to abandon their country and its institutions, now no longer in force, and to retreat into the wilderness.” While the “spirit of liberty” which had once prevailed in America would have to experience a rebirth among the Mormons in the West, the angel continues, the rest of the nation would soon fall victim to “divisions and contentions…multiplied to that degree that they soon destroyed each other, deluged the country in blood, and thus ended the confederation under the title of E Pluribus Unum.”12 Having concluded that the United States of America was now beyond saving, the Mormons would devote all of their energy over the next four decades to building up what they considered a vastly superior nation. It was not until the final decade of the nineteenth century that Mormon leaders finally acquiesced to the fact that they could no longer build Zion apart from the United States. Demonstrating a capacity for adaptation that had always been one of the hallmarks of their movement, they moved to heal their strained relationship with the rest of America. After finally agreeing to give up their despised practice of plural marriage, they instructed their people to join the national political parties, mostly as voters, but in some cases, as state and national officials. They promised to 12 Parley Parker Pratt, The Angel of the Prairies; A Dream of the Future (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Printing and Publishing Establishment, 1880), 17. 6 respect the doctrine of the separation of church and state, although what precisely that entailed would thereafter generate considerable debate. The LDS Church also launched a de facto public relations campaign to convince suspicious Americans, particularly those wielding power in Washington, that Latter-day Saints were patriotic, independent-minded citizens. At the same time, Mormon leaders needed to persuade their own people that this positive new relationship with the United States constituted a progressive step in the unfolding of God’s plan. If their prophets had earlier admonished them to build an isolated, theodemocratic Zion in what the Book of Mormon christened “the land of promise,” by the second decade of the twentieth century they were admonishing them to build Zion, now converted from a separate nation into a Christian denomination, in what apostle James E. Talmage hailed as “the nation of promise.”13 It took little time for the Latter-day Saints to absolve the U.S. of its earlier sins and once again elevate it to the status of God’s favored nation. As sociologist Ethan Yorgason points out, Mormon leaders began to speak of the United States not as some transitory Gentile nation that currently inhabited the Promised Land, as their predecessors had been wont to do, but as the Promised Land itself.14 When plumbing the writings of the most nationalist-minded Latter-day Saints of the 13 James E. Talmage, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports of the Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1897-1921; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1921-present), 129. On the Mormon Church’s efforts at the turn of the century to reconcile with the United States, see Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930, 2nd ed. (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1996); Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1986); Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); and Ethan R. Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 2003). 14 Ibid., 140, 166-168. 7 twentieth century, in fact, it is often difficult to tell exactly where Zion ends and the United States begins. “Out of this land, which in solemn truth is the land of Zion,” Talmage wrote in 1919 in a passage directly referring to the United States, “shall go forth the law of the Lord unto the world at large.”15 In addition to conflating Zion and the American nation, Talmage also implied that the latter’s divine mission extended beyond simply protecting God’s kingdom at home to actually facilitating its expansion abroad. Not all church members would embrace such robust religious patriotism. Yet over the course of the century, it was difficult to find any Latter-day Saint who would publicly question the idea that God had somehow inspired the United States to serve as Zion’s ongoing ally and sanctuary. One of the pillars of Zion nationalism that Mormons were forced to sacrifice in order to reconcile with the United States was their political solidarity. The birth of Mormonism had coincided with the rise of America’s first modern political parties.16 Especially after persecution had illustrated the need for immediate political action, early Mormons proved willing to support specific parties and candidates at the ballot box. Yet they always did so as a unified bloc in the hopes that their support might yield something in return.17 Nor was their political unity simply an outgrowth of the Mormons’ recognition that as a persecuted minority, they needed to stick together. In their minds, the ideal form of government was not America’s pluralistic 15 James E. Talmage, The Vitality of Mormonism: Brief Essays on Distinctive Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1919), 205. 16 On the Second Party System, see Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 482-518. 17 On Mormon bloc voting and the outrage it provoked, see Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 50-53; and Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 132-133. 8 and, in their view, suicidal democracy. “Every government lays the foundation of its own downfall,” Brigham Young once quipped in one of his signature attacks on the nation’s political system, ”when it permits what are called democratic elections.”18 Their alternative to American democracy was what they called theodemocracy. It was premised on the expectation that the citizens of Zion would use their free will to voluntarily unify behind God’s will, as transmitted to them through his prophets.19 Though never devoid of internal drama, the Saints’ theodemocratic unity reached its peak with the formation in the early 1870s of the People’s Party, which became, in effect, the political arm of the LDS Church.20 After a rocky adjustment following the dissolution of the People’s Party and their entrance into the national parties beginning in 1891, Latter-day Saints fully embraced the two-party system.21 For nearly a century thereafter, the two major parties engaged in a relatively equal battle for their share of the Mormon vote. Then in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the political pluralism that had been so vibrant in the Mormon community during the early and middle part of the century underwent a significant decline. By the time Ronald Reagan came to power, Utah had gained a reputation as perhaps the reddest state in the union, with neighboring Idaho, also heavily Mormon, not far behind.22 During the final two decades of the century, 18 Brigham Young, Apr. 8, 1871, Journal of Discourses, 14:93. Mason, “God and the People,” 349-375. 20 G. Homer Durham, “A Political Interpretation of Mormon History,” Pacific Historical Review 13, no. 2 (June 1944): 144. 21 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 16-36. 22 Ron Hrebenar, “Utah: The Most Republican State in the Union,” The Social Science Journal 18, no. 3 (Oct. 1981): 103-114. 19 9 American Mormons were one of the GOP’s most dependable voting blocs.23 Thus, after three quarters of a century of relative political balance within Zion, Latter-day Saints entered a metaphorical time warp by reappropriating the political unity of their pioneer forebears. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, with Utah continuing to vote Republican and with prominent Mormon Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck entering the national spotlight, it would have been tempting for both Latter-day Saints and outside observers to conclude that Mormon political thought was essentially synonymous with the platform of the Republican Party. Yet as political scientists David Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson point out, “To assume that Mormons are ‘natural’ Republicans would be a case of historical amnesia.”24 By uncovering its conservative, moderate, liberal, libertarian, progressive, socialist, theocratic, communitarian, and millennial permutations going all the way back to the 1830s, this dissertation reveals the fallacy of trying to equate Mormon political thought with the platform of any one party, past or present. Moreover, it demonstrates that partisan affiliation was only one among dozens of factors that shaped the political outlook of twentieth-century Latter-day Saints. In many situations, knowing that a particular Latter-day Saint leader or lay member was Republican or Democrat actually offers very little insight into why they adopted a particular viewpoint. The ascent and descent of the two-party system in the 23 David E. Campbell, John C. Green, and J. Quin Monson, Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 77-102. 24 Ibid., 101. 10 modern Mormon community makes up an important part of this story, yet it always remains secondary to its primary focus on thought and discourse. *** Thus far, the most insightful work written on Mormon political thought, one that has been foundational for this dissertation, is Mark Ashurst-McGee’s 2008 dissertation, “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political Thought.” Ashurst-McGee locates the essence of early Mormons’ radical, though sometimes quite American, political thought in what he calls “Zion nationalism.”25 From the very outset of their movement, he shows, Joseph Smith and his followers yearned to build a new nation upon the American continent. They envisioned this new nation, Zion, as a temporal and spiritual refuge for anyone escaping from violence, suffering under the changes of the Market Revolution, or confused by the surrounding babel of religious voices. They also viewed Zion’s emphasis on harmony and brotherhood as the necessary antidote to America’s excessively individualistic and fractured democratic culture. At the same time, he points out, Mormons had imbibed from that surrounding culture a love of individual liberty and hatred of all forms of oppression. They found the ideal balance between community and individualism, between Godly sovereignty and popular sovereignty, he argues, in the concept of theodemocracy.26 25 26 Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising,” 207-249. Ibid., 307-344. 11 According to Ashurst-McGee, the Mormons initially believed that Zion’s rise would coincide with America’s downfall. However, mob violence and the excesses of American localism quickly forced the Saints to “accommodate the Zion project to the broader political landscape.”27 Among other things, this meant toning down their separatist rhetoric and emphasizing their commonalities with other Americans. By the time they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, he concludes, the nationalism of their formative years had returned with a vengeance. However, it now bore the marks of the Saints’ efforts during the final years of Joseph Smith’s life to prove that their loyalty to Zion only enhanced their loyalty to the United States.28 Ashurst-McGee limits his timeframe to the brief period in Mormon history leading up to the expulsion from Jackson County in 1833, yet he succeeds in identifying and illuminating the foundational elements of early Mormon political thought that would persist for the remainder of most of the century. Even if unintentionally, “Zion Rising” reveals some of the advantages of beginning a study of modern Mormon political thought with a robust chapter on its nineteenth-century roots. For one thing, it shows that opening this story in 1830 as opposed to 1900 is the surest way to illustrate the degree to which Mormon political thought has changed since the nineteenth century. At the same time, by locating the seeds of modern Mormonism’s embrace of American exceptionalism as early as the 1830s, Ashurst-McGee provides an important clue as to why the Americanization of the Latter-day Saints at the turn of the century proved so successful. 27 28 Ibid., iv. Ibid., 4, 390-406. 12 Especially over the past several decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have offered dozens of compelling, albeit scattered, analyses of the myriad political mentalities of twentieth-century Mormons. They have largely done so through three general categories of work: biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs of politically inclined church leaders and members; studies of Mormon voting patterns and partisan proclivities; and, theses, dissertations, articles, essays, and monographs covering specific case studies. Several of these works have proven invaluable to this dissertation.29 By their very nature, however, none of them seeks 29 For biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs that best illuminate a particular phase or strand of modern Mormon political thought, see James Henry Moyle, Mormon Democrat: The Memoirs of James Henry Moyle, ed. Gene A. Sessions (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998); B.H. Roberts, The Autobiography of B.H. Roberts, ed. Gary James Bergera (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990); Milton R. Merrill, Reed Smoot: Apostle in Politics (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1990); D. Michael Quinn, Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002); Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2005); and Edward L. Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball, Working Draft (Salt Lake City: Benchmark Books, 2009). For studies of how modern Mormons have voted and why, see especially the works of Frank Herman Jonas. These include: Frank H. Jonas and Garth N. Jones. “Utah Presidential Elections, 1896-1952,” Utah Historical Quarterly 24 (1956): 289-308; Frank H. Jonas, “The 1952 Elections in Utah,” Proceedings of Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, & Letters, Vol. 45, Part I. LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT; Frank H. Jonas, ed., Political Dynamiting (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1970); and The Frank Herman Jonas Papers, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. For more recent works by political scientists, see Campbell, Green, and Monson, Seeking the Promised Land; and Luke Perry and Christopher Cronin, Mormons in American Politics: From Persecution to Power (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012). Works examining specific instances in which modern Mormonism intersected with American politics are voluminous. For those that shed the most light on political thought, see Flake, Politics of American Religious Identity; Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region; J.D. Williams, “The Separation of Church and State in Mormon Theory and Practice,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 2 (Summer: 1966), 30-54; Lola Van Wagenen, “Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage, 1870-1896,” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1994); Dave Hall, A Faded Legacy: Amy Brown Lyman and Mormon Women’s Activism, 1872-1959 (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2015); Brian Q. Cannon, “’What a Power We Will Be in This Land’: The LDS Church, the Church Security Program, and the New Deal,” Journal of the West 43, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 66-75; Jay Logan Rogers, “Utah’s Right Turn: Republican Ascendancy and the 1976 U.S. Senate Race” (master’s thesis: The University of Utah, 2008); Jacob W. Olmstead, “A Diabolical Disneyland in Zion: The Mormons and the MX” (master’s thesis: Brigham Young University, 2005); and Balmer and Riess, Mormonism and American Politics. 13 to provide one overarching framework in which to examine the various expressions of modern Mormon political thought. Hence, until now no scholar has written a comprehensive history of Mormon political thought in modern America. This study seeks to fill this scholarly void by presenting a single breadth piece that brings together a wide array of individuals, developments, events, and perspectives typically treated in isolation from one another. Mormon political thought in the twentieth century stemmed from a wide variety of sources and resulted in many different outlooks. However, the shift from Zion nationalism to American exceptionalism at the turn of the century provides a general framework in which to examine this variety. When we strain out the differences between them, the major strands of modern Mormon political thought all held in common, albeit in varying degrees, their church’s newfound embrace of American exceptionalism. The new relationship between Zion and the United States thus formed a common thread linking the liberal Mormonism of a Eugene England with the conservative Mormonism of an Ezra Taft Benson. The emergence of this common thread at the turn of the century constituted the major fault line between early and modern Mormon political thought, and then proceeded to create a loose set of boundaries in which this thought continued to develop, and beyond which it rarely traversed. Their shared nationalism was far from the only thing that twentieth-century Mormons had in common. They were, after all, members of the same religious organization. Due in large measure to a phenomenon known as correlation, their church’s policies, programs, and teaching curriculum became more homogenized 14 over the course of the century.30 They also looked to the same centralized hierarchy for direction.31 However incomplete and ambiguous may have been some of its individual parts, Mormon theology as a whole inculcated a shared religious worldview characterized by a belief in a personal God, a personal Satan, and a view of mortality as a joyous if sometimes grueling journey designed to prepare men and women to reunite with their Heavenly Father.32 Twentieth-century Mormons were also, by and large, not only citizens of the same nation, but quite frequently, residents of the same state. As Eugene England’s disappointment in his fellow church members in 1967 illustrates, these nationalistic, religious, cultural, and demographic commonalities did not result in political or ideological homogeneity among the Latter-day Saints. Vietnam may have been a particularly divisive case, yet it was not unlike dozens of other episodes over the course of the century in which Mormons sharply disagreed over how to translate shared religious and nationalistic assumptions into specific positions and policies. Like other case studies in this dissertation, moreover, the intra-Mormon debate over Vietnam reveals that even though they agreed that America was a special nation with a key role to play in God’s plan, church members who belonged to different political parties and who held different political views 30 On Mormon correlation, see Mathew Bowman, “The Progressive Roots of Mormon Correlation,” in Patrick Q. Mason, ed., Directions for Mormon Studies in the Twenty-First Century (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2016), 15-34; Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 116-157; and Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 139-159. 31 Throughout this dissertation, I use “hierarchy” as a shorthand for members of the LDS Church’s two highest governing bodies: The First Presidency, composed of a church president and two counselors, and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, composed of twelve men who, like the members of the First Presidency, serve until their death. 32 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 403. 15 almost never agreed, especially after 1933, on whether their beloved nation was currently ascending toward celestial glory, or descending toward apostasy and ruin. Partly because it has always been so open to interpretation, Mormon theology also failed to produce a uniform body of political thought. For example, Mormons who disagreed over whether or not the United States should join the League of Nations following World War I often did so because they held entirely different views of what the end of the world, a shared Mormon expectation, would actually look like. Nor did individual church members always agree with their leaders. During the 1930s and 1940s, in fact, the political thought of the Mormon hierarchy was often sharply at odds with that of the general membership. What historian Patrick Mason has written of twenty-first century Mormons applies equally well to the Mormons in this study: “Mormonism is not…a monolith. Mormons are not just Mormons, but also ranchers, academics, socialists, NRA members, veterans, community activists, and everything else.”33 One of the major objectives of this study is to highlight the array of Mormon political outlooks that emerged in the twentieth century, uncovering their origins, tracking their evolution across time, and describing their periodic collisions with one another. At the same time, this dissertation also reveals the major factors that limited this diversity. In particular, it illustrates how modern Mormons’ deep-seated reverence for America tended to circumscribe their political thought by blunting the appeal of any belief-system considered subversive, un-American, or even 33 Patrick Mason, “The (Probable) Future of Mormon Politics,” Aug. 14, 2018. Georgetown University, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/…/theprobable-future-of-mormon-politics (accessed Nov. 30, 2018). 16 moderately revolutionary. Very few Mormons ever gravitated toward communism, for example. Arguments in the Mormon community over communism were usually limited to such questions as how best to combat what was universally considered an antigospel, anti-American ideology, or the degree to which church members should take part in anticommunist organizations.34 Even before the Cold War, Latter-day Saints who publicly advocated Marxist doctrines belonged to an almost invisible minority. To the growing frustration of Mormons on the left, the same close association between Mormonism and Americanism that made communism unacceptable also sometimes cast aspersions on ideas and policies that appeared too novel. Because of their visible position, conservatives in the church hierarchy were often the most influential critics of change. As early as 1912, apostle Charles Penrose warned the Latter-day Saints to beware of progressive programs that, in his mind, risked permanently severing the nation from its constitutional moorings.35 By the 1930s, some Mormon conservatives were regularly implying that liberalism was essentially a revolutionary ideology because, unless it was stopped, it would ultimately result in communist rule. If the shift from Zion nationalism to American nationalism explains in part why Mormon liberalism was so often targeted, it also helps to explain why Mormon liberalism was, relatively speaking, quite conservative. Mormons on the left may have been the more passionate advocates for change, but they typically viewed change as constructive rather than destructive, evolutionary instead of 34 35 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 286-322. Charles W. Penrose, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 59-68. 17 revolutionary. In most cases, their general philosophy of national progress mirrored apostle James Talmage’s earlier prescription for achieving what he called “constructive progressivism.” “I rejoice in the progressivism of…the right kind,” he declared in 1912. “It is not that so-called progressivism that seeks to belittle or destroy the achievements of the past; it is not a progressivism that seeks to tear down, that says our fathers were wrong and we know more than they did; that they laid a foundation which in its way was good but not sufficient for us to build upon.”36 England’s castigation of the U.S. government in 1967 shows that Mormon liberals were not afraid to chastise their nation when they believed its actions contradicted either gospel or constitutional principles. In doing so, however, they were usually quick to distance themselves from any association with left-wing radicalism. For example, England’s article begins with the caveat that his objections to the Vietnam War “in no way implies…approval of various violent or sensationalist forms of opposition to the war in this country.”37 Modern Mormon political thought was not immune to radicalism. However, over the course of the century it was actually Mormons on the right, not Mormons on the left, who were more susceptible to extremist ideas, movements, and personalities. Even more revealing than the general boundaries in which Mormon political thought evolved was the fact that most of the political disagreements that seeped into Zion over the course of the century were not arguments over general religious and political principles, but rather, arguments over how to translate shared principles into specific positions and policies. Even the most contentious political 36 37 James E. Talmage, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 126. England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam,” 71-72. 18 debates in the Mormon community followed this pattern. For example, no one in the LDS community on either side of the polarizing League of Nations debate questioned the maxim that the United States was uniquely responsible for promoting democracy and freedom around the globe. When Latter-day Saints in the 1970s and early 1980s argued amongst themselves over the merits of the Equal Rights Amendment, moreover, both sides honestly believed that their respective cause most closely aligned with the church’s stated mission to strengthen the family. For the most part, modern Mormon political thought tended to splinter over specifics rather than generalities. This study uses several, sometimes overlapping methods to uncover and illuminate modern Mormon political thought. One of these is to look closely at the direct involvement of the LDS Church in various political controversies. After disbanding the People’s Party and guiding their members into the national parties in the early 1890s, Mormon leaders repeatedly promised that they would not use their religious authority for explicitly partisan ends. However, they reserved the right to respond to political issues that, in their minds, directly affected the moral fabric of the nation, the progress of God’s kingdom, or both. As church leaders quickly realized, there was no clear-cut line separating partisan politics from issue politics. Nor did the new pattern make it any easier to decide which political issues to address, and which to ignore. Nevertheless, over the course of the century the LDS hierarchy as a collective unit mostly did their best to remain neutral toward parties and candidates while exercising their right to help shape the environment in which they and their people lived. In most cases, the 19 modern church’s incursions into the political realm consisted of official public statements from the hierarchy. Less common and more controversial were those instances when LDS leaders either directly contacted Mormon legislators asking them to vote a certain way, or sought to convert their members at the grassroots level into political activists. Since this is not primarily a history of the political activities of the modern LDS hierarchy, examples of ecclesiastical involvement in the political realm that fail to shed much light on the political thought of either the hierarchy or the general membership rarely make their way into this study. However, this still leaves room for dozens of episodes that either reveal to some extent what Mormon leaders were thinking at a given point in time, or that sparked a general outpouring of political discourse from the Latter-day Saints. Another approach this study employs is to examine several manifestations of Mormon political thought through the lens of their symbiotic relationship to internal church policies. In some cases, the LDS hierarchy’s perspective toward a particular political development resulted in changes to church policy or the creation of a new program. One example of this was the degree to which the First Presidency’s opposition to the New Deal contributed to the creation in 1936 of an independent church welfare plan.38 At other times, efforts to introduce new church policies or modify older ones played a significant role in influencing Mormon attitudes toward surrounding political issues. During the early part of the century, for example, the hierarchy’s campaign to convince Latter-day Saints to more strictly adhere to the 38 On the LDS Church Welfare Plan, see Leonard J. Arrington and Wayne K. Hinton, “Origin of the Welfare Plan of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” BYU Studies 5, no. 2 (Winter 1964): 67-86; and Cannon, “’What a Power We Will Be in This Land,’” 66-75. 20 Mormon health code, or Word of Wisdom, dovetailed with and generated additional support for the nationwide movement to outlaw liquor. Sometimes the relationship went both ways. The persistence of nineteenth-century era racial barriers within the church could not help but exercise a profound influence on Latter-day Saints’ views in the 1950s and 1960s of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. At the same time, the broader movement for racial equality forced church members to reexamine their church’s long-standing position toward people of African descent. This study also periodically keeps the reader apprised of Utah’s changing political landscape over the course of the twentieth century. It makes no claim to offering a complete history of Utah politics. Moreover, Utah history and Mormon history are far from synonymous, and many church members never lived in the Beehive State. That being said, Utah’s political history offers a unique window into the mindset of many ordinary Mormons who never put pen to paper. It also constitutes part of the ongoing backdrop against which the major developments in this story unfold. For these reasons, the following chapters take note of controversial campaigns, important state and national elections, contentious fights over specific issues, and most importantly, the major political realignments that the Beehive State underwent at different points during the century. The most common method this dissertation employs to extrapolate and analyze modern Mormon political thought is to closely examine a wide variety of written texts, including religious talks, political speeches, newspaper editorials, official church statements, journal and magazine articles, books, pamphlets, and more. Because this study is primarily concerned with thought, it frequently dissects 21 these writings in a more detailed and lengthier manner than one would typically find in biographies or monographic case studies. Given the impossibility of subjecting every political text from twentieth-century Mormonism to this kind of rigorous examination, this study tends to favor writings that best represent a major strand of Mormon political thought at a particular juncture. In some parts it simply uses a debate between two individuals or groups to illustrate a broader fault line running through the Mormon community at a specific moment in time. Although this is primarily a study of thought, most of the Latter-day Saints it evaluates were not intellectuals, but rather church leaders, politicians, and lay members in the pew. It thus attempts to offer a cross section of voices rather than constitute a traditional work of intellectual history. *** Not unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors, twentieth-century Latterday Saints frequently boasted that the restored gospel contained every solution their countrymen needed to fix America’s problems. In the dark days of the Great Depression, for example, apostle Melvin J. Ballard told his fellow Saints that the unprecedented economic crisis that was tempting various nations to experiment with fascism and communism “can only be solved in the Lord’s way. We have the Lord’s way,” he assured them, “and it is our responsibility to demonstrate to the world that the Lord’s way is effective.”39 Without question, modern Mormons 39 Melvin J. Ballard, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 106. 22 continued to display a strong and, in the context of an increasingly secular society, unusual tendency to look to their own religious tradition—to its scripture, its history, its culture, and the teachings of its current leaders—for any insights that might inform their political thought. At the same time, this study also reveals how thoroughly immersed in their surrounding political and ideological milieu the Latter-day Saints became. If the radicalism of Zion nationalism had set nineteenthcentury Mormon political thought well outside the crowd, by the twentieth century it was often indistinguishable from the political thought of contemporary politicians, outspoken media pundits, or left-wing and especially right-wing ideologues. Of all the outside belief-systems and movements that made their way into Zion over the course of the century, none exercised more influence over the twentieth-century church than modern American conservatism.40 As was true nationally, conservatism’s rise among the Mormons would begin in earnest in the mid-1930s in the form of a small but vocal backlash against the perceived excesses of the New Deal, and in response to the mounting pressure on the U.S. to abandon what conservatives saw as the nation’s historical and wise policy of political isolation.41 The presence in the church hierarchy of such outspoken conservative thinkers as J. Reuben Clark may have given them more opportunities to disseminate their views than their small numbers would have otherwise allowed, yet Mormon 40 For an insightful overview of the historiography of modern American conservatism, see Kim Phillips-Fein, “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” The Journal of American History 98, no. 3 (Dec. 2011): 723-743. 41 On the beginnings of modern conservatism in the 1930s, see David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 9-38; and Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009). 23 conservatives in the 1930s and 1940s largely failed to persuade their co-religionists to oppose the new liberalism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. Beginning in the 1950s, different factions of conservatives nationwide began shedding their older parochialism in the hopes of achieving a new fusion that would make conservatism the leading ideological component of the Republican Party.42 The glue holding these various groups together was their shared anticommunism which, in the words of historian George Nash, “brought to the postwar Right a profound conviction that the West was engaged in a titanic struggle with an implacable adversary—Communism—which sought nothing less than the conquest of the world.”43 In addition to eroding their earlier support for isolationism, this conviction also persuaded many conservatives that New Deal liberalism was not only wasteful and contrary to America’s tradition of rugged individualism, but that it also constituted nothing less than the road to communism. As the conservative intellectual Frank Meyer put it, “No irreconcilable differences exist between it [liberalism] and Communism—only differences as to method and means.”44 With apostle Ezra Taft Benson as their de facto leader, the most extreme Mormon conservatives in the 1950s and 1960s sought to elevate this association between liberalism and communism to the status of official church doctrine. But just as anticommunism bred contention throughout the nation and frequently hurt the 42 On the fusion between economic libertarians, defenders of traditional moral and religious values, and militant anti-communists in the 1950s, see George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Wilmington: Basic Books, 2006), 197-206. 43 Ibid., xxi. 44 Quoted in Ibid., 227. 24 conservative cause, the efforts of Benson and other right-wing Mormons to make anticommunism a litmus test for Latter-day Saints likewise tended to backfire. It was not until the post-Vietnam era that conservatism became the preferred political ideology of most Latter-day Saints. When it did, it had far less to do with stopping communism or arresting the growth of the welfare state than with protecting Zion and its American sanctuary from such perceived excesses of liberal culture as mounting demands for gay rights, the legalization of abortion, and radical feminism. In the same general period, many evangelicals, Catholics, and some Jews around the country were likewise moving to the right in response to such ominous developments and forcing their agenda to the top of the overall conservative agenda. With their help, conservatives finally succeeded in becoming the leading ideological force within the GOP.45 Thus, a general overview of the history of the conservative movement reveals how closely its nationwide ascent paralleled its ascent within the modern LDS Church. The additional perspective this study offers on the birth, evolution, and eventual triumph of the modern conservative movement is just one illustration of the fact that Latter-day Saints experienced the highs and lows of the twentieth century alongside their fellow countrymen, not as isolated members of some remote theocratic kingdom. Along the way, they frequently derived guidance, motivation, and a recognizable political vocabulary from conservatism as well as from many 45 On the origins and eventual birth of the Religious Right, as well as the contribution it made to the broader conservative movement and, eventually, the GOP, see Angela M. Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011); and Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 25 other outside movements and ideologies. Far more than its nineteenth-century predecessor, then, modern Mormon political thought was forged in the context of Americanization. Hence, in addition to providing the first comprehensive history of Mormon political discourse, this dissertation also necessarily sheds further light on several of the most important strands of twentieth-century American political thought. At the same time, this study also demonstrates that in many respects, modern Latter-day Saints remained a people apart. However Americanized much of it may have become, their political thought would retain enough of its original distinctiveness to warrant its own unique classification. Much of this was due to the persistent influence of their radical past. They may have put Zion nationalism on hold for the time being, yet twentieth-century Mormons continued to reach back to their founding era for any nuggets of wisdom that might help them maneuver through the thickets of the modern age. One of the qualities that made their nineteenth-century past so seductive was its malleability. Indeed, this was the period when Mormons first expressed their genuine hope that Zion and the United States might serve as long-term allies in bringing the restored gospel to the entire world. Yet it was also the period when Latter-day Saints first declared that America was on the road to apostasy. However contradictory, both perspectives continually resurfaced throughout the following century. Sometimes the optimists were more numerous. Sometimes the pessimists had the upper hand. Moving forward, it is unlikely that either of these extreme Mormon assessments of America’s present and future will disappear any time soon. 26 The more likely possibility is that they will continue to coexist, in constant tension with one another, so long as the United States remains the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. CHAPTER 2 THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ZION NATIONALISM From the early 1830s until the early 1890s, in locations ranging from western Missouri to the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons worked to establish a righteous new nation called Zion, or the Kingdom of God.1 To this holy nation the literal descendants of ancient Israel and any others who wished to join them would gather. As Joseph Smith told a newspaper editor in 1842: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel…That Zion will be built upon this continent.”2 If “Gentile” nations such as the United States had any part to play in the establishment of Zion (and the Latter-day Saints were not always certain that they did), it was to serve as a mere stepping-stone to “prepare the way for a kingdom which shall have dominion over all the earth to the ends thereof.”3 During most of the nineteenth century, Zion nationalism superseded American nationalism in the minds of the Latter-day Saints. Like other Christians, Mormons also used the name Kingdom of God as a synonym for their ecclesiastical organization. During the final years of Joseph Smith’s ministry in Nauvoo, Illinois, Kingdom of God became more associated in the Mormon mind with a distinct political system. Mathew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844-January 1846, THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Ronald K. Esplin, Mathew J. Grow, and Mathew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2016), xxviii-xxix. 2 Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, Vol. 1, Autobiographical and Historical Writings (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1989), 437. 3 Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:73. 1 28 As the Mormons soon realized, the Zion project was an audacious undertaking that involved gathering thousands of people from North America and Europe and then unifying them around a set of beliefs and practices that were sharply at odds with mainstream American culture. Not surprisingly, they encountered challenges from the start, from plans that proved unworkable to opposition from outsiders raising the cry of imperium in imperio. Yet the Saints proved both resilient and adaptable. Responding to the myriad challenges consistently thrown their way, they guided their infant Zion through four major phases during this roughly sixty-year period. Mormon political thought in the nineteenth century largely grew out of these efforts to plant an earthly Zion in what their scriptures called the “land of promise.”4 During most of the century, Mormons viewed the relationship between Zion and the United States in highly antagonistic terms. At first, they envisioned their new nation as a righteous alternative to what they saw as the increasingly contentious, unequal, and secular nation of their birth. Then for a brief period during Smith’s prophetic tenure, the Mormons considered the possibility of building Zion not apart from, but with the help of their fellow Americans. It was in this context that they first embraced the idea that God himself had inspired the framing of the U.S. Constitution and overseen the founding of the American republic, all for the purpose of laying the necessary groundwork for the establishment of his earthly kingdom. Having adopted their own peculiar form of American exceptionalism, the 4 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 10, 14, 676. 29 Latter-day Saints were temporarily hopeful that some kind of partnership between Zion and the United States could be forged. When this alliance failed to materialize, the Mormons moved west. For the remainder of most of the century, they wanted nothing more from their fellow countrymen than to be left alone. Not coincidentally, their political thought in these years reached the apogee of its radicalism. At its core was the concept of theodemocracy, which called for restoring God to the political arena from which, the Saints complained, he had been so rudely thrust. Its two most controversial corollaries were the rejection of the compartmentalizing of religious leaders to purely spiritual matters, and the celebration of unity, or what the Saints called “common consent,” in contrast to the fierce partisanship that characterized the country’s pluralistic and competitive democracy.5 As the Mormons discarded Zion nationalism and the more extreme corollaries of theodemocracy at the turn of the twentieth century, their political thought underwent a profound transformation taking it from the margins to the mainstream of American political life. Nevertheless, the legacy of their earlier political thought—ranging from the patriotic outreach of the 1830s and early 1840s, to the millennial separatism of the 1850s and 1860s—continued to exercise a powerful hold upon the political outlook of modern Mormons. Understanding that nineteenth-century background is thus critical in order to appreciate the degree to which twentieth-century Mormonism would part ways with its radical past, even as differing interpretations of that past continued to shape the Mormon worldview. 5 Mason, “God and the People,” 349-375. 30 Sacred Land, Sinful Nation Published on the eve of the founding of the Church of Christ in 1830, the Book of Mormon contained the first adumbrations of what soon became the Latterday Saints’ paramount mission of building a righteous new nation upon the sacred land of America. In ancient times, the book claimed, God had commanded several small offshoots of his covenant people to flee familiar biblical lands and cross unidentified oceans until they reached a “land of promise…which is choice above all other lands” (1 Nephi 2:20).6 To those so fortunate to settle in this chosen land, whether anciently or in modern times, the Book of Mormon issued a promise and a warning. While nations that served Jesus Christ and obeyed his commandments would “prosper in the land of promise,” nations that failed to abide by these conditions would be “swept off when the fullness of his wrath shall come upon them” (Ether 2:9).7 The actual text of the Book of Mormon never explicitly identified the land of promise as either North or South America, let alone western New York where the ancient record was purportedly discovered. Yet even before its publication, Joseph Smith and his followers readily assumed that the book’s mostly thousand-year history had taken place somewhere in the New World.8 Accordingly, the first Mormon missionaries often advertised their new work of scripture as nothing less 6 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 676. Ibid., 14, 676. 8 As scholar Terryl Givens shows, there has never been a consensus in the LDS community as to where exactly in the New World the Book of Mormon narrative unfolded. See Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 89-116. 7 31 than a history of the Indians.9 In his personal history recorded in 1838, Smith revealed what was probably the earliest source of this tendency to map Book of Mormon lands onto America. He recalled that when the angel Moroni first appeared to him on the night of September 21, 1823, the heavenly messenger introduced the Book of Mormon as “an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang.”10 Thereafter, Smith’s revelations uniformly designated Native Americans as descendants of ancient Book of Mormon peoples.11 Long before its publication, explorers, colonists, and revolutionaries had anticipated the Book of Mormon’s sacralization of the New World by describing its centuries-long isolation and eventual discovery and settlement in providential terms.12 As John Adams once wrote in this vein: “I always consider the settlement of America with Reverence and Wonder—as the Opening of a grand scene and Design in Providence, for the Illumination of the Ignorant and the Emancipation of the slavish Part of Mankind all over the Earth.”13 The Book of Mormon included vague yet unmistakable allusions to this settlement when its ancient authors prophesied of future Gentiles going “forth…upon the many waters” to reach the Promised Land, where they would settle amidst the doomed remnants of fallen Book of Mormon civilizations and eventually be “delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all 9 Ibid., 94-95. Karen Lynn Davidson, David J. Whittaker, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, Histories, Vol. 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844, Vol. 1 of the Histories series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 222. 11 Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1, 11, 21, 41-42, 44, 105, 118. 12 Sylvia Soderlind and James Taylor Carson, eds., American Exceptionalisms: From Winthrop to Winfrey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011). 13 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L.H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 257. 10 32 other nations” (1 Nephi 13:13,19).14 Echoing the antimonarchical sentiment of the postrevolutionary age, the book sternly warned against any future ploys to restore monarchy to the New World, since its purpose was to be “a land of liberty,” with “no kings upon the land…For he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish.” So long as its occupants remained righteous, the book promised, God will “fortify this land against all other nations” (2 Nephi 10:11-14).15 At first glance, the Book of Mormon seemed only to mirror the prevailing nationalist ethos that coincided with its publication. Upon closer examination, however, this new work of scripture sharply diverged from the standard nationalist narrative. In recognizing the hand of God in the deliverance of its new Gentile inhabitants, the Book of Mormon clearly made room in the Promised Land for, and even promised conditional blessings to, the United States and other Gentile nations. However, the major reason the land had been formed and for so many years kept hidden from the outside world, the book revealed, was to provide the ideal location for the modern restoration of lost Israel and the triumph of Zion.16 In fact, the Book of Mormon contained the hopeful message that its publication would coincide with the rise of a latter-day Zion in the Promised Land. “And blessed are they which shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day,” declared one verse (1 Nephi 13:37).17 Inspired by such passages, early Mormons believed the time was now at hand for the scattered remnants of Israel 14 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 34-37. Ibid., 105. 16 Ibid., 36-44, 68-74, 92-93, 104-106, 618-627, 676. Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 101-105. 17 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 37. 15 33 and their Gentile allies to construct this American Zion. Classifying American Indians as descendants of these transplanted Israelites, Smith and his people saw their conversion as the first step in the gathering of Israel.18 Ancient Israel may have gone astray, but according to the Book of Mormon, the Lord had not forsaken his original covenant people. As the book’s title page explained, its purpose was to “shew unto the remnant of the house of Israel…that they are not cast off forever.”19 This emphasis on Native Americans and on the House of Israel more generally, Joseph Smith biographer Richard Bushman has argued, “turned American history upside down.” For the Mormons, Bushman observes, “The story of Israel overshadowed the history of American liberty…The gathering of lost Israel, not the establishment of liberty, was the great work.”20 About six months following the publication of the Book of Mormon, Smith shed additional light on Zion’s ancient, biblical lineage by introducing his people to the story of the prophet Enoch, a figure only cryptically mentioned in the Bible.21 Smith’s audacious revision of the Old Testament identified Enoch as the founder of an ancient city whose people were so righteous and united that they were renamed Zion and literally “taken up into heaven!” Smith’s apocryphal account then prophesied that Enoch and his people would eventually descend from heaven and Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 122. Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 3 20 Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 104. 21 Genesis 5:21-24 (King James Version) 18 19 34 meet the latter-day inhabitants of a “New Jerusalem,” which city, Smith’s revelations subsequently promised, the Latter-day Saints would soon build in the New World.22 To set in motion the fulfillment of this prophecy, Smith sent four missionaries to western Missouri in the fall of 1830 to preach to the Indians and search out a location “where the City shall be built.”23 By the summer of 1831, the Mormon prophet had designated Independence, Jackson County, Missouri as “the land of promise & the place for the City of Zion.”24 For the Mormons this was the New Jerusalem that Saint John the Revelator had prophesied would come “down from God out of heaven” (Revelation 21:2).25 It would serve as the capital city at the center of an ever-expanding Zion. Reminiscent of promises the Lord had once made to ancient Israel, one of Smith’s revelations promised modern Israel “a land flowing with milk & Honey…for the land of your inheritence & for the inheritance of your Children forever.” Eventually they would be “a free People,” the revelation went on to promise, who would “have no laws but my laws for I am your Law giver.”26 As historian Mark Ashurst-McGee points out: “The revelation spoke to the political independence of the church…Embarking to the West, toward the future land of Zion, Smith believed that God was once again setting up his kingdom on the earth.” The 22 “Extract From The Prophecy Of Enoch,” The Evening and the Morning Star 3, Vol. 1 (August 1832): 3. Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1, 96. 23 Michael Hubbard Mackay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, Vol. 1 of the Documents series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Mathew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2013), 185-186. 24 Godfrey, Ashurst-McGee, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, 7-8. 25 Revelation 21:2 (King James Version) 26 Mackay, Dirkmaat, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, 231-232. 35 establishment of Zion would thus liberate the Mormons from their subservience to rival power structures, notably that of the United States government.27 The Mormons were able to visualize their undersized colony in Jackson County, Missouri as the germ of an independent nation because of their millennialism. As their eventual name—Latter-day Saints—would indicate, they were fully convinced that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the enactment of his thousand-year reign were close at hand.28 Similar to other millennialists, the Mormons expected dire calamities to pave the way for Jesus’ imminent return.29 In an 1833 letter to non-Mormon newspaper editor, Noah C. Saxton, Smith predicted that “not many years shall pass away before the United States shall present such a scene of bloodshed as has not a parallel in the hystory of our nation.” “Pestalence hail famine and earthquake,” he went on, “will sweep the wicked of this generation from off the face of this Land.”30 The Saints were promised that those who gave heed to their prophet’s warnings and gathered to Zion would find safety amidst a world in chaos.31 Early Mormons boasted that as it welcomed the Lord’s elect in ever-greater numbers, their new nation would rapidly expand outward and absorb more Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising,” 207-208. On Mormon millennialism, see Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1993). 29 Mackay, Dirkmaat, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, 180-181. Godfrey, Ashurst-McGee, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, 330-331. 30 Ibid., 355. 31 On Zion’s mission to provide spiritual and temporal safety in the last days, see Mark AshurstMcGee, “Zion as a Refuge from the Wars of Nations,” in Patrick Q. Mason, J. David Pulsipher, and Richard L. Bushman, eds., War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives (Greg Kofford Books, Inc., 2012), 83-92; and Underwood, Millenarian World, 24-41. 27 28 36 territory.32 “For Zion must increase in beauty & in holy-ness her borders must be enlarged,” one of Smith’s revelations proclaimed.33 Yet violence would play no part in Zion’s expansion. “Evry man that will not take his sword against his Neighbor must needs flee unto Zion,” another revelation stated, “& it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another.”34 In contrast to the rival nations of Babylon, Zion’s growing power would result not from a stockpile of weapons or money, but from the unity and righteousness of its people. With Enoch’s ancient city as their model, the people of Zion would strive to be “of one heart and of one mind,” with “no poor among them.”35 Only then would they be worthy to rule under Christ’s leadership during the millennium.36 Despite diverging from the mainstream nationalist narrative by emphasizing the literal gathering of Israel and ultimate millennial triumph of Zion, the Book of Mormon nevertheless promised that America could also serve as “a land of liberty unto the Gentiles” (2 Nephi 10:11).37 As stipulated throughout the text, however, this liberty was entirely contingent on their willingness to obey God’s commandments. Foremost among these was their responsibility to lend assistance Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising,” 216-223. Godfrey, Ashurst-McGee, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, 236. 34 Mackay, Dirkmaat, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, 280. 35 “Extract From The Prophecy Of Enoch,” 3. 36 On the Mormons’ belief that Zion would eventually govern the earth during the millennium, see Hill, Quest for Refuge, xvii-xxii. As Hill points out, the Saints did not expect Zion to supplant earthly governments and exercise global sovereignty until after Christ’s Second Coming. Nevertheless, to ensure Zion’s readiness to withstand the coming calamities and to step forward and govern at any moment, the Mormons were fully intent on becoming the majority in Jackson County and thereafter expanding outward. Although the Mormons never formally seceded from the United States government, their critics had understandable reasons for accusing them of building a kind of nation within the nation. See Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising,” 207-249, wherein he examines the essential components of Zion nationalism. 37 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 105. 32 33 37 to, or better yet, directly unite with modern Israel to build up the Kingdom of God.38 Failure to abide by these conditions would lead to destruction, “for if iniquity shall abound,” one Book of Mormon passage warns, “cursed shall be the land for their sakes” (2 Nephi 1:7).39 With an inclination for dualistic thinking stemming from their millennial worldview, the earliest Mormons were convinced that their fellow Americans were on the pathway to destruction.40 Much like the Jaredites and Nephites whose ancient American civilizations had collapsed under the weight of their own iniquity, they believed, modern Americans had defiled the Promised Land by ignoring the poor and engendering religious and political conflict, reducing their society to a fractured patchwork of selfish, competing interests.41 The Mormon prophet warned his fellow Americans in December 1832 that such wickedness would plunge the United States, and much of the world, into chaos and violence. Undoubtedly stimulated by news of the ongoing nullification crisis in South Carolina, Smith’s so-called Civil War revelation prophesied that “the rebellion of South Carolina” would “eventually terminate in the death and missery of many souls.” Not only would this rebellion escalate into full-scale war between the northern and southern states, the revelation warned, but other nations such as Great Britain would also intervene until the war 38 On the Gentiles’ responsibility to serve Zion as mandated by the Book of Mormon, see Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 102-105. 39 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 73. 40 On the “Apocalyptic Dualism” of early Mormonism, see Underwood, Millenarian World, 42-57. 41 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 100-101, 135-136, 141-144, 663-668. For a more extensive version of this argument, see Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 113-122. 38 “poured out upon all Nations.” Violent slave revolts and natural disasters would soon follow, finally resulting in “a full end of all Nations.”42 Although acutely aware of the political and social turmoil unfolding around them, the Mormons received little encouragement in Smith’s earliest revelations to participate in either mainstream politics or social reform in order to save the American nation from impending ruin. His language was millennial and separatist, not activist, except insofar as activism entailed bringing people into Zion’s peaceful orbit while the rest of the world went to hell. The Saints were commanded to “stand ye in holy places and be not moved untill the day of the Lord come, for be hold it cometh quickly saith the Lord.”43 Hence, Mormon reverence for the land of America did not at first coincide with reverence toward the current nation occupying the land. Instead, their initial conclusion was that their fellow Americans’ refusal to abide by the conditions required of those inhabiting the Promised Land necessitated the collapse of the United States and the triumph of Zion. A New Role for the Republic Convinced of the nearness of the Second Coming and disgusted by what they saw as the wickedness of their fellow countrymen, the Latter-day Saints were originally hesitant to assign the American republic a prominent role in the unfolding of God’s plan. The United States was initially viewed as more of an obstacle that needed to be swept aside to make room for God’s kingdom. Hence, the Mormons felt 42 Godfrey, Ashurst-McGee, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, 330331. 43 Ibid., 331. 39 little inclination to participate in either mainstream politics or social reform for the purpose of salvaging a system they believed was teetering on the verge of collapse. But as Zion came under attack, first from local mobs and then from the state of Missouri, the Saints began to conceive of the United States as a divinely inspired nation that would stand by Zion’s side as both ally and protector. The Mormons would in turn reciprocate by inspiring their fellow Americans to return to their nation’s highest ideals. Rather than flee to Zion and await the collapse of earthly governments, as they had originally anticipated, the Mormons would instead employ a new strategy of calling upon their fellow countrymen and their elected officials to uphold the Constitution by coming to the aid of unpopular minorities. The Latter-day Saints thus briefly entertained the possibility of a new and lasting partnership between the Kingdom of God and the American republic. Although this partnership failed to materialize, Mormon efforts in the 1830s and 1840s to synchronize American history, institutions, and values with the goals of Zion nationalism would lay the foundation for their renewed embrace of American exceptionalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Just two years after Smith had named Independence, Missouri the site of the New Jerusalem in the summer of 1831, a group of Jackson County residents who feared the Saints’ growing numbers and nationalist ambitions issued a manifesto ordering them to leave the county. After witnessing the destruction of their printing press and the tarring and feathering of two of their beloved local leaders, the outnumbered Missouri Mormons had no choice but to comply. By the end of 1833 40 most of them had relocated to nearby Clay County, thereby putting the entire Zion project in jeopardy.44 In the midst of this crisis the Mormon prophet issued a pair of revelations instructing the Saints, for the first time, to reach beyond Zion for outside help. In the first revelation they were encouraged to befriend the “Law of the land which is constitutonal,” and to seek out “good men and wise men” to serve in public office. Until this moment, Smith’s revelations had not mentioned the Constitution. Now it was being hailed as a universal document for “maintaning rights and privealiges belonging to all mankind,” including the citizens of Zion.45 The second revelation admonished the Saints to glean wisdom from the New Testament parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Just as the widow had unceasingly pestered the cynical judge to “avenge her” of her enemies, the revelation counseled, the children of Zion were to “importune at the feet of the Judge; and if he heed them not, let them importune at the feet of the Governor; and if the Governor heed them not, let them importune at the feet of the President.”46 The Saints were initially hopeful that by winning the support of powerful political leaders, they could return to their homes in Jackson County and resume the building of their New Jerusalem. To forge ties with the world beyond Zion, the Mormons initiated what became a long running campaign of highlighting their commonalities with other On the expulsion from Jackson County, see Matthew Lund, “The Vox Populi is the Vox Dei: American Localism and the Mormon Expulsion from Jackson County, Missouri” (Master’s thesis: Utah State University, 2012); and Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 222-230. 45 Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Brent M. Rogers, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, Documents, Vol. 3: February 1833-March 1834, Vol. 3 of the Documents series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Ronald K. Esplin and Mathew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2014), 224. 46 Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, 269. 44 41 Americans. As part of this campaign they issued a “Declaration on Government and Law” in 1835.47 Employing conservative language that bore little resemblance to Smith’s earlier, millennial-infused writings, the document presented the Mormons as loyal Americans who held conventional political views for their time. “We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man,” read the statement’s opening passage. This was a far cry from their initial characterization of secular governments as man-made institutions bound for destruction. The Mormons were now ascribing earthly governments to God’s will. Having derived from the same heavenly source, the statement implied, churches and nation-states should work together for the accomplishment of God’s ends. In line with standard republican thought, however, citizens were only “bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside,” the statement was careful to point out, as long as their civic leaders “protected…their inherent and inalienable rights.”48 The Mormons thus reserved the right to criticize their government, but for the time being they would do so in the familiar language of republicanism. Consistent with their revelatory instructions to appeal to one level of authority at a time, the Saints’ initial efforts at molding public opinion were largely designed to forge political alliances in the state of Missouri. By 1838 it was painfully clear that these efforts had come to naught. After five years of bringing their case before state officials, the Mormons had failed to win back their New Jerusalem. Even 47 Mathew C. Godfrey, Brenden W. Rensink, Alex D. Smith, Max H. Parkin, and Alexander L. Baugh, Documents, Vol. 4: April 1834-September 1835, Vol. 4 of the Documents series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Ronald K. Esplin, Mathew J. Grow, and Mathew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 479-482. 48 Ibid., 482-484. 42 worse, by the end of that year they had been forcibly expelled from Missouri under the looming threat of Governor Lilburn Boggs’s infamous extermination order.49 Having been thrust out of Missouri and forced to start from scratch in their new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, the Mormons’ campaign to acquire political allies now shifted from the state to the national level. The 1833 revelation likening the Saints to the offended widow had identified the president as the final authority to whom they should appeal for redress. In the fall of 1839, Smith and several associates journeyed to Washington D.C. to present their case before the nation’s highest officers. Their two meetings with President Martin Van Buren marked an ominous beginning to this new phase of their campaign. Van Buren reportedly acknowledged the justness of the Mormons’ cause, but he had no wish to “come in contact with the whole state of Missouri.”50 He would not risk alienating Missourians on the eve of an election, even if that meant winning to his side a few thousand Latter-day Saints. Equally important, the Mormons issued their grievances against Missouri at a time when the sovereignty of individual states was considered sacrosanct, especially among Van Buren’s Democratic supporters.51 Coming on the heels of the Latter-day Saints’ violent expulsion from Missouri, Smith’s disappointing mission to the nation’s capital converted the Mormon prophet into a fierce critic of what was known in the pre-Civil War era as Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 356-372. Karen Lynn Davidson, Richard L. Jensen, and David J. Whittaker, Histories, Vol. 2: Assigned Histories, 1831-1847, Vol. 2 of the Histories series of THE JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 285. 51 On the nineteenth-century Democratic Party’s philosophy of limited federal power, see John Gerring, “A Chapter in the History of American Party Ideology: The Nineteenth-Century Democratic Party (1828-1892),” Polity 26, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 742-743. 49 50 43 the states’ rights doctrine.52 In the decades before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal government rarely intervened on behalf of persecuted minority groups.53 For the Mormon prophet this was a recipe for democracy run amok. “The State rights doctrine are what feed mobs,” he frustratingly quipped, “They are a dead carcass—a stink.”54 Smith’s opposition to the most extreme forms of American federalism in this period coincided with his growing reverence for the Constitution, a document he was just beginning to equate with divine writ. But even the Constitution had its flaws, he argued. “The only fault I find with the Constitution,” he explained in 1843, “is, it is not broad enough to cover the whole ground. Although it provides that all men shall enjoy religious freedom, yet it does not provide the manner by which that freedom can be preserved…Its sentiments are good, but it provides no means of enforcing them.” Smith even suggested amending the Constitution to require federal officials, at the risk of facing capital punishment, to come to the aid of mistreated minorities.55 As their plight grew more desperate, Smith and his people increasingly supported the idea of a protective federal government that would ensure religious liberty for all Americans. James B. Allen, “Joseph Smith vs. John C. Calhoun: The States’ Rights Dilemma and Early Mormon History,” in Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens, eds., Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 73-90. 53 The policy of Indian removal implemented under President Andrew Jackson may appear to constitute an exception to this trend, since according to Jackson apologists it was done to protect Indians from local mobs and state governments. Yet whatever Jackson’s true motives, Indian removal unquestionably fulfilled the wishes of southern state governments and so can hardly be considered an affront to states’ rights. See Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 342-357. 54 Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Orem: Grandin Book Company, 1991), 259. 55 Joseph Smith Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B.H. Roberts, 2nd ed., 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1971), 6:57. Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M. Rogers, Journals, Vol. 3: May 1843-June 1844, Vol. 3 of the Journals series of the JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS, general editors Ronald K. Esplin and Mathew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2015), 113. 52 44 Even with their attempts to redeem Zion through conservative forms of outreach consistently coming up short, the Mormons were still not ready to abandon their hopes of winning a sizeable body of Americans to their side. As the 1844 presidential election approached, the Mormons decided to broaden their public relations campaign. Having been rebuffed time and again by Missouri officials, they would now appeal to other states across the nation by sending open letters to their citizens and state legislatures. They also cast their eyes once again on the federal government. Having failed to gain any political traction whatsoever with either the Van Buren administration or the subsequent administration of President John Tyler, the Mormons reached out to five politicians who were likely to seek the presidency in 1844.56 In these and other Mormon writings designed for public consumption, the earlier gulf between Zion and the United States had been significantly reduced. The Saints now pled with their countrymen to protect them from mob violence and assist them in recovering their pilfered homes and property. Consistent with their 1835 “Declaration on Government and Law,” this meant adopting the language of American nationalism. In his 1843 letter to the people of Vermont entitled, “General Joseph Smith’s Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys,” the Mormon prophet avoided the millennial and separatist language of Zion nationalism while emphasizing his American identity and revolutionary heritage. “From the old ‘French War’ to the final consummation of American Independence,” his appeal began, “my fathers, 56 On the 1843-44 phase of the Mormons’ public relations campaign, see Brent M. Rogers, “To the ‘Honest and Patriotic Sons of Liberty’: Mormon Appeals for Redress and Social Justice, 1843-44,” The Journal of Mormon History 39, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 36-67. 45 heart to heart, and shoulder to shoulder, with the noble fathers of our liberty, fought and bled; and, with the most of that venerable band of patriots, they have gone to rest, bequeathing a glorious country with all her inherent rights to millions of posterity.”57 Smith and his people hoped to demonstrate that as sincere patriots whose forefathers had helped secure the country’s independence, they were equally entitled to the rights and privileges for which the Revolution had been fought. Far from depicting Zion and the American republic as inherent rivals, Smith and his people were now proposing the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between the two nations. Ideally, the Gentiles would obey the Book of Mormon by helping to establish Zion, and modern Israel, for her part, would inculcate virtue and righteousness into the American body politic. Smith’s new revelatory insights on the origins and importance of the Constitution made it possible for the Saints to begin imagining the American nation as a potential ally. As Mark Ashurst-McGee points out, the Book of Mormon had consistently identified the Bible rather than the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence as the nation’s founding text. According to the Book of Mormon, however, the Bible on which the United States had been founded was no longer the pure Bible of its original authors. That it was built on a corrupted version of God’s word further indicted the United States in the eyes of early Mormons, AshurstMcGee argues.58 Then in December 1833, approximately four months after Missouri vigilantes had ordered his people out of Jackson County, Smith issued a new Joseph Smith Jr., “General Joseph Smith’s Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys,” (Nauvoo: Taylor and Woodruff, 1843), 3. 58 Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Zion In America: The Origins of Mormon Constitutionalism,” The Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 98. 57 46 revelation that elevated the Constitution above the Bible as the nation’s founding document. More importantly, the revelation attributed the Constitution to God’s direct inspiration. “I established the constitution of this land by the hands of wise men,” the Lord declared through his latter-day prophet.”59 As Ashurst-McGee writes, “Adopting the Constitution as a sort of scripture made it easier for the Saints to seek its protection.”60 With this new conception of their republic as having been founded by God and endowed with a glorious Constitution that they were now being admonished to preserve, the Mormons proved willing to temporize their earlier millennial dualism.61 They now believed that with their help, the once imminent collapse of the United States could be averted and the Lord’s millennial timetable prolonged.62 They did not abandon their expectation that the United States and other Gentile nations would eventually yield their sovereignty to the Kingdom of God. But until that future transfer of power took place, they now intimated, the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom could provide a hospitable environment for the nurturing of Zion. This new mentality that saw the two nations as potential allies rather than inherent enemies represented a real opportunity for the Mormons to have entered Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, 268. 60 Ashurst-McGee, “Zion In America,” 98. 61 On the Mormons’ temporary retreat from dualistic thinking as a result of persecution and politicization, see Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 227, 377, 512-513. 62 Joseph Smith’s reticence to predict a specific date for the Second Coming gave Mormon millennialism a degree of flexibility that was rare among premillennialists. Underwood illustrates this by contrasting Mormon millennialism with that of the Millerites. Underwood, Millenarian World, 112-126. Also see Hill, Quest for Refuge, xxi; and Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967), 16-19. 59 47 the American mainstream far sooner than they eventually did. Had American leaders come to their aid, it is more than likely that the Latter-day Saints’ isolationist proclivities would have undergone a significant decline while the conservative positions outlined in their 1835 “Declaration on Government and Law” would have become the basis of their political thought moving forward. Rather than turn their backs on the United States, as they were soon compelled to do, the Mormons desperately wished to return to Jackson County to build up Zion in a nation dedicated to protecting religious freedom. Of course, this is not what happened. By the end of 1843 the Mormons had more than complied with the Lord’s 1833 mandate to emulate the offended widow by appealing to every possible level of civic authority. After circumventing local party leaders by sending letters directly to five prospective candidates for the presidential election of 1844, the Mormon prophet received disappointing but predictable responses from three of them. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun’s position echoed what the Mormons had been hearing from federal officials since their meeting with Van Buren in 1839. “Candour compels me to repeat…that according to my views the case does not come within the jurisdiction of the federal government, which is one of limited and specific powers.”63 The candidates’ responses convinced Smith and his people that they had done all they could to persuade the nation’s leaders to come to Zion’s aid. Having exhausted their heavenly instructions to importune at the feet of their civic leaders, the Saints needed a new strategy. “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J.C. Calhoun,” The Times and Seasons 5, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1844): 394. Rogers, “To the ‘Honest and Patriotic Sons of Liberty,’” 40-41. 63 48 They were also desperate to understand why their fellow countrymen, whose revolutionary forefathers God had delivered and whose Constitution derived from heavenly inspiration, had thus far ignored their divine calling to lift the children of Zion atop their metaphorical shoulders. The Mormons’ conclusion was that modern America had apostatized, or fallen away from, its original founding principles. The concept of apostasy was a familiar one to the Latter-day Saints. As part of their restorationist worldview, they had already concluded that modern Christianity was but a shell of its primitive, pristine self. Transferring the doctrine of apostasy from the religious to the political realm may not have required much in the way of an imaginative leap, but it did provide the Mormons with a new vocabulary with which to condemn the United States. The Mormons had never been reluctant to pronounce fierce Jeremiads upon their nation. But while the Book of Mormon and Smith’s early revelations tended to chastise modern America for violating God’s commandments, the apostasy narrative that emerged in the early 1840s instead judged the American people for having betrayed their nation’s revolutionary heritage. As a native son of Vermont, Smith observed in his letter to the “Green Mountain Boys,” he had fully expected to grow up clothed in “the blessings and privileges of an American citizen…But to the disgrace of the United States, it is not so.”64 The Saints’ deprivations at the hands of Missourians were sad proof that their nation had fallen from its illustrious beginning. “Where is the patriotism of 76?” Smith despairingly asked. “Has the majesty of American liberty sunk into such vile servitude and oppression, that 64 Smith, “Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys,” 3. 49 justice has fled? Has the glory and influence of a Washington, an Adams, a Jefferson, a Lafayette, and a host of others forever departed?”65 Their narrative of national apostasy made it possible for the Mormons to continue affirming their patriotism even as they castigated the United States and once again prophesied its imminent destruction. Their Jeremiads against current government officials may have looked disloyal to outsiders, but the Saints never ceased praising the generation of Washington and Jefferson. Although they criticized mainstream antebellum interpretations of the Constitution, the Mormons continued to insist that if correctly understood, the nation’s founding document was actually on their side.66 It was actually their fellow citizens, they increasingly argued, who had deviated from authentic American principles. Paradoxically, then, even as they grew more willing to assign the United States a positive role in the unfolding of God’s plan, the Mormons were simultaneously subjecting it to a new wave of condemnations. By endowing the American nation with greater responsibility, they had unintentionally set it up for failure.67 Once again the Latter-day Saints perceived their nation inching toward a dangerous precipice, only this time the apocalyptic fate looming over America was seen as a direct result of the persecutions inflicted upon Zion and the American people’s unwillingness to come to the Mormons’ aid. Smith’s revelations had Ibid., 6. The Mormons countered the states’ rights position with an exegesis of the Constitution underscoring the powers it granted the federal government. See Joseph Smith’s rejoinder to John C. Calhoun in “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” 394-396. 67 For another perspective on Mormon efforts to assert their Americanness by distinguishing between the nation’s divine birthright and its current state of degradation, see Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989). 65 66 50 prepared his people for such an outcome. The same set of instructions that had admonished the Saints to emulate the widow in her dealings with the unjust judge came with the caveat that if the nation’s leaders “heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place, and in his fury vex the nation.”68 As their efforts to forge political alliances failed, the Mormons reverted to their earlier millennialism. “Remember,” Smith boldly stated in his rejoinder to Calhoun, “if the Latter-day Saints are not restored to all their rights, and paid for all their losses…God will come out of His hiding place and vex this nation with a sore vexation—yea, the consuming wrath of an offended God shall smoke through the nation, with as much distress and woe, as independence has blazed through with pleasure and delight.”69 With their fellow citizens and their elected officials showing no signs of paying heed to these warnings, the Saints fell back on their earlier isolationism, only this time in more radical form. In February 1844 Smith instructed the church’s second highest governing body, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to send teams of explorers to California and Oregon in search of an ideal place where the Saints could “build a city in a day—and have a government of our own.”70 Smith provided a doctrinal justification for building Zion in a location other than Jackson County when Jensen, Woodford, and Harper, Revelations and Translations, Vol. 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, 269. 69 “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” 395. 70 Hedges, Smith, and Rogers, Journals, Vol. 3, 180. Ronald K. Esplin, “’A Place Prepared’: Joseph, Brigham, and the Quest for Promised Refuge in the West,” The Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982): 90-94. As Esplin points out concerning these plans to investigate possible relocation sites in California and Oregon: “Perhaps because there were too few volunteers, more likely because of increasing preparations for the forthcoming political campaign, Joseph Smith never dispatched the planned-for western expedition.” Mormon leaders also briefly considered relocating Zion to the disputed territory between Mexico and the newly formed Republic of Texas. See Michael Scott Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002). 68 51 he taught the Saints, in April 1844, that “The whole [of] America is Zion.”71 In theory, the Saints could now build Zion anywhere in North or South America where they gathered. These nascent plans to create an independent Mormon kingdom outside the authority of the U.S. government were just one indication that Smith and his people had not only reverted to, but were willing to dramatically exceed, their original nationalist ambitions. Another indication was Smith’s formation in March 1844 of the Council of Fifty. Consisting of fifty men with the Mormon prophet at the helm, the Council’s underlying purpose was to lay “the foundation for a theocracy in preparation for the millennial reign of Jesus Christ.”72 Among their other responsibilities, Council members were tasked with framing a new constitution “which should be perfect, and embrace those principles which the constitution of the United States lacked.”73 Presumably such a constitution would provide greater protections for minority groups while incorporating the principles of what Smith had begun calling theodemocracy.74 Although the Council ultimately abandoned this project, the mere idea of supplanting the U.S. Constitution with a Mormon alternative illustrates how disillusioned the Saints had become with mainstream American politics by the spring of 1844.75 Nevertheless, the Mormon prophet was willing to embark on one final, audacious attempt to work within the political system. On January 29, 1844, Smith Hedges, Smith, and Rogers, Journals, Vol. 3, 223. Grow, Esplin, Ashurst-McGee, Dirkmaat, and Mahas, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, xx. 73 Ibid., 54. The Council’s other main duties included overseeing a possible western migration and promoting Smith’s presidential campaign. For an overview of the Council’s responsibilities during the final six months of Smith’s life, see Ibid., xxxiv-x1. 74 Ibid., 110-114. 75 Ibid., xxxvii. 71 72 52 announced his candidacy for the nation’s highest office.76 Consistent with the political actions he had taken thus far, the primary impetus behind Smith’s presidential run was the welfare of Zion. “I would not have suffered my name to have been used by my friends on any wise as president of the United States or candidate for that office,” Smith publicly declared just as his campaign was getting underway, “if I and my friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens…I feel it to be my right and privilege to obtain what influence and power I can lawfully in the United States for the protection of injured innocence.”77 Yet Smith regarded himself as more than just a political savior to his own people. In a public address given four years earlier, he had prophesied that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to peices and tumbling to the ground and when the constitution is on the brink of ruin this people will be the Staff up[on] which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the constitution away from the very verge of destruction.”78 He went on to issue similar prophecies after announcing his campaign. According to one eyewitness, Smith predicted that “if they elect him ruler of the nation he would save them & set them at liberty, but if they refuse they shall be swept off.”79 Envisioning the election of 1844 as his final opportunity to save the United States from impending ruin, the Mormon prophet threw much of the church’s resources behind his presidential run.80 Hedges, Smith, and Rogers, Journals, Vol. 3, 169-171. Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 9 vols. (Midvale: Signature Books, 1983), 2:349. 78 Dean C. Jessee, “Joseph Smith’s 19 July 1840 Discourse,” Brigham Young University Studies 19:3 (Spring 1979): 392-394. 79 Quoted in Hill, Quest for Refuge, 137. 80 Grow, Esplin, Ashurst-McGee, Dirkmaat, and Mahas, Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, xxxivxxxv. 76 77 53 Smith’s presidential campaign demonstrated how far the Saints had come since their apolitical beginnings. His platform addressed the major national issues ranging from slavery and expansion to the desirability of a national bank. In proposing ideas that attempted to balance long-standing Whig and Democratic dogmas, Smith revealed his practical side. On the bank question, for example, he followed the Whigs in endorsing a national bank, but in stipulating that the bank’s “officers and directors shall be elected yearly by the people,” he hoped to alleviate Democratic fears that the bank would fall into the hands of an undemocratic cabal of moneyed-men.81 On the issue that was fast becoming the most divisive one in America—chattel slavery—Smith’s platform was antislavery but not abolitionist. Through a program of voluntary, gradual emancipation with slave masters receiving financial compensation from the sale of public lands, it promised, the South’s peculiar institution would come to an end by 1850. Although his platform did not mention colonization, in subsequent addresses Smith echoed such prominent antislavery moderates as Henry Clay by coupling gradual emancipation and congressional compensation with support for colonizing the freed slaves outside of the United States.82 Above all, Smith’s presidential platform reflected the Mormon prophet’s idealistic belief that as the nation’s new president, he would extend the unity and brotherhood that lay at the heart of the Zion project into the contentious world of “Gen. Smith’s Views on the Government and Policy of the U.S.,” The Times and Seasons 5, no. 10 (May 15, 1844): 532. 82 Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), 14-24. W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 127. 81 54 American politics. “We have had democratic presidents; whig presidents; a pseudo democratic whig President;” Smith lamented, “and now it is time to have a president of the United States.”83 Smith envisioned this newfound harmony transcending national borders. On the divisive question of whether or not to annex Texas, Smith optimistically assumed that not only Texas, but also Mexico and Canada, would raise no objections to joining America’s empire of liberty. “Come Texas: come Mexico; come Canada; and come all the world—let us be brethren: let us be one great family; and let there be universal peace.”84 Healing the United States of its own internal conflicts was, for Smith, merely the first step on the road to universal brotherhood. From the Latter-day Saints’ perspective, the disharmony and turmoil threatening American society resulted primarily from the American people’s growing tendency to “thrust out God from all of [their] political movements” and crown themselves as the ultimate arbiters of truth and justice.85 As the governor of Missouri had so bluntly informed the Mormons following their expulsion from Jackson County, “All I can say to you is, that in this Republic, the vox populai is the vox Dei.”86 Indeed, the anti-Mormon settlers in Missouri had regarded their actions as contiguous with a long American tradition of local democracy.87 Recent experience thus made it clear to the Mormons that the will of the people, when divorced from the will of God, could not be trusted. “Gen. Smith’s Views on the Government and Policy of the U.S.,” 533. Ibid., 533. 85 “Religion and Politics,” The Times and Seasons 5, no. 6 (Mar. 15, 1844): 470. 86 Quoted in Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 344. Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” 87 Lund, “The Vox Populi is the Vox Dei.” 83 84 55 To restore the necessary balance between the all-encompassing sovereignty of God and the democratic rights of the people, Smith lauded a new political theory that he called theodemocracy, “where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness.”88 While most governments in the Western world since the late seventeenth century had been steadily shedding their centuriesold reliance on religious authority, “Smith and his followers,” argues the scholar Patrick Mason, insisted that theocracy and democracy “were inseparable and could not be fully enacted one without the other, that theos and demos were in fact part of an organic system of government that permeated not only earthly but also heavenly realms.”89 On the one hand, the proper equilibrium between theos and demos demanded respect for individual freedom, or in Mormon parlance, free agency. As apostle John Taylor would later teach: “The proper mode of government is this— God first speaks, and then the people have their action. It is for them to say whether they will have his dictation or not…The government of God is not a species of priestcraft, after the order of the Church of Rome…We have our voice and agency, and act with the most perfect freedom.”90 On the other hand, the people could not attain that oneness and brotherhood that had characterized Enoch’s ancient city unless they voluntarily unified behind the will of God. In an ideal theodemocratic polity, they believed, prophet-statesmen with access to revelation would relay God’s commands to the people, and then the people would exercise their democratic “For the Times and Seasons,” The Times and Seasons 5, no. 8 (Apr. 15, 1844). Mason, “God and the People,” 350. 90 John Taylor, Apr. 6, 1861, Journal of Discourses, 9:10. 88 89 56 freedom, as a collective body, to voluntarily consent. “It is not that a majority shall rule,” Mormon apostle George A. Smith would instruct the Saints in 1858, “but that the people shall be agreed.”91 Never before had the Latter-day Saints been more hopeful that theodemocracy might work its way into and reform the United States government than during Smith’s brief presidential run. However naïve and impractical, this desire to see theodemocracy gain the approval of American citizens and supplant their faction-ridden political system testifies to how desperately Smith and his people wished to save not only Zion, but the American republic as well. Zion Exceptionalism Five months after his people nominated him for the nation’s highest office, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were gunned down by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois. With the death of their beloved prophet still fresh in their minds, the Mormons were forced to abandon their homes and temple in Nauvoo and embark on their famous hegira to the Rocky Mountains. In the years leading up to Smith’s murder, the Saints had grown increasingly convinced that their fellow countrymen and especially their elected officials were riding roughshod over the Constitution, betraying the vision of the founding fathers, and consequently plunging their nation toward suicide. But as Smith’s presidential run had demonstrated, the Mormons still retained a small glimmer of hope that they could save the republic by persuading its people to forge a new relationship with the 91 George A. Smith, Jan. 3, 1858, Journal of Discourses, 6:159. 57 Kingdom of God. The murder of their prophet and forced expulsion from Nauvoo all but shattered these hopes. The Mormons now reveled in their isolation as they sought to build up Zion with as little outside interference as possible. Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, summarized this new outlook when he candidly declared in 1856: “I desire them to let us alone…Let them attend to their own business, and we will build up Zion while they go to hell.”92 For the Mormons this new desire to be left alone in no way implied that they had somehow abandoned their American identity or renounced their loyalty to the United States government. “I am at the defiance of the rulers of the greatest nation on the earth, with the United States all put together,” Young declared in 1852, “to produce a more loyal people than the Latter-day Saints.” Their fellow Americans may have “trampled the Constitution under their feet with impunity,” and rode “recklessly over all law, to persecute and drive this people,” he continued, but the Saints would never betray their fidelity to the nation’s founding document.93 Yet in contrast to their earlier hopes, the Mormons who were now ensconced in their isolated mountain kingdom no longer displayed much confidence in the long-term preservation of America’s constitutional system. “The Almighty looks down from heaven and sees it impossible to save the Constitution, to perpetuate it, and cleanse and purify it,” apostle Orson Hyde lamented on the eve of the Civil War, “for the wickedness of the people is determined to sweep it out of the way.”94 Observing from a distance the fracturing of America in the 1850s and 1860s, the millennial- Brigham Young, Aug. 31, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 4:40. Brigham Young, Aug. 1, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 1:361. 94 Orson Hyde, Jan. 3, 1858, Journal of Discourses, 6:153. 92 93 58 minded Mormons were more persuaded than ever of the need to prepare the Kingdom of God for the imminent collapse of the United States and other man-made governments. Apostle Orson Pratt’s 1855 discourse, “The Kingdom of God,” provides one of the clearest windows into this new phase in the evolution of Zion nationalism. In contrast to the earliest expressions of Zion nationalism, which made little attempt to distinguish the United States from other Gentile nations, Pratt’s address bore the clear imprint of the Mormons’ earnest efforts during the final years of Smith’s life to engage the American public and forge a lasting partnership with their government. He began by reminding his fellow Saints of the essential role of the American republic in providing the ideal nurturing ground for Zion’s early development. “Had not the government of the United States been framed, where would have been safety for this people?” Pratt inquired. “I answer, nowhere,” he responded. “If [Zion] had been formed in any other kingdom or nation upon the earth except the United States…we should have been rooted out of the earth.” With the Constitution’s protections for religious liberty forming its chief cornerstone, Pratt continued, “the government of the United States is one of the best that has been organized among men upon the face of the earth.” This is why we continue to “venerate and defend” the government under which we live, he explained, notwithstanding the failure of our elected officials to protect us. Yet even as he recognized the divine inspiration that had made its formation possible, Pratt was far more intent on highlighting the deficiencies and imperfections that had plagued the United States government from the start. Going 59 beyond the apostasy narrative, he gently chided the nation’s founders for their unwillingness to establish a form of government based on Zion principles. If the first generation of Americans had been more righteous, Pratt argued, “the government of heaven would not have been separated from the government of men,” and “a perfect government—a theocracy” would have been introduced. Instead, God was forced to adapt to the weaknesses of the people and “introduce a government that He knew would be just suited to their capacity, and hence it was that He inspired Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and others.” This lesser form of government had made possible the establishment of the Kingdom of God, but with all its imperfections, he concluded, the United States was not meant to endure much longer. Like a modernday John the Baptist, its mission was essential but temporary, having been designed to prepare the way for a more excellent form of government before stepping aside. The central message of Pratt’s discourse, and of Mormonism in general in the 1850s and 1860s, was that “the nucleus of such a government is formed, and its laws have emanated from the throne of God, and it is perfect, having come from a pure fountain.” The governing system of the United States may have been superior to all other earthly governments, he admitted, “yet the government of God in its very infancy was greater than it.” To be sure, for the time being the Saints promised to remain loyal to both Zion as well as the American republic. They would neither foreshadow the Confederacy by seceding from the United States nor actively work to bring about the nation’s demise. Yet their efforts at building their mountain kingdom were clearly premised on the expectation that such a collapse was both inevitable and imminent, for “the day will come when the United States government, 60 and all others,” Pratt predicted, “will be uprooted, and the kingdoms of this world will be united in one, and the kingdom of our God will govern the whole earth.”95 Having embraced an updated version of their earlier millennial dualism, the Latterday Saints in the 1850s and 1860s once again envisioned the rise of Zion coinciding with the downfall of the American nation. It was in this context of renewed isolationism and disenchantment with the United States government that Mormon political thought underwent its most radical phase. This was not because the ideas the Saints regularly voiced in the 1850s and 1860s were necessarily new—most of them had originated during the final years of Smith’s leadership. Yet they had seldom been articulated in such an explicit and thorough manner. During much of that earlier period, the need to enlist outside help had prompted the Mormons to emphasize similarities and elide differences. Their public statements had affirmed the divine origins of earthly governments and professed allegiance to “kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law.”96 While this conservative posture never completely disappeared, during the final years of Smith’s ministry the Saints’ political pronouncements became more devoted to emphasizing the superiority of the Kingdom of God over all other governments. This habit of celebrating Zion and belittling rival political systems followed the Mormons to Utah and then reached its crescendo in the following two decades as they completely withdrew from mainstream society, came dangerously close to confronting the United States Army Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:70-74. Godfrey, Rensink, Smith, Parkin, and Baugh, Documents, Vol. 4: April 1834-September 1835, 482484. Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 248. 95 96 61 in 1857, and then watched with righteous indignation as their fellow countrymen took part in the greatest bloodbath in American history.97 The Mormons in these years may have retained a lukewarm semblance of American exceptionalism rooted in their reverence for the Constitution and the founding fathers, yet this paled in comparison to what could aptly be called Zion exceptionalism. In the realm of thought, the most radical expression of Zion exceptionalism was the Latter-day Saints’ brazen insistence that the Kingdom of God, in the bold language of Orson Pratt, “is the only legal government that can exist in any part of the universe.” Blatantly contradicting the Mormons’ 1835 “Declaration on Government and Law,” Pratt concluded that “All other governments are illegal and unauthorized.”98 According to this line of thought the same absence of divine authority that made rival churches untrue also made rival governments illegitimate. Since the earth belonged to and was consistently upheld by God, the Saints argued, to feign any pretense of sovereignty therein, whether ecclesiastical or civil, without his permission would be tantamount to “a minister plenipotentiary of any nation…who should exceed the limits of his instructions; or a man holding a farm, or vineyard, by a certain lease, if he should disregard the conditions of that lease, and destroy the farm, or vineyard.”99 As apostle John Taylor further expounded in his 1852 tract, The Government of God, God’s universal gift of free agency did not excuse those who would upset the precious balance between theos and demos by assuming 97 On the Utah War, see Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict: 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960). On the Mormons and the Civil War, see E. B. Long, The Saints and the Union: Utah Territory During the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981). 98 David J. Whittaker, ed., The Essential Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 48. 99 John Taylor, The Government of God (Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1852), 47. 62 the position of rulers without divine approval. “God never gave man unlimited control of the affairs of this world,” Taylor explained, “but always speaks of man as being under his guidance, inhabiting his territory, and responsible to him for his acts.”100 Orson Pratt would echo these sentiments seven years later: “The Lord claims it as a right, in consequence of his wisdom and superior power, and in consequence of his having created men, to govern them; and if so, he claims the right of originating their laws and of dictating the form of government by which they shall be ruled.”101 Free agency may have given individuals throughout history ample opportunities to establish governments of their own design, but without God’s express authorization, Taylor argued, even governments led by well-intentioned leaders ultimately rested on ashes.102 Having usurped God’s rightful place to govern his own creation, the Mormons taught, all man-made political systems would soon fall victim to usurpation themselves. No passage of scripture held greater significance to the Latter-day Saints in the 1850s and 1860s than the second chapter of Daniel, which speaks of a “stone…cut out of the mountains without hands” that “shall break in pieces and consume” all rival kingdoms and leave in place “a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44-45).103 Taking their cue from their founding prophet, the Mormons chided those Christians whose exegesis of Daniel reduced this kingdom to a mere metaphor for the establishment and triumph of Christianity upon the earth. For Taylor and other nineteenth-century LDS apologists, the “stone…cut out of the Ibid., 49. Orson Pratt, Aug. 14, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:211. 102 Taylor, Government of God, 58-59, 66-67. 103 Daniel 2:44-45 (King James Version). 100 101 63 mountains without hands” symbolized a literal, political kingdom, not some “ariel phantom,” Taylor argued, “but a substantial reality. It will be established…on a literal earth, and will be composed of literal men, women, and children.”104 Although clearly willing to indulge in radical rhetoric, even when their millennial dualism was at its peak the Mormons were no revolutionaries. For one thing, the Latter-day Saints were probably the least likely people in the nineteenth century to lend support to any movement or ideology, whether religious or secular, devoted to tearing down the status quo. Not that they were supporters of the status quo. Assessing the current political situation in Europe, where he had spent many years as a missionary, Taylor pessimistically concluded that the whole atmosphere was so “full of combustion” that it “only needs igniting to set the whole in one common blaze. Talk of peace!” he cynically cried. “The world is as belligerent now as it ever was, and as full of commotion and uncertainty…The late revolutions in Europe, and present uncertain state of political affairs,” he concluded, “are an evident proof of this.”105 Yet however dire the current state of the nations, Taylor could not see how transitioning from one man-made political system to another would do much good. “If nations think proper to change their form of government, “ he observed, “they of course have a right to do so; but to think that this will ameliorate their condition, and produce happiness, is altogether a mistake. Happiness and peace are the gifts of God, and come from Him.”106 So while they may 104 Taylor, Government of God, 87. For similar exegeses of Daniel by early Mormon leaders, see Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses, 7:48-53; Orson Pratt, Aug. 14, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:210-227; and Whittaker, The Essential Orson Pratt, 218-237. This represents only a small sample of early Mormon commentaries on the tangible, political nature of the kingdom described in Daniel. 105 Taylor, Government of God, 20. 106 Ibid., 24. 64 have seen the collapse of earthly governments as a necessary prerequisite for Zion’s ultimate triumph, the Mormons in these years were generally cynical of any group that sought to precipitate such a collapse through its own efforts. Another factor that dissuaded the Saints from embracing revolutionary challenges to the dominant order was their seemingly paradoxical willingness to grant even wicked governments a pivotal role in God’s grand design. After harping on the illegitimacy of the vast majority of the world’s governing systems, past and present, Taylor nevertheless contended that “by his overruling Providence” the Almighty had allowed these same governments to come into existence to accomplish his righteous, though often mysterious, ends. Thus, even godless autocrats such as Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, and Caesar deserved the respect and obedience of their subjects. According to Taylor, this explained why the apostle Paul had counseled the early Christians to obey even wicked rulers. “These men were ordained for a certain purpose,” Taylor went on, “and it is proper for well disposed persons…to be peaceable and quiet, and to pray for kings, governors, and authorities.”107 Taylor, Pratt, Young, and other exponents of Mormon political thought in the 1850s and 1860s thus tended to posit a kind of hierarchy of government, with the Kingdom of God at the top, America’s constitutional republic in the middle, and despotic regimes at the bottom. Now that the “nucleus” of God’s kingdom was here, was it not time for the Saints to expedite Zion’s ascendency by actively working to undermine these inferior, even illegitimate, governments? Discouraging the Mormons from 107 Ibid., 62-68. 65 embracing a militant, revolutionary brand of millennialism was the precise role that Zion was destined to play in the last days. As spelled out in the revelations of their founding prophet, Zion’s mission was not to aggravate or directly challenge other nations, but to provide a place of peace and refuge for those wishing to flee the wicked world.108 It was not their responsibility to hasten the decline of illegitimate governments. The way things were going, the peoples of the earth would accomplish this on their own. The Mormons rarely lacked theories as to what was causing this worldwide demise. Militarism, economic inequality, false teachings, and even monogamy frequently came under attack. But if there was one root cause behind the “divisions, strife, contention, and evil” that were “everywhere increasing,” it was what modern Americans would call secularism.109 As Joseph Smith’s earlier formulation of theodemocracy had already made clear, one manifestation of secularism that the Saints found especially worrisome was what they perceived as the removal of religious influence from civil government. For the Mormons this took many forms, notably modern man’s growing propensity to relegate religious leaders to evernarrower spheres. Apostle Daniel H. Wells chided his fellow Americans for having “no confidence in their clergy’s knowing anything about politics or temporal affairs in general, but they say, ‘We know more about such things than you do. It is your calling to administer in spiritual things only.’”110 If the influence of rival clergymen was on the wane, then the status of modern-day prophets claiming revelation from Mackay, Dirkmaat, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, 279-280. 109 John Taylor, Aug. 9, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 5:120-121. 110 Daniel H. Wells, Feb. 22, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 4:236. 108 66 heaven had all but disappeared. In Old Testament times, Orson Pratt complained, “we find even kingly powers bowed to Prophets and Revelators. Nebuchadnezzar, in all his glory…believed in Prophets.” But having “strayed so far from a theocratical form of government,” he concluded, one could be certain that if a true prophet ever visited the current American Congress to offer counsel or wisdom, “They would show him the door.”111 By removing God altogether from politics and government, the Saints charged, modern man had lost the sole “adhesive principle” with the power to “unite the people together.”112 The end-result was all the forms of pluralism the Mormons detested, from political parties and religious sects to the jumbled mass of nation-states.113 In Zion these differences would ideally dissolve as its citizens rejected secularism and embraced the idea that God’s truth speaks to every element of the human experience, including civic government. As Wells once boasted, “We have men to counsel and guide us in whom we repose unlimited confidence…and the counsels they give we feel to appreciate and abide both in spiritual and temporal things.”114 Brigham Young was more direct. “When we see a religion…and it will not govern men in their politics,” he declared, “it is a very poor religion.”115 The Mormons were promised that if they followed the spiritual and temporal directives of righteous, inspired leaders, they would attain the same level of union and Orson Pratt, Aug. 14, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:216. John Taylor, Mar. 1, 1863, Journal of Discourses, 10:124-125. 113 On the Mormons’ hostility to different forms of pluralism in nineteenth-century America, see Hill, Quest for Refuge. 114 Daniel H. Wells, Feb. 22, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 4:236. 115 Brigham Young, June 4, 1871, Journal of Discourses, 14:159. 111 112 67 cooperation as the ancient people of Enoch.116 “You may gather a people together, and no matter how widely they differ in politics,” Young claimed, “the Gospel of Jesus Christ will make them one, even if among them were found members of all the political parties in the country.”117 Parley P. Pratt boasted that he could already discern such unity taking root in Zion. “You do not hear a man say that he is a Dane, or an Englishman, or of any peculiar nation,” he observed upon returning to Utah after an extended absence. “But losing his nationality, and all blending into one mass, with a united heart to build up the kingdom of our God, and to become one great nation.”118 The same degree of harmony attained within Zion would eventually spread throughout the globe, Mormon leaders happily predicted, erasing all national and political rivalries by bringing the various peoples of the earth together under one world government.119 Hence, even at their most militantly isolationist the Latter-day Saints never lost sight of Zion’s inherent universalism, longing for that millennial day, Orson Pratt enthusiastically prophesied, when: Kings, nobles, and great men, from all the principal nations of the earth, will come flocking to Zion with their armies, and their servants to view the grandeur of Zion; and they will have to be obedient to the mandates of the great King who shall issue forth His laws from Zion…I look forward to the day of glory, when the glory of Zion shall be like a light upon a hill, which will illuminate the whole world.120 116 Orson Pratt, Sept. 10, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 2:103-104. Heber C. Kimball, Aug. 13, 1853, Journal of Discourses, 2:105-111. 117 Brigham Young, June 4, 1871, Journal of Discourses, 14:159. 118 Parley P. Pratt, June 29, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 4:12. 119 Hyrum L. Andrus, Joseph Smith and World Government (Salt Lake City: Hawkes Publishing, Inc., 1972). 120 Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:74. 68 Resistance and Compromise From the moment the Great Basin became their new home in the late 1840s, therefore, the Latter-day Saints neither expected nor wanted their isolation to last forever. As part of their millennial worldview, they envisioned throngs of beleaguered outsiders continually flocking to Zion for food and freedom as the nations of the earth descended into chaos.121 But the decline of Mormon isolationism came well short of matching these millennial expectations. Instead of the American people choosing to conform to Zion’s heavenly laws, it was the citizens of Zion who saw fit to conform to American laws. After decades of fierce resistance, the LDS leadership in the early 1890s agreed to a series of compromises, the longterm impact of which was to bring about the end of Zion nationalism. Among the root causes of the eventual erosion of Zion nationalism was the growth of Utah’s non-Mormon population in the decades following the Civil War.122 The anxiety this demographic shift engendered is just one illustration of the tension in early Mormonism between universalism and isolationism. From the very beginning of the Zion project, the Saints had carved out theoretical space in God’s kingdom for both Israelites and Gentiles. Their stated mission was to provide refuge to all people wishing to escape the calamities that would precede the Second Orson Hyde, Mar. 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 2:206-207. Orson Pratt, May 20, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:16. “Do you suppose that this people will be kept away from the Gentiles?” Pratt inquired of his fellow Saints. “No verily, the Lord does not intend that we should dwell separate from the world altogether.” 122 Between 1860 and 1890 non-Mormons went from just 8 to an estimated 34 percent of the territory’s population. Ironically, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, which Brigham Young and the Saints enthusiastically supported, was most responsible for this rapid influx of religious and cultural outsiders. See Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 116; and John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 314. 121 69 Coming. Once driven to the Great Basin, they were especially eager to advertise Zion as a place where despised minorities like themselves could live in peace far from the intolerance and bigotry of mainstream American society. Orson Pratt invited even Chinese “idolaters” and Muslims to gather to Zion. “The Mahometan can come to Utah with his wives; anybody can come here,” he boasted. “We say to all the world, Come to Utah, and…we will protect you.”123 But as Mark Ashurst-McGee points out, the doctrine of Zion inclusivism was not so inclusive as to envision granting Gentiles the right to govern. “In Smith’s vision of Zion’s future,” he writes, “his people’s offer of asylum to others would come from a position of superior political power,” one that “belonged to Israel and those who joined its covenant.”124 Like Pratt, Brigham Young emphasized the religious freedom that would prevail in Zion. “The kingdom that Daniel saw…will protect the Methodists, Quakers, Pagans, Jews, and every other creed there ever was or ever will be, in their religious rights. At the same time,” Young was careful to point out, “the Priesthood will bear rule, and hold the government of the Kingdom under control in all things.”125 Furthermore, while the persecution they had suffered in Missouri and Illinois may have prompted the Mormons to take a stronger stand for religious liberty, it had also revealed the dangers of being a minority in Zion. For reasons rooted in theology and self-preservation, the Saints expected outsiders to show deference to the Mormon majority.126 Orson Pratt, Aug. 14, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 7:226. Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising,” 269. 125 Brigham Young, Feb. 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 2:189. 126 Mason, “God and the People,” 369-370. 123 124 70 As their numbers and influence steadily rose, however, Utah’s Gentiles refused to tolerate the continued domination of a religion that, by mainstream American standards, so clearly overstepped the bounds in which churches were supposed to operate. Particularly odious to Utah’s non-Mormons was the Saints’ unified approach to politics, resulting in their near monopolization of the territorial legislature along with the most important nonfederal territorial positions. With the Mormons forming a political bloc that transcended the nation’s two-party binary, non-Mormons rightly intuited that dividing along national party lines would only hinder their ability to challenge this theocratic hegemony. Hence, in February 1870 a group of non-Mormons led by the mining leader Patrick Connor joined forces with a group of recently excommunicated Mormon dissenters calling themselves the Godbeites to form the Liberal Party of Utah.127 The Mormons responded to the Gentile-Godbeite alliance by formalizing the de facto political solidarity they already enjoyed by introducing their own new party—the People’s Party. Liberal Party candidates rarely mustered enough support to defeat church-backed candidates from the People’s Party in local races for the territorial legislature.128 They did succeed for a number of years, however, in accomplishing their primary goal of thwarting periodic Mormon attempts to endow On the formation of the Liberal Party of Utah, see John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011), 15-20. On the Godbeite movement, see Ronald W. Walker, Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). The Godbeites were excommunicated for publicly opposing the economic and political nationalism of nineteenth-century Mormonism. Yet as Walker points out, the Godbeite presence in the Liberal Party proved short-lived as these former Mormons quickly became disenchanted with the party’s aggressive antipolygamy stance. Even after their excommunication many Godbeites continued to practice plural marriage. More importantly, their libertarian inclinations clashed with the Gentiles’ campaign to pressure the federal government into quashing the Mormon Church’s political power. See Ibid., 225-229. 128 Durham, “A Political Interpretation of Mormon History,”144. 127 71 Utah with statehood. Liberals were aware that the disproportionate political and economic clout they enjoyed as a minority in Utah would quickly evaporate without support from federally-appointed territorial officials, who would lose their jobs the moment Utah became a state. They also knew that statehood would fortify Zion’s defenses by making it more difficult for Congress to weed out the Latter-day Saints’ objectionable economic, political, and especially marital, practices.129 The Liberals thus proved to be a small but powerful minority, taking advantage of their connections in Congress and their control over local newspapers to broadcast the dangers of acceding to the Saints’ demands. Prior to the formation of the Liberal Party, three Mormon petitions for statehood had been soundly rejected. With Liberals amplifying the nationwide opposition to the Mormon Church, three additional Mormon petitions issued between 1872 and 1887 were also defeated.130 The same year in which the sixth Mormon request for statehood died in the halls of Congress, the federal government escalated its campaign to eradicate the most visible marker of Mormon otherness—their practice of plural marriage, or polygamy. In 1852 the LDS Church had announced to the world that God had commanded his chosen people to reestablish the Old Testament pattern of one husband marrying multiple wives.131 Four years later the newly formed Republican Party pledged to eliminate from the western territories what it called “those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery.”132 Over the next three decades Lyman, Political Deliverance, 15. On the historical context in which the first six, unsuccessful Mormon petitions for Utah statehood were issued, see Ibid., 7-35. 131 Orson Pratt, Aug. 29, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 1:53-66. 132 B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1992), 39-40. 129 130 72 Republican statesmen would largely take the lead in pushing through Congress a series of antipolygamy measures. In the 1880s federal marshals flooded Utah territory to arrest any Latter-day Saint, no matter how prestigious, suspected of violating these laws. But the Mormons refused to yield. Even after the Supreme Court voted to uphold federal antipolygamy legislation in the 1879 Reynolds decision, many Latter-day Saints risked imprisonment or went into hiding rather than violate God’s commandment.133 The Mormons had always insisted that they were loyal, law-abiding Americans. One of their earlier revelations had stated that “he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land.”134 But with new laws criminalizing polygamy making their way through Congress, it no longer seemed possible to obey all of God’s commandments without breaking at least some of the laws of the land. On what grounds could the Saints possibly justify such selective obedience? Their most common strategy was to shift attention away from the apparently lawless character of plural marriage by arguing that the entire antipolygamy crusade constituted an act of lawlessness by violating the Constitution.135 Not only did this approach offer a better chance of convincing W. Paul Reeve, “The Mormon Church in Utah,” in Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 46-47. 134 Godfrey, Ashurst-McGee, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 2: 1831-1833, 16. 135 As Sarah Barringer Gordon shows, the Mormons’ constitutional objections to antipolygamy legislation rested on two arguments: The first was that these laws violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency—the highest governing body in the LDS Church—later recalled: “We were sustained in this view not only by our own interpretation of the amendment to the Constitution, but also by some of the best legal minds in the country, who took exactly the same view that we did—that this law was an interference with religious rights.” George Q. Cannon, Oct. 6, 1890, Collected Discourses, 5 vols., ed., Brian H. Stuy (Burbank: B.H.S. Publishing, 1988-92), 2:130. The second objection to these federal laws was their utter disregard for the constitutional principle of federalism, which historically had restricted the federal government from interfering too closely in the affairs of local majorities. This second argument was more difficult 133 73 people who were not otherwise sympathetic to the Saints to leave them in peace, but it also provided a rational basis for their seemingly hypocritical claim to being patriotic Americans. They may have been in open defiance of Congress, the Presidency, and even the Supreme Court, yet the Mormons could still affirm their genuine Americanness by claiming to have the supreme law of the land on their side. After all, what could be more American than seeking shelter behind the Constitution? Mormon constitutionalism in the nineteenth century illuminates one of several contradictions in early Mormon political thought that would leave behind such a confusing, albeit malleable, legacy for subsequent generations of Latter-day Saints. On the one hand, their millennial dualism seemed to offer little hope that America’s constitutional structure would survive much longer. When Mormon cynicism toward the United States government was especially palpable in the 1850s, Orson Hyde warned church members that the Constitution’s days were numbered since it “now serves but little purpose other than a cloak for political gamblers, merchants, and hucksters.” Yet rather than view this as cause for panic, Hyde assured the people of Zion that the Lord would guide and protect them whether the Constitution or United States government endured or not. “What Constitution shall to make, however, since Utah was a territory, not a state. In public statements church leaders insisted that the Constitution granted territories the same rights as states. As Orson Pratt opined in 1860: “Congress has no more power to exercise legislative jurisdiction over American citizens in Territories than it has over American citizens in States.” “Shall simply crossing an air-line in the same country,” he incredulously asked, “prevent them from enjoying a Republican form of government, having a voice in the selection of their rulers, and the privilege of making their own laws without being subject to have them disapproved by Congress?” Orson Pratt, July 4, 1860, Journal of Discourses, 8:113. Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 5, 89, 123-126. 74 we be governed by, when unprincipled men have destroyed the Constitution of our Union?” he asked. “I will tell you what we shall have…The Constitution that God will give us.”136 Typifying the isolationist, millennial posture of LDS leaders in the 1850s, Hyde could imagine a glorious future for Zion irrespective of what might befall the United States. On the other hand, ever since their expulsion from Jackson County in 1833, the Saints had consistently looked to the nation’s founding document for protection whenever they faced concerted opposition. As the chief instigator of anti-Mormon activity shifted from mobs and state governments to the federal government in Washington, the Mormons necessarily grew even more dependent on the Constitution. Most importantly, they had long revered it as a work of scripture that was no less sacred than the Bible or the Book of Mormon. By the end of the century they had grown so attached to the Constitution that it was nearly impossible for the Latter-day Saints to imagine Zion’s future apart from it. In 1887 Brigham Young’s successor as church president, John Taylor, responded to a newspaper editor who wondered why the persecuted Saints did not simply relocate outside of the United States. Expounding on his statement that “our destinies are interwoven with the destinies of the United States,” Taylor prophesied “that the day would yet come when it would fall to us to uphold the constitution and constitutional government in this country. We fully believe that this high honor is in store for us.”137 Similar Orson Hyde, Jan. 3, 1858, Journal of Discourses, 6:153. The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 49, ed., George Teasdale (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1887), 29-30. 136 137 75 predictions casting the Saints as the future saviors of the U.S. Constitution were ubiquitous in late nineteenth-century Mormon discourse.138 Nineteenth-century Mormons thus displayed a love-hate mentality toward the United States, one that found expression in two conflicting categories of discourse. The first category was imbued with the same spirit of activism and involvement that had inspired Joseph Smith’s presidential run. It depicted the American nation on the verge of collapse, but found hope in the prospect of Zion intervening in the final moment to save the United States and its inspired Constitution. The second category of discourse, meanwhile, was rooted in the Mormons’ lingering resentment over the failure of the federal government to shelter Zion from mobs and state governments or protect their founding prophet from assassination. It was then amplified by the federal antipolygamy crusade. It tended to be apolitical and separatist, prophesying destruction upon the United States while boasting of Zion’s readiness to survive alone. What these two categories of discourse had in common was their shared belief that something was deeply wrong with the United States. As their isolation came to an end in the 1870s and 1880s, the Mormons increasingly reverted to the first category by emphasizing in their public discourse not only what the Constitution could do for them, but what they could do for the Constitution and nation as a whole. Mormon assertions of patriotism, unfortunately, could not halt the antipolygamy onslaught. In 1887 Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, disincorporating the LDS Church and opening the door for the confiscation of all 138 Wilcox, The Constitution Will Hang by a Thread. 76 church property valued at over $50,000.139 By 1890 Charles S. Varian, the United States attorney for Utah, was urging the federal government to begin the process of confiscating the most sacred edifices in Mormonism—their temples.140 To make matters worse, a new antipolygamy bill that would disenfranchise all members of the church, polygamist or not, appeared to be gathering steam in Congress.141 With the federal government now threatening “the temporal salvation of the church,” John Taylor’s successor, Wilford Woodruff, issued a brief public statement in September 1890 that came to be known as the Manifesto.142 After refuting ongoing rumors that LDS leaders were still encouraging their people to enter into new polygamous marriages, Woodruff assured the nation that he would obey federal marriage laws and “use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.”143 As the next two decades of LDS history would reveal, the Woodruff Manifesto did not bring about a clean and thorough break from decades of ingrained practice.144 Nevertheless, it did mark the first in a series of essential compromises between the LDS Church and the United States government that would lead to the granting of Utah statehood six years later. More significant for the future of Mormon political thought was the compromise that came the following year. With the chief barrier to statehood now ostensibly out of the way, LDS leaders sensed an opportunity to remove the other obstacles that for so many years had blocked Utah’s admission. One of these was the Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 49. Lyman, Political Deliverance, 34. Ibid., 135. 141 The act in question was entitled the Cullom-Struble Bill. See Ibid., 126-127. 142 Ibid., 135-136. 143 Joseph Smith Jr., comp. The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981), Official Declaration—1. 144 On post-Manifesto polygamy, see Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 206-283, 389-426. 139 140 77 church-controlled People’s Party, which their critics saw as the embodiment of Mormonism’s backward theocracy. LDS leaders also surmised that once the People’s Party was out of the picture, the rival Liberal Party would no longer have any grounds on which to justify its continued existence. With these pragmatic, immediate concerns in mind, the LDS hierarchy dissolved the People’s Party in spring 1891.145 More significantly, its former members were immediately admonished to “ally themselves with the respective national parties, according to their individual preferences.”146 For the first time in their history, Latter-day Saints in large numbers would now line up on opposite sides of the political aisle. Alongside millennialism and the program of gathering converts to specific geographic locations, the political solidarity of the Latter-day Saints, embodied in the concept of theodemocracy, had been one of the three central pillars on which Zion nationalism had rested. As these three pillars went into abeyance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Zion nationalism would quietly crumble in order to make room for a more acceptable, pro-American version of the Kingdom of God. Put another way, Mormons agreed to place their original mission of building Zion as a separate nation upon the land of America on hold for the indefinite future. In its stead they would have to rest content with a new mission—that of building Zion as an idiosyncratic Christian denomination inside the nation of America. Just as Zion nationalism had formed the basis of Mormon political thought in the nineteenth century, this new conception of Zion’s place within the United States On the steps leading to the disbanding of the People’s Party, see Lyman, Political Deliverance, 150161. 146 Quoted in Ibid., 161. 145 78 would form the basis of Mormon political thought in the century to come. With the exception of the final years of Joseph Smith’s ministry, early Mormon political thought had been almost wholly preoccupied with the challenges directly confronting the Kingdom of God. In the twentieth century, by contrast, church leaders and lay members alike would move beyond their parochial past by turning their attention to the most pressing national and global issues of the day. At the same time, the Mormons found it difficult to escape the tensions and paradoxes that had penetrated their political thinking during the previous century—namely universalism versus localism, reverence for the Constitution versus distrust of the federal government, majority versus minority rights, devotion to religious freedom versus opposition to religious pluralism, free agency and individualism versus the theodemocratic ideal of common consent, and most importantly perhaps, working for the good of the American nation versus succumbing to the conclusion, so pervasive in the nineteenth century, that the United States was actually beyond saving. Coupled with the outside belief-systems and partisan influences that were now making their way into Zion, these conflicting impulses and emphases would give rise to a more diverse medley of political viewpoints among the Mormon people, one that offered a wider array of solutions to meet the challenges confronting both the Kingdom of God as well as the United States during the socalled “American Century.”147 147 Henry R. Luce, “The American Century,” Life, Feb. 17, 1941, 61-65. CHAPTER 3 THE AMERICANIZATION OF MORMON POLITICAL THOUGHT For the Latter-day Saints 1903 was a critical year. The compromises to which their leaders had acquiesced in the early 1890s had significantly reduced antiMormon prejudice and made possible the granting of Utah statehood in 1896. But allegations of ongoing polygamy and church control over Utah politics persuaded many that the so-called “Mormon problem” had not yet been fully resolved. The issue came to a head in 1903 when the Utah Legislature elected Republican Reed Smoot, a sitting Mormon apostle, to represent them in the United States Senate. Responding to the nationwide outcry against Smoot’s election, the Senate formed a special committee and initiated a series of hearings to determine whether the senator-elect could retain his seat. As everyone involved in the hearings recognized, the real question the Senate committee wished to answer was not whether Smoot was personally qualified to serve in public office, but whether the church he helped to oversee had been sufficiently purged of its supposed un-Americanism.1 1 On the Smoot hearings, see Flake, Politics of American Religious Identity; Jonathan H. Moyer, “Dancing with the Devil: The Making of the Mormon-Republican Pact” (PhD dissertation, The University of Utah, 2009), 297-556; and Jay R. Lowe, “Fred T. Dubois, Foe of the Mormons: A Study of the Role of Fred T. Dubois in the Senate Investigation of the Hon. Reed Smoot and the Mormon Church, 1903-1907” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1960). 80 Although far from an ideal situation for the Saints, their leaders saw no choice but to seize upon the Smoot hearings as an opportunity to improve their public image by depicting their members as patriotic, law-abiding, independentminded citizens who had every right to place one of their own in the highest corridors of government. With the hearings set to begin in just a few months, the LDS First Presidency released an official address entitled “The Kingdom of God.” The distinctions between this statement and earlier Mormon explications of the kingdom described in Daniel are often quite subtle and only apparent when one listens closely to what the former does not say. Nevertheless, when the First Presidency message is carefully examined alongside apostle Orson Pratt’s 1855 discourse of the same name, it becomes rather clear that the LDS leadership had articulated a new conception of the Kingdom of God, and equally significant, a new understanding of how this modified kingdom related to the United States.2 The address begins by dismissing “the old cry of ‘treason’ and the charges that the ‘Mormon’ organization is imperium in imperio.” Far from constituting a separate nation or rival political system, the document insists, the Mormon Church is “solely an ecclesiastical organization…[that] does not interfere with any earthly government.”3 The First Presidency acknowledged the common tendency among lay members to use the terms church and kingdom interchangeably, but from a strict doctrinal standpoint, they argued, the two were entirely separate. Analogous to John the Baptist’s role, the statement continues, the church’s purpose is merely to 2 Kathleen Flake calls the 1903 First Presidency statement “a public renunciation of nearly sixty years of church teaching.” Flake, Politics of American Religious Identity, 54. 3 James R. Clark, ed., Messages of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Inc., 1965-75), 4:79. 81 prepare mankind for the establishment of that political kingdom alluded to in scripture, when “Christ is to be King and all nations and peoples are to serve and obey Him.” As the First Presidency quickly pointed out, this kingdom would not exist until the Second Coming. Until that millennial day the church would function as a mere “spiritual ‘kingdom of heaven,’” exercising none of the powers of a traditional political sovereign.4 On at least one point the 1903 statement perfectly agreed with Orson Pratt’s 1855 exegesis of the kingdom. Both acknowledged that Zion would not actually govern the earth until Christ’s return. Yet rather than draw a rigid distinction between the existing church and some distant, millennial kingdom, Pratt and other nineteenth-century Mormons boasted that this kingdom was already here, albeit in its infancy. While the 1903 statement described the church as a spiritual forerunner designed to prepare the earth for the political kingdom foretold by Daniel, according to Pratt the United States had already performed this preparatory work. Having fulfilled its designated purpose of providing a sufficiently free and open society where the kingdom could be planted, he went on, the inspired but incomplete U.S. government could now step aside. Church members would remain law-abiding citizens until that day arrived, but their primary focus should be on the kingdom.5 As late as 1889 George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency was telling his fellow Saints: “There is no need for men to associate themselves with any organization outside the 4 5 Ibid., 4:81. Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:70-74. 82 organization of the Kingdom of God. Herein is our strength, in being united as one people having one object in view—the building up of the Kingdom of God.”6 By 1903 Mormon leaders were no longer depicting the U.S. government on the verge of collapse. In a public address given earlier that year, church President Joseph F. Smith taught that in addition to inspiring the founding of the United States, God would continue to preserve and strengthen the nation until well into the future. “His hand has been over this nation,” Smith proclaimed, “and it is His purpose and design to enlarge it, make it glorious above all others, and to give it dominion and power over the earth.”7 The absence of theocracy or any other imperfection that Pratt had claimed would lead to America’s imminent downfall received no mention in the First Presidency message. Instead, the 1903 statement dwelled only on those features of the United States government that Mormons had long believed were of divine origin, namely its Constitution. Moreover, the First Presidency promised the active support of the Mormon people in keeping America’s righteous government afloat. Far from being “inimical to any earthly government,” their message stated, the church “tended to make its adherents better citizens and more useful to the state.”8 As Smith had promised in his earlier discourse, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be a strong supporter of the nation of which we are a part, in the accomplishment of this grand purpose.”9 The reciprocal relationship between Zion and the American republic that had been only fleetingly contemplated during the final years of Joseph Smith’s ministry 6 George Q. Cannon, Sept. 2, 1889, Collected Discourses, 1:353. Joseph F. Smith, Apr. 1903, Conference Reports, 73. 8 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 4:79. 9 Joseph F. Smith, Apr. 1903, Conference Reports, 73. 7 83 had thus become, by the early twentieth century, the official position of the LDS Church. In the words of sociologist Ethan Yorgason: “Instead of supplanting the nation, as was earlier expected, the church would perfect it.”10 The same George Q. Cannon who had sounded so parochial in 1889 was preaching a message of universality and patriotism just ten years later: “Many people imagine that when we talk about the triumph of the Church of God we mean to confine that triumph to those who belong to our Church. Not so; this is for the whole world. It is for all America, as well as for Utah. God has made most glorious promises to this nation…the Lord has destined to make it the head of all the nations of the earth.” “I say to you today, in the presence of God,” Cannon continued in this vein, “that no more patriotic people live upon the continent of America than the Latter-day Saints.”11 In exchange for their promise to help preserve and strengthen America’s chosen status, the Saints expected their nation to safeguard their religious freedom and to facilitate Zion’s eventual global expansion. By the early twentieth century, the millennial dualism of nineteenth-century Mormonism had given way to a new paradigm that cast the Mormon Church and the United States as long-term partners in the mission to bless humanity. This new paradigm would in turn give rise to a new era of expansive and activist political thought. Now that they were determined to convert America into a righteous sanctuary for the Kingdom of God, the Mormons could no longer ignore contemporary political issues or merely view them as further evidence of the approaching millennium. Rather than leave the nation to grapple with its own 10 11 Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region, 166. George Q. Cannon, Oct. 1899, Conference Reports, 48-49. 84 problems, the Latter-day Saints would henceforth play an active role in the political process. This transformation could never fully eradicate the isolationist proclivities of the Saints’ pioneer past. Indeed, Mormon leaders throughout the twentieth century periodically intimated that the United States was once again marching toward apostasy, thereby necessitating some kind of return to the older Zion nationalism. But for the most part, the Mormons’ fear of what might befall their nation if the American people ever turned away from God tended to inspire involvement and activism rather than a resurgence of millennial apathy and separatism. Twentieth-century Mormons on all sides of the political spectrum may have grown cynical from time to time, yet the vast majority could never quite bring themselves to give up on the United States. The End of Theodemocracy Twelve years before the Smoot hearings commenced, Mormon leaders took a decisive step toward this new relationship with the United States by admonishing their people to participate as active partisans in the nation’s two-party system. After all, Reed Smoot went to Washington as a representative of the formerly antiMormon Republican Party. Though often overshadowed by the church’s simultaneous abandonment of plural marriage, the process of sacrificing their cherished political solidarity was also tremendously difficult for the Latter-day Saints. The results of this new policy, moreover, went far beyond what Mormon leaders had originally hoped. Indeed, the First Presidency’s decision in 1891 to dissolve the People’s Party and encourage their members to divide along national 85 party lines was not intended to bring about the end of theodemocracy. Mormon leaders were simply hoping to ease the path for Utah statehood and persuade skeptical Gentiles to jettison the Liberal Party. But as the Latter-day Saints’ newfound partisan affiliations grew more genuine and hardened, and as outside pressure to conform to American standards only intensified, theodemocracy would largely cease to function except within the ecclesiastical realm.12 By the time the Smoot hearings came to a close in 1907, it was clear that the hierarchy’s decision in 1891 had given rise to a host of unintended consequences. Looking back on this difficult period of transition several decades later, former People’s Party official-turned-Democratic politician James Henry Moyle applauded church leaders for introducing “a new era in their policy” to “eliminate the old fight between Mormon and Gentile.” Yet as he correctly noted, this did not mean LDS hierarchs “suddenly gave up their desire to be a real factor in Utah politics.”13 Even as they instructed the Saints to make their way into the Republican and Democratic camps, members of the First Presidency had no intention of surrendering any of their influence on the altar of partisan politics. As Cannon told his fellow general authorities during a private priesthood leadership meeting: “We have the right to indicate the policy this people should pursue. Parties are means not the ends.”14 If Mormon leaders had earlier viewed the People’s Party as an essential means of safeguarding the church’s interests, they now surmised that membership in the national parties would place them in the best position to get 12 Mason, “God and the People,” 350, 362-363. Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 151. 14 Apr. 20, 1893, Collected Discourses, 3:285. 13 86 what they wanted. But as they also recognized, the national parties would only serve Zion’s ends if the Mormon people were equally represented in both. On the other hand, if the Saints went disproportionately to one party then Utah’s non-Mormons would likely flood into the opposite party and thus perpetuate the familiar MormonGentile rivalry.15 This was no paranoid delusion. Since the 1850s the Republican Party had been the leading force in the antipolygamy crusade, and as a result, Cannon observed, “Our people think they are Democrats.” But “if they go into the Democratic Party the Gentiles will go into the Republican Party,” he warned, “and we will have the old fight over again under new names.”16 With little hope that their people would evenly divide between the two parties without some kind of direction, the First Presidency adopted a two-fold program. First they would work to convince the Saints that, contrary to their deeply ingrained assumptions, there was no sin in being Republican. “There has been an impression entertained by some Latter-day Saints,” Cannon acknowledged just as the division movement was getting underway, “that it was necessary to be a Democrat in order to be a good Latter-day Saint.” But “a Republican has just as good a right to a standing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a Democrat—just exactly.” In the same discourse Cannon defended the Republicans’ support for protective tariffs by insisting, undoubtedly to the chagrin of the Mormon Democrats in the congregation: “We have always 15 16 Lyman, Political Deliverance, 162-165. Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 150. 87 believed in the principle of protection. The doctrine of Brigham Young was protection.”17 The second and more controversial component of the First Presidency’s strategy was their use of ecclesiastical influence to bring more Latter-day Saint voters into the Republican fold. During the same meeting in which he dissolved the People’s Party, Cannon openly urged “those who have no…strong predilections on politics [to] go into the Republican Party.”18 To the critics of this approach both inside and outside the church, any attempt to influence the Saints’ political affiliations violated the First Presidency’s earlier vows to remain politically neutral. Members of the First Presidency repeatedly denied the accusation that they had pressured Mormon Democrats to either switch parties or cast their ballots for Republican candidates. “We have asked no Republican to vote the Democratic ticket, and no Democrat to vote the Republican ticket,” President Woodruff assured the Deseret Weekly.19 He omitted the fact that while the First Presidency had earlier encouraged apostles John Henry Smith and Francis Lyman to travel about the territory building up the state’s fledgling Republican Party, two of the most popular, 17 George Q. Cannon, Nov. 2, 1891, Collected Discourses, 2:305. Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 151. 19 Deseret Weekly, Sept. 29, 1894. Woodruff’s denial may strike some contemporary Latter-day Saints as disingenuous in light of the well-known stories of earlier church leaders arbitrarily dividing LDS congregations into Republican and Democratic halves. However, I have yet to uncover any conclusive evidence that this was ever a uniform policy that came down from the church hierarchy. Moreover, the flimsy evidence on which such stories are based consists of second, third, and fourth-hand accounts reported decades after these incidents supposedly occurred. Of course, the lack of direct evidence does not automatically invalidate such stories. Aware of the church’s efforts to prop up the GOP, at least a few local leaders may have taken the initiative to “call” some members of their congregation to become Republicans, thus laying the foundation for later reminiscences. But the lack of direct evidence makes it impossible to know for sure whether this practice actually took place, and if it did, just how widespread it was. For examples of such stories told long after the fact, see Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 334; and Williams, “The Separation of Church and State in Mormon Theory and Practice,” 37. Historians Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton refer to such stories as “Mormon folklore.” Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 247. 18 88 charismatic Democrats in the hierarchy—Moses Thatcher of the Twelve and B.H. Roberts of the Seventy—were consistently pressured to remain passive spectators in the crucial years when the division movement was just getting underway.20 As several historians have noted, Utah Republicans greatly benefited from the church’s new policy.21 During the first three decades of the twentieth century, in fact, the formerly despised GOP generally outperformed Utah Democrats in both state and national elections.22 But while this may have been the end result, the First Presidency’s original objective was to achieve a relatively equal balance between the two parties in order to fulfill the church’s most immediate and pressing needs. As the First Presidency explained in an 1891 letter to church member John W. Young, “The more evenly balanced the parties become the safer it will be for us in the security of our liberties; and…our influence for good will be far greater.”23 Cannon later recalled that when the division movement was first inaugurated, many church members worried that “we were going to perdition because we are divided on national lines.”24 Twenty years later the First Presidency lamented that so many of their people had gone to the opposite extreme, resulting in 20 D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 346, 350-352. Gustive O. Larson, The “Americanization” of Utah for Statehood (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1971), 288. 21 Moyer, “Dancing with the Devil.” Lyman, Political Deliverance, 301. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 6-11. 22 Utah went Republican in seven out of nine presidential elections between 1900 and 1932. The GOP also enjoyed a clear edge in Utah congressional elections during this timespan. Reed Smoot managed to retain his Senate seat until 1933, while two other Republicans sat in the Senate between 1901 and 1917. In state elections Utahns elected Republican governors six out of eight times between 1895 and 1924. Jonas and Jones, “Utah Presidential Elections,” 289-307. Allan Kent Powell, ed., Utah History Encyclopedia (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1994), 157-161. 23 Quoted in Eugene England, Making Peace: Personal Essays (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 86. 24 George Q. Cannon, Nov. 2, 1891, Collected Discourses, 301. 89 “the excess of that liberty in the indulging of personalities and other extremes of partisanship which are greatly to be regretted and ought to be condemned.”25 The perceptive James Henry Moyle blamed the contentious partisan bickering that quickly seeped into Zion on the tendency of the Mormon people, perhaps owing to their lack of political experience, to view the competing parties in overly rigid terms. ”Mormons…tended to treat politics on the same principle as religion,” Moyle argued, “truth vs. untruth, the one all right, the other all wrong.” Instead of acknowledging gray areas and searching for common ground, he complained, the Saints’ initial instinct was to associate their party with gospel truth while demonizing their opponents. “More bitter and unyielding partisanship never developed anywhere else in the land,” he concluded.26 Hence, even though the First Presidency’s strategy succeeded in accomplishing its primary goals of eroding support for the Liberal Party and paving the way for Utah statehood, it only did so by putting severe strain upon the theodemocratic legacy of a unified membership collectively obeying the spiritual and temporal counsel of inspired leaders. The earliest indication that the division of the Mormons into the national parties would bring unwelcome confusion and contention into Zion came with the territorial elections of 1892. With the First Presidency having affirmed in several public statements that the Mormon people were “entirely and perfectly free in all political affairs,” Moses Thatcher and B.H. Roberts both decided to actively campaign for Democratic candidates.27 From the First Presidency’s standpoint, 25 Apr. 1911, Conference Reports, 129. Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 152-153. 27 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 3:233. 26 90 however, their actions threatened to derail the behind-the-scenes program to prop up the Republican Party for the good of Zion. To make matters worse, Thatcher delivered an incendiary speech in Ogden in which he vilified Republicans and, according to eyewitnesses, asserted that Jesus would have been a Democrat. Thatcher later claimed that he had been misquoted.28 Nevertheless, both he and Roberts were taken to task and pressured to confess their wrongdoings before their fellow general authorities for having entered the political fray without first seeking the approval of their ecclesiastical superiors.29 Scrambling to preempt another debacle within the hierarchy, members of the First Presidency enacted a concrete rule forbidding general authorities from serving in public office. But with statehood fast approaching, the First Presidency quickly abandoned this policy out of fear that it would disqualify many of the most experienced and trusted Mormons from serving as delegates to the upcoming constitutional convention.30 With this ban on church leaders’ political involvement having been lifted so quickly, Thatcher and Roberts once again assumed that members of the hierarchy were entirely free to participate in political campaigns for the party of their choice. Thus, on the eve of statehood the two men accepted the Democratic Party’s nominations for U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. In a public address delivered shortly thereafter, Joseph F. Smith of the First Presidency sharply criticized them for once again acting contrary to the 28 Lyman, Political Deliverance, 179. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 8. 30 Edward Leo Lyman, “The Alienation of an Apostle from His Quorum: The Moses Thatcher Case,” in John R. Sillito and Susan Staker, eds., Mormon Mavericks: Essays on Mormon Dissenters (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 173. B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 6:331. 29 91 collective interests of the church by agreeing to run for public office without consulting the First Presidency or their fellow quorum members.31 In response Roberts granted an interview with the pro-Democrat Salt Lake Herald in which he acknowledged the wisdom of restricting members of the hierarchy from any political involvement that might interfere with their church responsibilities. “But if the church permits its high officials to enter politics at all,” he continued, “then those men ought to be absolutely free to follow their own discretion as to what their politics shall be, [as] any thing short of this would render party loyalty impossible. I do not believe that Democratic church officials ought to be expected to go to Republican superior church officials for counsel in political affairs, or vice versa.”32 With a new round of intrahierarchy feuding threatening to derail the church’s plans, Woodruff admonished all parties to keep quiet until after statehood had been attained.33 The political infighting among members of the LDS hierarchy in the short period between the disbanding of the People’s Party in 1891 and the granting of Utah statehood in 1896 was in large measure a microcosm of the emerging tension within Mormonism between conservative Latter-day Saints who wished to extend at least a modicum of theodemocracy into the new century, and an increasingly vocal collection of leaders and lay members who favored a more drastic plunge into the nation’s mainstream, pluralistic political culture. Two of the most influential spokesmen for each side were Joseph F. Smith and B.H. Roberts. 31 B.H. Roberts, The Essential B.H. Roberts, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 59. 32 “Roberts’ Strong Position,” Salt Lake Herald, Oct. 14, 1895. 33 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 9. 92 A member of the Quorum of the Twelve since 1867 and of the First Presidency since 1880, Smith would eventually succeed to the office of church president in the fall of 1901. As such, he was arguably more instrumental than any other LDS leader in propelling Mormonism into the modern world. As historian Kathleen Flake argues, once he became president, Smith considered it his mission to “heal the breach between his people and the rest of America” and “end Mormonism’s Rocky Mountain isolation.”34 At the same time, he always kept one foot firmly planted in the nineteenth century. Perhaps owing to his own traumatic upbringing engulfed in anti-Mormon violence (his father Hyrum and his uncle, church founder Joseph Smith, were both murdered in Carthage Jail when he was a child), Smith always remained wary of allowing the church to grow too close to the nation or become too much a part of the cultural mainstream.35 Hence, even as he recognized the need for church members to join the national parties, Smith hoped this could transpire without destroying the nineteenth-century vision of a unified membership seeking spiritual and temporal guidance from an inspired and respected set of priesthood leaders. “I do not want the Latter-day Saints to forget that this is their privilege,” he stated in a 1912 discourse. “I would rather that they should seek God for a counselor and guide,” he continued, “than to follow the wild harangues of political leaders, or leaders of any other cult.”36 Unfortunately, Smith lamented in another address, some church members wished to relegate God’s prophets. “There was a time in the church of 34 Flake, Politics of American Religious Identity, 26-27. Ibid., 56-57. 36 Joseph F. Smith, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 42. 35 93 Christ when I think the authority of the whole priesthood was more thoroughly acknowledged,” he complained, “when it was held in higher esteem, and when it was treated with more respect than it is today.”37 Mormons who had pure faith in their leaders would never resist “the influence of the church no matter where it is felt,” he taught elsewhere, because they would trust the presiding authorities to impart nothing but what is “in the interest of good government, in the interest of prosperity and peace, and of happiness and good will towards all mankind.”38 Like Presidents Cannon and Woodruff, then, Smith hoped that the Saints’ newfound partisan affiliations would never supersede their loyalty to God’s kingdom or lessen their respect for their leaders. Nearly twenty years younger than Joseph F. Smith, B.H. Roberts of the Seventy also viewed the Mormons’ transition away from theodemocracy in the 1890s with a great deal of concern. However, while conservatives in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve feared the possible consequences of too much integration, Roberts feared the opposite scenario of too little integration. From his own reading of the LDS past, of which he was a devoted student, Roberts had come to the conclusion that lingering manifestations of Mormon separatism threatened the church’s future. To help further Zion’s assimilation, Roberts became an active player in the Utah Democratic Party the moment the People’s Party was 37 38 Joseph F. Smith, July 17, 1892, Collected Discourses, 3:102-103. Joseph F. Smith, May 3, 1896, Collected Discourses, 5:143. 94 dissolved, even though such involvement frequently put him in the crosshairs of his ecclesiastical superiors.39 Roberts’ opposition to too broad an exercise of priesthood authority— specifically one that seeped into the political realm—was thus rooted not only in his deep reverence for the Mormon doctrine of free agency, but also in his realistic assessment of where Zion presently stood in relation to the outside world. The First Presidency’s repeated assurances that they could intervene in politics for the good of both the church and the nation while remaining above the partisan fray may have been entirely sincere, but for Roberts they also entirely missed the point. So converted were their fellow Americans to the doctrine of “separation of the state from the influence of the church,” Roberts once declared, “they will tolerate no alteration of this arrangement under existing conditions.”40 The mingling of church and state may have been possible when Zion was the lone power in Utah territory, Roberts acknowledged, but by the first decade of the twentieth century he was convinced that “Utah is destined to become a non-Mormon state…It is for those who are directing the policy of our Church to consider whether they will have it antiMormon as well as non-Mormon. If we persist in some of the methods now in vogue,” he warned, “it will unavoidably be anti-Mormon.”41 In other words, the First Presidency could not continue this vacillating approach of saying one thing in public 39 Utahns elected Roberts to Congress in 1898, but in a sad irony given his faith in the fruits of assimilation, he was denied his seat in the House of Representatives due to lingering distrust of Mormons throughout the nation compounded by Roberts’ status as a polygamist, forcing him to step down. D. Craig Mikkelsen, “The Politics of B.H. Roberts,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 9, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 35. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 11. 40 B.H. Roberts, Oct. 5, 1892, Collected Discourses, 3:134-135. 41 Roberts, Essential B.H. Roberts, 185. 95 and then contradicting it in private. As Roberts told the Salt Lake Herald: “I see no middle ground between absolute and complete retirement on the part of high Mormon church officials from politics, or else perfect freedom of conduct in respect to politics—trusting the individual’s own discretion and judgment in political concerns.”42 So while Joseph F. Smith insisted on carrying forward the nineteenthcentury emphasis on the theocratic half of theodemocracy, Roberts’ confidence in the ability of the Mormon people to make wise political choices without consulting their priesthood leaders went against the grain by stressing demos over theos. In the short term, at least, it was Smith’s vision that prevailed. Not long after Utah was granted statehood, the First Presidency issued an official statement that became known as the Political Manifesto. Its most important, albeit controversial, section required high church officials to obtain permission from their ecclesiastical superiors before running for public office. Anticipating the accusation that such a requirement somehow violated the separation of church and state, or worse, that it would be manipulated for the benefit of one party over the other, the First Presidency insisted that their chief concern was merely to ensure that “men who hold high positions in the Church” not “accept political office or enter into any vocation that would distract or remove them from [their] religious duties.”43 Although Roberts never publicly questioned the First Presidency’s sincerity, he initially refused to attach his name to the document. Not only did he correctly anticipate the anger it would engender among Utah’s non-Mormons—specifically non-Mormon Democrats who feared the new requirement would be used to silence 42 “Roberts’ Strong Position.” 43 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 3:275-276. 96 Mormon Democrats such as Thatcher and Roberts. He also worried, somewhat ironically for someone who professed so much trust in the people, that individual church members would incorrectly assume that mere permission to run for office was tantamount to receiving the church’s official endorsement.44 Facing tremendous pressure from his fellow church authorities, Roberts eventually agreed to sign the Manifesto. Thatcher’s refusal to follow the same course, meanwhile, led to his tragic removal from the Council of the Twelve Apostles.45 The Political Manifesto helped the First Presidency reclaim some of the political influence they had lost since the dissolution of the People’s Party. Nevertheless, the Smoot hearings of 1903-07 all but marked the death-knell of nineteenth-century theodemocracy. The irony is that the Smoot hearings eventually resulted in a major victory for the Mormon Church. After four years of watching his fellow Mormon hierarchs lampooned in the press and subjected to intense interrogations on the floor of the Senate, Reed Smoot was finally allowed to retain his Senate seat. But this victory had come with a price. In the words of the Senate committee, the main impetus behind the Smoot hearings had been the widespread concern that the senator-elect was “one of a self-perpetuating body of fifteen men who, constituting the ruling authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or ‘Mormon’ Church, claim…supreme authority…to shape the belief and 44 Mikkelsen, “The Politics of B.H. Roberts,” 34-35. Roberts, Autobiography, 203-205. Roberts, Essential B.H. Roberts, 60-61. 45 As Edward Lyman has shown, Thatcher’s refusal to endorse the Political Manifesto was not the only reason for his demotion from the Twelve. His alienation from his fellow church authorities was actually a long process that culminated in the Political Manifesto controversy. See Sillito and Staker, Mormon Mavericks, 159-192. Also see Kenneth W. Godfrey, “Moses Thatcher in the Dock: His Trials, the Aftermath, and His Last Days,” The Journal of Mormon History 24, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 54-88. Godfrey suggests that Thatcher’s morphine habit may also have contributed to his downfall. 97 control the conduct of those under them in all matters whatsoever, civil and religious, temporal and spiritual,” even to the point, the statement went on, of encouraging their people to violate the laws of the land.46 So wary were LDS leaders of reinforcing this unfair and simplistic characterization of their relationship to their people that they went to unprecedented lengths to minimize Mormonism’s traditional emphasis on unity born of obedience to prophetic revelation. The result was four years of public rhetoric that would have been unrecognizable to earlier generations of Mormon leaders. With no other aspect of their faith tradition engendering more suspicion from members of the Senate committee than the Saints’ belief in living prophets, the Mormons who testified in Washington sought to highlight the limitations on both the authority and extent of prophetic revelation. Though at times frustratingly ambiguous, church President Joseph F. Smith’s opening testimony was unequivocal in stating that so long as “a man or a woman is honest and virtuous and believes in God and has a little faith in the church organization,” their membership in the church would not be in jeopardy “though he may not believe all that is revealed.” As evidence, Smith pointed to the “many thousands” of Latter-day Saints who “never received…or believed” in the revelations concerning polygamy but who, nevertheless, “were not disfellowshipped and…are still members of the church.” When pressed by the Senate committee to explain how church leaders could tolerate such selective obedience to revelations supposedly originating from God, 46 U.S. Senate, Committee on Privileges and Elections, Proceedings before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate in the Matter of the Protests against the Right of Hon. Reed Smoot, a Senator from the State of Utah, to Hold His Seat, 4 vols. (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904-06), 1:1. 98 Smith suddenly shifted gears by minimizing his own revelatory record with the naked admission that “I have never pretended to nor do I profess to have received revelations. I never said I had a revelation except so far as God has shown to me that so-called Mormonism is God’s divine truth; that is all.” When asked if this revelation confirming the truthfulness of Mormonism had come in the form of visions comparable to those claimed by his uncle, Joseph Smith, Smith was unwilling to say more than that this revelation had come by “the spirit of the Lord.”47 Whether premeditated or spontaneous, this portion of Smith’s testimony dramatically backtracked from founding prophet Joseph Smith’s emphasis on both the frequency and literalness of prophetic revelation. While this may have calmed the fears of the Senate committee, it also ran the risk of weakening the Mormon people’s faith in their religious leaders. In addition to minimizing the theocratic half of theodemocracy, Mormons and their friends who appeared before the Senate committee also placed more emphasis on the demos in theodemocracy by challenging the prevailing stereotype of their people as a mindless herd who thought and acted in unison according to their leaders’ wishes. “The members of the Mormon Church are among the freest and most independent people of all the Christian denominations,” Smith insisted. “They are not all united on every principle.”48 According to J.W.N. Whitecotton, a sympathetic Gentile who testified in favor of Smoot, this independent-mindedness was most apparent among the younger generation of Latter-day Saints. When asked 47 Michael Harold Paulos, ed., The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008), 32-35. 48 Ibid., 32. 99 to gauge their collective attitude toward the rumors of church dictation in politics, Whitecotton claimed to have “never heard one of them approve of it.” Instead, he went on, “I have heard many young men speak in terms of the very strongest condemnation of anybody seeking to interfere.”49 Of primary importance, of course, was to highlight the senator-elect’s willingness to be his own man. When asked whether his fellow Mormon apostles would in any way influence his actions in the Senate, Smoot responded with an affirmative “None whatever; because it is not their business.”50 Hence, the numerous Latter-day Saints who testified before the Senate committee all but ignored such pillars of theodemocracy as prophetic authority, common consent, and Zion exclusivism, and instead sought to highlight the diversity, individualism, and patriotism of the Mormon people. By so doing, they served to foreshadow the general contours of Mormon political thought moving forward. The end of theodemocracy did not mean the end of church involvement in politics. Nevertheless, an important shift had taken place between the disbanding of the People’s Party in 1891 and the adjournment of the Smoot hearings in 1907. In the words of historian Thomas Alexander, the church had transitioned from a quasination that had operated its own political system in the nineteenth century into “more like a pressure group dealing in what [it] perceived to be the best interest of the community.”51 With their repeated promises to respect “the doctrine of the separation of church and state” and honor “the absolute freedom and independence 49 Ibid., 418. Ibid., 532. 51 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 35. 50 100 of the individual in the performance of his political duties,” members of the LDS hierarchy would henceforth wield their political influence with far greater tact.52 Moving forward, this generally meant refraining from overt expressions of partisanship while excusing other forms of activism on moral grounds. While this may have provided some justification for subsequent incursions into the political realm, the fact that Mormon leaders were now obligated to draw a line between socalled moral and political issues constitutes further evidence that theodemocracy, at least in its nineteenth-century form, had come to an end. In Search of Righteous Reform The Latter-day Saints’ newfound engagement with the American political system coincided with a broad impulse for change and improvement throughout the United States, one that historian Richard Hofstadter called “the age of reform.” Stimulating this widespread desire for reform was the need to meet the challenges resulting from America’s confrontation with modernity. Among these challenges were the negative effects of corporate industry, concerns over gender, racial, and class conflict, along with the mounting fear that America’s legacy of democratic individualism and traditional adherence to Protestant social values were in grave danger. Americans responded with a wide variety of organizations and ideologies. From the far left came populism, labor unionism, and socialism, appealing to smaller numbers on the margins but contributing valuable criticisms and programs that mainstream reformers frequently appropriated. But the most popular and impactful 52 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 4:153. 101 reform movements of this period belonged to the amorphous, bipartisan phenomenon known as progressivism. Driven by a democratic idealism that viewed the people not as something distinct from, but as the sum total of the state, progressives promised to either break up or at least regulate the new corporate behemoths dominating the American economy, heal class divisions, provide a safety net for the underprivileged and downtrodden, introduce women into the political sector, and finally expunge from American life the evils of intemperance, among dozens of other promises.53 To what extent did Mormon political discourse reflect and even encourage this widespread desire for reform? In at least one case the Mormons were well ahead of the national curve. As an unexpected byproduct of the church’s recent standoff with the federal government over polygamy, the Saints were already in the vanguard of one of the major reform movements of this period—that of women’s suffrage. On a more general level, the church’s new emphasis on working for the good of the American nation encouraged more Saints than ever before to step outside of Zion and join forces with non-Mormon reformers in their pursuit of a wide variety of goals. As apostle Francis M. Lyman counseled in a general conference talk from 1908: “We expect our people to fall in line with every movement and every action taken in our nation and among the peoples of the world 53 On the widespread yearning for reform that captured American politics and culture in the early twentieth century, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955); Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order: 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966); and Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 102 for the salvation and redemption of men.”54 Considering the church’s new policy of accommodation and assimilation, it would have been surprising had the Saints not taken part in at least some of the organized efforts to stamp out problems that ran contrary to their Zion ideals. At the same time, within Mormon thought lay a powerful strain of conservatism that had always viewed human efforts to improve society with a great deal of cynicism and distrust. This skeptical attitude toward reform stemmed in part from the widespread conviction among the Saints that unless societies were committed to following the gospel of Christ, ambitious campaigns to produce social change had little chance of success. Mormon conservatism was also rooted in the fear that democratic movements risked undermining the sacred principles embodied in the Constitution. As was true of other conservatives, Mormon conservatives saw the Constitution as their surest line of defense against what Tocqueville had famously called the “tyranny of the majority.”55 Given their own history of persecution at the hands of private mobs, state governments, and most recently, the federal government, conservative Latter-day Saints were quick to see in any changes to the nation’s founding document a potential threat to their religious and civic rights. As Mormon stake president W.A. Hyde noted before an audience of Congregationalists in Idaho: “The conservatism of the ‘Mormon’ people as to proposed changes in our fundamental law, is a result of a fear that they have, that an instrument that they believe to have been inspired of God, was in danger of 54 Francis M. Lyman, Oct. 1908, Conference Reports, 56. Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, trans. Gerald E. Bevan (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 292. 55 103 violation.”56 In addition to these ideological concerns, the Mormons were also acutely aware of the potential political backlash that might result from supporting certain reform movements. The tension in the Mormon community between these activist and conservative instincts was on display during the October 1912 LDS general conference. With the 1912 presidential election only a month away, the October conference bore the clear imprint of the nationwide debate over which of the four main presidential candidates would bring the right kind of reform to the United States.57 On the eve of conference the church-owned Improvement Era had published an editorial by President Joseph F. Smith extolling the current American president, William Howard Taft. The editorial did not tell church members how to vote, yet Smith concluded that “whatever may happen through the elections in November…it is clear that President William H. Taft has made a good president.”58 Likely responding to Smith’s de facto endorsement of the conservative Taft, the outspoken B.H. Roberts delivered a controversial address that provoked several rejoinders from his fellow general authorities.59 At the heart of Roberts’ discourse was the seemingly innocuous argument that the most inspired element of America’s political system was its doctrine of popular sovereignty. To bolster his argument, Roberts quoted a long passage from 56 W.A. Hyde, “Why I Am a ‘Mormon,’” Improvement Era 16, no. 6 (Apr. 1913): 539. The 1912 presidential election pitted four viable candidates against one another: The Republican candidate and current president William Howard Taft, the Progressive candidate and former president Theodore Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson, and the Socialist candidate Eugene Debs. On the 1912 presidential election, see James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs—The Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). 58 Joseph F. Smith, “The Presidential Election,” Improvement Era 15, no. 12 (Oct. 1912): 1120-1121. 59 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 39. 57 104 the Book of Mormon wherein the prophet Mosiah admonishes the Nephite nation to permanently abolish monarchy and transition into a government of judges, “which in reality was a sort of republic,” Roberts argued, “or rule by the people.” According to Roberts, Mosiah urged this shift from kingly to popular sovereignty because in a monarchical system, the Book of Mormon prophet observed, “the sins of many people…are answered upon the heads of their kings.” In a democracy, by contrast, not only does the power to “alter or even abolish,” as well as to “institute new forms” of government reside in the people, Roberts contended, but the people are also accountable before God for whatever ills might befall their society. For Roberts, then, democracy was superior to all other forms of government because by placing ultimate authority in the hands of the people, it thereby made them responsible for the fate of their own nations and thus honored the LDS doctrine of individual accountability.60 With this principle forming the basis of his talk, Roberts then transitioned into a discussion of the relationship between popular sovereignty and the Constitution. Perhaps sensing that his more conservative brethren in the hierarchy were likely to depict the Constitution as a higher law that superseded even the will of the people, Roberts reminded the congregation that Brigham Young had rejected the notion that the Constitution, though inspired, had established a perfect framework of government. “If men know anything they must know that the Almighty never yet found a man in mortality that was capable at the first intimation,” Young had declared, “to receive anything in a state of entire perfection.” 60 B.H. Roberts, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 32-34. Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 275. 105 The framers may have “laid the foundation,” Young continued, but “it is a progressive and gradual work.” With one of the original pillars of Mormonism seemingly on his side, Roberts applauded the framers for giving future generations the opportunity, when necessary, to build upon their work through constitutional amendments. Roberts assured his audience that he had no wish to see the sovereign people tamper with the Constitution’s most essential principles, but he did insist on their right and even responsibility to make gradual, progressive changes for the greater good.61 Roberts’ talk drew rebuttals from several other general authorities, the lengthiest of which came from apostle Charles Penrose. Penrose rejected what he saw as Roberts’ simplistic division between “essentials,” which for Roberts consisted of little more than the core doctrines of Mormonism, and “non-essentials,” which for Roberts consisted of pretty much everything else, including multiple perspectives on politics and governance. In Penrose’s view “every principle that the Lord has revealed to us in the latter days is to be counted among the essentials.”62 These included the sacred principles of republican government contained in the Constitution. “Are there no essentials in that which is grouped under the head of civil government?” Penrose asked the congregation. “Yes, I think so; I think that there are fundamentals in regard to civil government and particularly in the kind of government under which we live.” Foremost among these, he insisted, were the principles of representative government and the rule of law as the primary means of checking the “passions of the multitude.” Having studied the histories of 61 62 B.H. Roberts, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 34. Charles W. Penrose, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 63. 106 governments both ancient and modern, he continued, the framers of the Constitution had seen “the failures that had occurred when the populace directly had power to regulate the affairs of the community.” Hence, “they had learned the difference between that which is called popular government—the unguided will of the people, the masses, and a representative government.”63 Evincing far less trust in the people than either Roberts or Mosiah, Penrose warned his fellow Saints to remain ever watchful of any attempts to alter the sacred principles that had been revealed to the nation’s founders. He did not automatically oppose every proposal to amend the Constitution, but as he stated near the close of his address, “amending the Constitution and ripping it up the back and tearing out its vitals are two very different things.”64 Among other insights, the exchange between B.H. Roberts and Charles Penrose illustrated the growing diversity of Mormon political thought resulting from the Saints’ increased exposure to outside partisan and ideological influences. Although neither LDS leader brought up the ongoing presidential race or any of its competing parties and candidates, many in the congregation undoubtedly recognized that they were in fact taking part in a much larger debate over the Constitution and American democracy that was being heard throughout the nation in the years and months leading up to the 1912 election. Of the major ideological factions competing for power that year, the one that likely exercised the most influence on Penrose was that of President Taft and the socalled Old Guard of conservative Republicans, many of whom, like Penrose, had 63 64 Ibid., 64-65. Ibid., 67. 107 adopted a pessimistic view of human nature that made them distrustful of direct democracy and mass political activism. Providing a check against the unhinged passions of the multitude, they argued, was the Constitution’s preference for representative government. As his lukewarm nod to reform near the close of his address did reveal, Penrose did not automatically oppose the idea of either amending the Constitution or stretching and broadening some of its language in order to confront new challenges. But as historian Norman Wilensky points out, the primary reason why Progressive Era conservatives sometimes favored moderate reform was actually to preserve the status quo as much as possible. Knowing that excessive rigidity in government risked arousing a revolutionary spirit, Wilensky argues, they were willing to go along with piece-meal changes that tended to appease popular sentiment without sacrificing what Penrose, borrowing from Roberts, had valorized as the “essentials” of civic government.65 On the other side, Roberts’ trust in the sovereign people combined with his view of the Constitution as a mere foundation upon which future generations must continue to build placed his political discourse much closer to that of the Progressive candidate and former president, Theodore Roosevelt, and even more so, to that of the new standard-bearer of Roberts’ beloved Democratic Party, Woodrow Wilson. According to scholar Christopher Wolfe, in no other text did Wilson more clearly present his perspective on the proper relationship between the Constitution and America’s democratic citizenry than in his 1885 work, Congressional 65 Norman M. Wilensky, Conservatives in the Progressive Era: The Taft Republicans of 1912 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965), 38-47. Gary Murphy, “’Mr. Roosevelt is Guilty’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for Constitutionalism, 1910-1912,” Journal of American Studies 36, no. 3 (Dec. 2002): 441-457. 108 Government.66 Like Roberts, Wilson regarded the nation’s founding document as “a corner-stone, not a complete building; or…a root, not a perfect vine.” Yet rather than decry this as a weakness, Wilson instead hailed the Constitution’s brevity as well as its frequent lack of specificity as “its chief strength. For it to go beyond elementary provisions,” he reasoned, “would be to lose elasticity and adaptability.”67 For Taft, Penrose, and other Progressive Era conservatives, this interpretation of the Constitution as open-ended and flexible was dangerous because it risked placing too much responsibility in the hands of the untrustworthy masses. Wilson, Roberts, and other progressives were no utopians, but they did tend to possess a more optimistic view of human nature.68 Thus, if Penrose imagined anarchy and eventually despotism resulting from ordinary citizens’ inability to agree on the precise meaning of the Constitution, Roberts was more likely to envision his fellow Americans engaged in a healthy and ultimately constructive dialogue on how best to apply the Constitution to the modern world. The informal debate between Penrose and Roberts did reveal one important commonality. Whatever their differences regarding the wisdom of altering the Constitution or the degree to which everyday people should participate in the workings of government, the conservative Penrose and the progressive Roberts were equally convinced of the Latter-day Saints’ sacred duty to work not only for the good of Zion, but for that of the United States, as well. Neither LDS leader 66 Christopher Wolfe, “Woodrow Wilson: Interpreting the Constitution,” The Review of Politics 41, no. 1 (January 1979): 121-142. 67 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885), 8-9. 68 Wilensky, Conservatives in the Progressive Era, 43. 109 showed any inclination, in other words, to return to the older Zion nationalism. Penrose took a more conservative position, but his conservatism was rooted in distrust of the masses and reverence for the Constitution. At no point did he advocate the restoration of theodemocracy. Neither Roberts nor Penrose described the relationship between Zion and America in millennial, binary terms. And, neither saw the current challenges facing the nation as reason to abandon their fellow countrymen to some awful fate. In hindsight, the public disagreement between Roberts and Penrose was significant for two reasons: It exposed the budding rift in the Mormon community between progressives and conservatives, and more importantly, it revealed how thoroughly Americanized Mormon political thought had become by 1912. As further evidence of their Americanization, Latter-day Saints in the Progressive Era now saw it as their duty to seek out and support what they considered righteous reform, and conversely, to protect their nation from supposed reforms that threatened to do more harm than good. For most Latter-day Saints, two movements from this period that fell into the latter category were organized labor and especially socialism. The wide gulf between Mormonism and the various workers’ associations of this period stemmed in part from the church’s desire to improve its public image by avoiding even the appearance of radicalism. But Mormon opposition to the labor movement was also deeply ideological. Latter-day Saints regularly condemned unions for supposedly violating the free agency of nonunion workers by forcing them to join their ranks. In its first official statement on labor unions issued in 1896, the First Presidency stopped short of imposing 110 ecclesiastical discipline on any of its members who had joined the Ancient Order of United Workmen, a union formed in 1868. Nevertheless, the First Presidency did not hesitate to proclaim “it is wrong, contrary to our religion, and contrary to good citizenship, for men to combine together in any organization to prevent their fellowmen from working because they do not join them.”69 Augmenting the First Presidency’s rebukes, a 1902 article in the church-owned Deseret News insisted: “When a society says to a mechanic or laborer, ‘you shall not earn your bread…unless you become a member with us,’ it becomes a despotism more to be despised…than the tyranny of one man.”70 Seeing organized labor as a new form of democratic despotism that frequently violated the sacred principle of free agency, the Mormon hierarchy in the twentieth century would take a consistent stand against the closed shop and in favor of so-called “right-to-work” laws.71 Mormons also attacked unions for encouraging class-consciousness, a fact that many union members undoubtedly took pride in. But for the Saints classes were not only antithetical to Zion’s cooperative ideals; they also threatened the nation’s very existence. In the Book of Mormon, the emergence of classes usually indicated that society was on the verge of either anarchy or tyranny.72 Mormon leaders frequently implored the heads of both capital and labor to resolve their differences through peaceful means. In an official address to the peoples of the earth issued on the first day of 1901, church President Lorenzo Snow pled with the 69 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 3:278-279. “’Mormons’ and Labor Unions,” Deseret Evening News, Mar. 21, 1902. 71 J. Kenneth Davies, “Mormonism and the Closed Shop,” Labor History 3, no. 2 (March 1, 1962): 169187. 72 For Book of Mormon passages warning against the dangers of class distinctions, see Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 158-159, 289-290, 297-298, 391-392, 645-646. 70 111 world’s “toiling millions” not to regard “wealth as your enemy and your employers as your oppressors.” Snow then invited the world’s capitalists to “unlock your vaults, unloose your purses and embark in enterprises that will give work to the unemployed.”73 When pressed to choose a side in this growing conflict, however, Mormon leaders were more likely to sympathize with capital. In an article published in the church-owned Juvenile Instructor entitled, “The Strike Craze,” Joseph F. Smith condemned unions for “irrationally making war against capital.” For Smith there was no question as to which side was the true aggressor. While “Capital is naturally shy, and…forced to hide itself by a wild and irrational agitation,” he argued, employees all too often resorted to strikes not because they had legitimate grievances against their employers, but as a show of solidarity toward other laborers with whom, Smith opined, they often had little in common. This “strike craze” was sweeping across the land, Smith warned, inciting violence against employers, destroying private property, and “stopping the wheels of commerce,” much to the detriment of the nation’s consumers. But the most dangerous consequence of organized labor, he continued, was its potential to foment divisions among Latter-day Saints by compelling Mormons within unions to “make war upon their brethren who are without the union.” Consistent with the First Presidency’s statement back in 1896, Smith stopped short of imposing a strict rule prohibiting church members from joining unions. But he did admonish any Latter-day Saint who 73 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 3:334. 112 belonged to a union to “assume a conservative attitude” by rejecting violence and coercion upon non-union workers.74 Not all Mormons defended capital. In his 1895 work, A New Witness for God, B.H. Roberts depicted capital as the clear aggressor in the worsening conflict between rich and poor. “Capital, to secure and perpetuate its interests,” Roberts argued, “combines into huge corporations which control production and the markets, waters its stock, bribes legislatures, [and] oppresses labor.” Roberts did not excuse labor for occasionally resorting to unscrupulous methods, but these were primarily taken up, he argued, “to protect itself against the ever-increasing greed and power of capital.”75 Issuing a fiercer denunciation of capital was a 1911 article from the Woman’s Exponent, the leading literary organ of the church’s official women’s organization, the Relief Society. Entitled “Employer and Employee,” the article dwells on the horrendous conditions of industrial labor and their detrimental effects on the human body and mind, calling the entire system a form of “white industrial slavery.” Not surprisingly, its primary concern was the plight of working women. In an ideal world, the author observes in a passage betraying her conservative bent, women would avoid “money-making employment” since “her real sphere is in the home.” But with demand for female labor on the rise, the article continues, lawmakers and philanthropists should do everything in their power to limit the hours and increase wages for working women. If they did not, the author 74 Joseph F. Smith, “The Strike Craze,” The Juvenile Instructor 38, no. 12, June 15, 1903, 368-371. B.H. Roberts, A New Witness for God (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons Company, 1895), 397. 75 113 warns, young women working for a mere pittance would likely turn to prostitution.76 Notwithstanding their diatribes against the greed and tyranny of big business, neither Roberts nor the Woman’s Exponent author came close to endorsing any radical programs calling for the overthrow of the existing capitalist system. In fact, Roberts ridiculed socialism and communism in particular as “impracticable theories which from time to time have engaged the attention of philosophical minds with a bent for speculation in human affairs.”77 Not every Mormon dismissed socialism. As historians John R. Sillito and John S. McCormick have shown, Latterday Saints made up as many as 40% of Utah’s small Socialist Party between 1900 and 1920.78 Mormon socialists acknowledged their status as odd ducks. One Mormon socialist, George W. Williams, lamented that so few Mormons “comprehend the class struggle,” for so effectively had capitalists deceived the people that “even the Church of Christ is permeated with its pernicious doctrines.”79 Nevertheless, Mormon socialists took pride in their belief that of all the existing political and economic philosophies, theirs most closely resembled the egalitarian vision of nineteenth-century Mormonism.80 76 “Employer and Employee,” Woman’s Exponent 39, no. 8 (Mar. 1911): 57-58. Roberts, New Witness for God, 399. 78 John R. Sillito and John S. McCormick, “Socialist Saints: Mormons and the Socialist Party in Utah, 1900-1920,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 123. 79 Quoted in Ibid., 125. 80 Ibid., 127-128. Early Mormonism’s pursuit of economic cooperation and egalitarianism was rooted in the Law of Consecration and Stewardship, which Mormons also frequently referred to as the United Order, or the Order of Enoch. First imparted to the Saints in 1831 in the form of a revelation from their founding prophet, the Law of Consecration instructed them to turn over, or consecrate, all of their property to the church through a permanent deed. Under the direction of church elders, this accumulated property was then reapportioned to each participating family in the form of a stewardship that varied according to their respective needs and capacities. Since members were 77 114 Although the number of Mormon socialists was never very large, LDS leaders embarked on what Sillito and McCormick have described as a full-fledged “campaign against socialism.”81 The rhetoric making up this campaign frequently echoed the hierarchy’s attacks on labor unions. Both were accused of promoting violence and class warfare, threatening the Constitution, and discouraging the influx of muchneeded capital into Utah. But owing to its ambitious program of economic and social change, socialism provoked a more organized, aggressive response from members of the LDS hierarchy. Like the Mormons’ own Law of Consecration, socialism promised to eradicate poverty and exploitation while raising men and women to a state of relative economic equality.82 Yet rather than applaud or support socialists for their seemingly noble intentions, Mormon leaders were more likely to classify socialism as a dangerous counterfeit that foolishly strove to create a Zion-like state without first enlisting God’s help to mold a Zion people. Responding to a letter from a Massachusetts socialist wishing to know “the attitude of the Mormon Church toward expected to work hard to expand their stewardships, all surplus property would be consecrated back to the church on an annual basis to provide new stewardships for the poor. Like hundreds of other communitarian ventures undertaken in antebellum America, the first crack at putting the Law of Consecration into practice came to a frustrating end after just two years. Various programs modeled after the original law were implemented in territorial Utah in the 1850s and 1870s, but they too fizzled out after only a few years. Following Brigham Young’s death, church leaders were unwilling to embark on any serious attempts to restore the United Order in full. Nevertheless, Mormons continued to regard the United Order as God’s perfect economic system, one that he would eventually challenge his people to practice again. On the Law of Consecration, see Smith, Doctrine and Covenants, 42:30-39; and Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Deseret Book Company: Salt Lake City, 1976), 1540, 135-154. 81 Sillito and McCormick, Utah Radicalism, 382-443. 82 On American socialism in the early twentieth century, see David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (New York: Macmillan, 1955); Howard Quint, The Forging of American Socialism (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953); and Ira Kipnis, The America Socialist Movement, 1897-1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952). 115 our movement,” an 1899 article from the Improvement Era stated: “The only thing that can permanently eradicate the evils under which humanity suffers is the Gospel of the Son of God.” Without the gospel, the article continued, “the efforts of philanthropists and social and political reformers to ameliorate the hard conditions under which mankind suffers…will not succeed to any very great extent.”83 Echoing the Improvement Era article, future Mormon apostle Melvin J. Ballard would argue in a 1911 general conference address that “What the world needs, more than socialistic system and methods, is a people so trained that they can keep themselves in line, and maintain high ideals and standards.”84 The central flaw of socialism, Mormon critics frequently charged, was that it sought to reform society without first reforming the individual. As B.H. Roberts wrote in A New Witness for God: “It is vain for men to seek to build up communities in which selfishness shall be abolished, and love and goodwill abound, until they have developed in the separate units that are to compose it the same qualities that are to be characteristic of the community; for communities can be no better than the individuals that compose them.” The genius of Mormonism, Roberts continued, was that “It comes first to the individual with a cry of repentance, with an appeal to turn unto righteousness,” eventually molding someone who “loves his neighbor as himself, and is ready to seek another’s rather than his own good.”85 Once the American people reached this level of righteousness through the influence of the gospel, Ballard enthusiastically prophesied, “the great problem that is confronting 83 “Attitude of the Church Towards Reform-Political Parties,” Improvement Era 2, no. 4 (Feb. 1899): 310-312. 84 Melvin J. Ballard, Oct. 1911, Conference Reports, 80. 85 Roberts, New Witness for God, 400-401. 116 the world today, between capital and labor, shall be completely solved.”86 To its Mormon critics, socialism would never solve these problems because it lacked the power to produce a Zion people. Due in large measure to these criticisms, what little support socialism had once enjoyed in the Latter-day Saint community had all but disappeared by 1920.87 If unionism and socialism tended to engender more opposition than support from Latter-day Saints, the same was not true of several of the more mainstream programs that fell under the broad rubric of progressivism. The two that found the widest support in the Latter-day Saint community were the fight to grant women the franchise, and the campaign to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol throughout the nation. In general, what made women’s suffrage and prohibition so appealing was their perceived ability to purify American society and politics without attempting to radically upend the existing social order. Despite the nearly unanimous ideological support they enjoyed among the Saints, however, each of these reforms encountered lesser and greater degrees of opposition within Mormondom stemming from reasonable concerns over their possible political ramifications. The widespread support for women’s suffrage among the Mormons in the years leading up to the Nineteenth Amendment had been decades in the making. Back in the nineteenth century, critics of Mormon polygamy, including congressmen, women’s rights activists, and journalists, had periodically speculated that granting Mormon women the right to vote might enable them to free themselves from what 86 87 Melvin J. Ballard, Oct. 1911, Conference Reports, 80. Sillito and McCormick, “Socialist Saints,” 127-130. 117 many outsiders decried as a patriarchal system of white slavery.88 In 1869 Indiana Congressman George W. Julian proposed a bill to enfranchise Utah women in the hopes that they would then, in effect, vote themselves out of polygamy.89 Not long after, the LDS hierarchy came to the conclusion that such a measure would in fact strengthen the church’s political power while proving to the rest of the nation that Mormon women were equally converted to the principle of plural marriage. As Lola Van Wagenen has demonstrated, the activism of Mormon women in the years after the Civil War—exemplified by large public protests organized by the Relief Society to denounce antipolygamy legislation as a violation of their religious rights as well as their rights as women—played a crucial role in convincing the church’s male leadership of Mormon women’s “potential for political usefulness.”90 Under the direction of the First Presidency, the Utah Territorial Legislature of 1870 became only the second legislative body in America to grant the women under its jurisdiction the right to vote.91 Once they came to the realization that Mormon women were not using the franchise as they had earlier hoped, members of Congress moved to return them to their former status as political eunuchs, first by disenfranchising polygamists in 1882 through the Edmunds Act, then by disenfranchising all Utah women, Mormon 88 On this nineteenth-century view of polygamy as a new and more insidious form of chattel slavery, see Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 161-170. 89 Thomas G. Alexander, “An Experiment in Progressive Legislation: The Granting of Woman Suffrage in Utah in 1870,” Utah Historical Quarterly 38, no. 1 (Winter 1970): 24. Congress never actually voted on Julian’s bill. 90 Van Wagenen, “Sister-Wives and Suffragists,” 17-24. 91 Beverly Beeton, “Woman Suffrage in the American West, 1869-1896” (PhD dissertation, The University of Utah, 1976), 49-51. 118 and non-Mormon, in 1887 through the Edmunds-Tucker Act.92 Utah women now had to wait for statehood for a chance to include female suffrage in a new constitution. By the time the constitutional convention was set to begin in the spring of 1895, most insiders regarded the inclusion of women’s suffrage as a foregone conclusion. Working through the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah, Mormon and non-Mormon suffragists were determined to enshrine this formerly enjoyed right in the new constitution rather than rely on the liberality of some future state legislature. Moreover, the two major parties along with the LDS hierarchy had already voiced their support for adding women’s suffrage to the new constitution.93 Then to most Utahns’ surprise, this expectation hit a fierce roadblock in the person of B.H. Roberts, who launched a one-man crusade against women’s suffrage during the convention. Given his progressive stances on such issues as church-state separation and political economy, Roberts’ opposition is startling. But as he insisted in one of his many lengthy speeches before his fellow delegates, “All change is not progress. All the customs that have been bequeathed to us by antiquity ought not to be stricken down.”94 Roberts argued that granting women the vote violated the republican maxim that “the franchise ought to be confined to those who are capable of acting independently.” In their capacity as wives and daughters, he feared, 92 Van Wagenen, “Sister-Wives and Suffragists,” 345-346, 397. Jean Bickmore White, “Woman’s Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895,” in Carol Cornwall Madsen, ed., Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 18701896 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997), 221-224. 94 Roberts, Autobiography, 190. 93 119 women were too prone to parroting the dominant men in their lives.95 Even more alarming to Roberts was the likelihood that too much exposure to the sordid and vulgar realm of party politics would degrade the gentler and more delicate female sex and thus endanger the future of the American, and Mormon, family.96 These timeworn arguments were not as compelling to most of the delegates as Roberts’ warning that female suffrage might imperil statehood. At a time when only two states in the entire nation granted women full voting rights, it was not unreasonable to expect the government in Washington to reject the new constitution and thus further delay the long struggle for Utah statehood.97 Nevertheless, the delegates eventually moved forward on women’s suffrage and, Roberts’ warnings notwithstanding, the new constitution was approved and Utah finally admitted into the Union.98 Latter-day Saint women who had taken part in the fight to restore female suffrage to Utah were equally committed to promoting the extension of the franchise to women around the world. As the first motto of the Woman’s Exponent read, “The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of all Nations.” The Woman’s Exponent and other suffragist literature kept Mormon women updated on the progress of women’s rights in other states while tackling head-on the myriad objections raised by such critics as Roberts. In her 1914 pamphlet, “Utah Women in Politics,” the prominent Mormon suffragist and daughter of Brigham Young, Susa 95 Ibid., 190. Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention, Assembled at Salt Lake City on the Fourth Day of March, 1895, to Adopt a Constitution for the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Company, 1898), 469-470. 97 These two states were Wyoming and Colorado. 98 Roberts, Autobiography, 185-194. 96 120 Young Gates, sought to assuage such fears by insisting that “The strength of the movement” for female suffrage in Utah “lay in the just and generous attitude of the great majority of the men of this state, and in the sane and conservative attitude of the women.”99 Writing for a national audience, Gates rejected the claim that bestowing the franchise on women had either caused marital problems or tempted women to abandon their traditional roles as wives and mothers. “The right of franchise has made no change in the women of Utah,” she assured her readers. “They are home-makers and helpmeets as women were ever wont to be. The right to vote has not marred their beauty or dimmed the luster of their womanhood.”100 At the same time, Gates insisted, women’s continued fidelity to the domestic sphere should not be taken to mean, as Roberts had earlier suggested, that they lacked the requisite independence to cast a ballot. One article in the Woman’s Exponent boasted that in contrast to the typical man who slavishly obeyed party orders, women were more likely to follow their conscience and use their newfound political voice to “stand by the home, and the vital questions that concern the family.”101 With their innate desire to support upstanding candidates and honorable legislation regardless of party influence, another article from the Woman’s Exponent promised, women would purify the political realm for the overall good of the nation. “I say women to the rescue,” the article declared. “Let her conscience go into politics as it has in her home so shall she carry the white banner of purity and liberty, casting her ballot at all times for the best good of all mankind until there shall be ‘a 99 Susa Young Gates, “Utah Women in Politics,” 1914, 2. Ibid., 13. 101 “The Woman’s Vote,” Woman’s Exponent 25, no. 4 (Aug. 1896): 28. 100 121 new heaven and a new earth.’”102 Framed in this way, female suffrage came to be regarded as precisely the kind of righteous reform that even most conservative church members could get behind. As evidence of women’s willingness to transcend partisan barriers for the good of both Zion and the United States, Mormon suffragists frequently pointed to women’s overwhelming support for the prohibition movement which, just as it had done in the antebellum period, was once again winning converts throughout the nation during the first two decades of the twentieth century.103 Because the cause of temperance “appeals especially to women,” an article from the 1908 Woman’s Exponent promised, prohibition laws would invariably take hold in every state where women enjoyed the right to vote. While even good men might “disagree as to the merits or desirability of prohibition,” the article declared, “Women do not. There is no question about it in their minds. If their votes could decide the issue, it would speedily be settled.”104 Mormon suffragists were not alone in linking women’s rights to prohibition, yet this rhetorical strategy was especially effective in the Latter-day Saint community where support for a temperate lifestyle was already deeply ingrained among women and men. In 1833 the Mormons had been given their own law of health known as the Word of Wisdom, urging them to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea, to 102 Woman’s Exponent 24, no. 6 (Aug. 1895): 42. On the prohibition movement of the early twentieth century, see Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010); and Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976). 104 “The Political Situation in Utah,” Woman’s Exponent 37, no. 3 (Oct. 1908): 20. 103 122 consume a healthy diet of herbs and fruit, and to eat meat only “sparingly.”105 It was not until the early decades of the twentieth century, however, that Mormon leaders embarked on a long-term, and ultimately successful, program to convert the Word of Wisdom from a voluntary “principle with promise” into a strict commandment that was equally binding upon all church members.106 But this was no easy task. As Joseph F. Smith admitted in a general conference sermon from 1908: “I am sorry to say that I do not believe there is another revelation…that is less observed or honored than this ‘Word of Wisdom,’ and that, too, by members and officers of the Church.” “Some of our best men,” he continued, “disregard in part this law.”107 Hence, much of the support for prohibition from members of the hierarchy stemmed from their hope that man-made legislation might further incentivize church members to follow the Lord’s law of health with greater exactness. As Francis Lyman of the Quorum of the Twelve admitted in the same conference: “It seems necessary to have laws of the land to confirm and assist the law of the Lord.”108 Mormon leaders viewed the national movement to outlaw liquor as a tremendous boon to their own efforts to enforce at least one facet of the Word of Wisdom within Zion. The widespread ideological support for prohibition in the Mormon community was also further evidence of the Saints’ growing concern for the moral 105 Dirkmaat, Rogers, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 3: February 1833-March 1834, 11-24. 106 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 258-271. As Alexander points out, the campaign to convert the Word of Wisdom into a binding commandment involved greater emphasis on abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea, while deemphasizing the original revelation’s counsel concerning herbs and meat. 107 Joseph F. Smith, Oct. 1908, Conference Reports, 5. 108 Francis M. Lyman, Oct. 1908, Conference Reports, 55. 123 and temporal wellbeing of the American nation. Mormon leaders were confident that the positive effects of prohibition would extend well beyond Zion. They frequently celebrated temperance as the first step toward a more general acceptance of the Word of Wisdom. It was clear evidence, they insisted, that the rest of America was finally beginning to follow Zion’s lead. “The most of us have lived under this law for a long time,” Lyman boasted, “and when the temperance movement was inaugurated by the world, looking to this important reformation among men, it was not a surprise” to the Mormons.109 “It appears that this spirit [of temperance] is not only moving upon the Latter-day Saints,” he claimed in an earlier sermon, “but it is among the peoples of the world as well.”110 Classifying the temperance movement as a kind of inspired corollary of the Word of Wisdom, Mormon prohibitionists described their mission as one of universalizing the Lord’s law of health for all of his children. As Joseph F. Smith wrote in a 1911 editorial for the Woman’s Exponent: “The best way to teach temperance is to keep the Word of Wisdom; and the next best is to assist others to keep it by removing artificial temptations from their lives. Such a temptation is the saloon.” “To work thus in the interest of temperance is highly commendable,” Smith concluded, “and in harmony with the teachings of the Church.”111 Smith and other church leaders framed prohibition as the logical, inspired culmination of the Word of Wisdom, and support for antiliquor laws as akin to a religious duty. 109 Ibid., 55. Francis M. Lyman, Apr. 1908, Conference Reports, 15. 111 Joseph F. Smith, “The Temperance Question,” Woman’s Exponent 39, no. 9 (May 1911): 65. 110 124 To reinforce this idea, apostle Heber J. Grant issued a resolution at the October 1908 general conference challenging church members to “do all in their power…to have such laws enacted by our legislature, soon to be elected, as may be necessary to close saloons [and] otherwise decrease the sale of liquor.”112 Four months later Utah’s Republican-dominated lower House approved a statewide prohibition bill. Then to the shock and dismay of Mormon prohibitionists, the state Senate rejected the bill only a few days after its easy passage in the House.113 The backlash was immediate. The senators who voted for prohibition accused their colleagues of entering into a secret compact with the liquor industry.114 The Deseret News lambasted the Senate for blatantly defying the will of its constituents, comparing it to President Van Buren’s snubbing of the Mormon people back in 1839.115 One of the harshest indictments came the following spring from apostle Hyrum M. Smith. Reminding his audience of the resolution issued only six months earlier, Smith charged the Senate with “fastening the whiskey yoke more firmly upon” the people, handing the state over to the liquor traffic, and giving “those engaged in this dreadful business all the aid, comfort and support we possibly can.”116 Unbeknownst to most church members and even many general authorities was the fact that one of their own—U.S. Senator and Mormon apostle Reed Smoot, with the tacit support of church President Joseph F. Smith—had directed his allies in 112 Heber J. Grant, Oct. 1908, Conference Reports, 64-65. Brent G. Thompson, “’Standing Between Two Fires’: Mormons and Prohibition, 1908-1917,” The Journal of Mormon History 10, no. 1 (1983): 40-41. 114 “Cannon Bill Duly Strangled,” Deseret Evening News, Feb. 22, 1909. 115 “What Can They Say?” Deseret Evening News, Feb. 22, 1909. 116 Hyrum M. Smith, Apr. 1909, Conference Reports, 90. 113 125 the state Senate to kill the prohibition bill. Like most of his fellow Saints, Smoot had no moral or ideological qualms with the temperance movement; his opposition was purely political. He feared that pushing statewide prohibition through the Mormondominated legislature, especially on the heels of the hierarchy’s open endorsement of this measure, would resurrect the accusation so often made during the Smoot hearings that the Mormon Church controlled Utah politics. In Smoot’s mind this risked destroying the delicate balance in the Utah Republican Party between Mormons and non-Mormons and might even prompt some of the latter to join forces with the anti-Mormon American Party.117 “If state wide prohibition had prevailed at that time,” Smoot later asserted in a letter to fellow Mormon Republican Nephi L. Morris, “I believe the state would have been controlled by the American party.” “You can imagine what that would have meant for our people at that particular time,” he continued, “if it had happened the liquor traffic instead of being further regulated, would have been encouraged and enlarged.”118 Persuaded by Smoot’s fears, President Smith stopped endorsing statewide prohibition in subsequent general conference talks. By 1911 he was pressuring his fellow Mormon hierarchs to exercise the same restraint. Not until the Republican Party added prohibition to its national platform and several western states abolished the liquor traffic did the LDS hierarchy resume their earlier support, 117 Like the Liberal Party of the late nineteenth century, the American Party of Utah was formed to oppose the economic and political power of the Mormon Church, beginning with Reed Smoot’s election to the U.S. Senate. Smoot’s concerns over the political fallout from prohibition stemmed from the fact that the American Party’s primary recruits were disenchanted Utah Republicans. Officially organized in 1904, the party ceased its political activities after 1923. See Reuben J. Snow, “The American Party in Utah: A Study of Political Party Struggles During the Early Years of Statehood” (Master’s thesis: The University of Utah, 1964). 118 Reed Smoot to Nephi L. Morris, Mar. 9, 1915. The Nephi L. Morris Papers, Box 1, Folder 18, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 126 finally resulting in the enactment of statewide prohibition in 1917 and the legislature’s ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.119 The LDS hierarchy’s vacillating support for statewide prohibition between 1908 and 1917 reveals yet another way in which partisan politics now limited the Mormon Church’s once limitless, at least in Utah, political power. In addition to having to acquiesce to their own people’s growing sense of independence, church leaders also had to face the fact that meddling in the political realm was almost certain to anger Utah’s non-Mormons who, unlike their predecessors in the nineteenth century, were now capable of unraveling the state’s delicate political balance. The vast majority of Mormons needed little convincing from their leaders to support antiliquor legislation, yet as B.H. Roberts had so consistently pointed out, even a unified body of Latter-day Saints could no longer run the state with impunity. To “Save the World”: The Great War and the League of Nations On the evening of September 2, 1919, what the Deseret News described as “an unusually large” audience crowded into the Salt Lake Tabernacle to hear J. Reuben Clark, a native Utahn and Latter-day Saint who had achieved considerable success among the Gentiles as attorney and statesman, address them on the subject of the League of Nations.120 Clark’s appearance at the tabernacle came almost two months after President Woodrow Wilson first presented the League of Nations charter to the United States Senate for approval, and only one day before Wilson was 119 Thompson, “Standing Between Two Fires,” 51-52. “Great Audience Hears Address on League of Nations,” Deseret Evening News, Sep. 3, 1919. Frank W. Fox, J. Reuben Clark: The Public Years (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), 292-295. 120 127 scheduled to begin a national speaking tour intended to win popular support for an organization that the president, at the Paris Peace Conference in February, had called “a definite guarantee of peace.”121 Clark could not have disagreed more. His lengthy speech painted the proposed league as a dangerous threat to American sovereignty that risked destroying the qualities that made America so exceptional among nations. After giving Clark a resounding applause, the audience was startled to see the familiar figure of B.H. Roberts unexpectedly emerge behind the pulpit to announce that “in the near future at a meeting here,” he would “answer the arguments presented by…Clark this evening.”122 Six days later another large crowd poured into the tabernacle to hear Roberts passionately endorse the proposed league on the grounds that it would allow the United States to spread its righteous influence throughout the globe. Clark would go on to give at least five more antileague speeches in different parts of the state. Roberts, meanwhile, would continue to take advantage of his visible position in the church hierarchy to reiterate arguments in favor of the league that he had been making since the start of World War I. But Clark and Roberts were by no means the only church members involved in this nationwide debate. Indeed, the League of Nations controversy may have been the most contentious political 121 Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 24. 122 “Great Audience Hears Address on League of Nations.” 128 issue for the Mormon Church during the first two decades of the twentieth century.123 The intense debate in the LDS community over whether the United States should join this new international organization illuminates some of the most important changes that Mormon political thought had undergone since the nineteenth century. In particular, it reveals the profound degree to which Mormons on all sides of the political spectrum had embraced the idea that their church had no greater ally among nations than the United States. In addition to repudiating the older apostasy narrative, many Mormons now viewed their republic as the inspired vehicle through which Zion would fulfill its universal ambitions, first by bringing about what Clark buoyantly called the “political salvation of the world.”124 Once democracy and religious freedom had taken root throughout the world thanks to American leadership, this argument went, the fullness of the Mormon gospel could then spread to every nation. But as the fierce arguments in Mormondom over the proposed league demonstrate, the general consensus that America had an ongoing role in God’s plan had not translated into a consensus as to what exactly that role should look like. While a shared religious tradition and the continued influence of church leaders often generated near unanimous ideological support for such causes as women’s suffrage and prohibition, the League of Nations controversy did far more to expose the tensions and ambiguities that had long characterized Mormon political and 123 For an insightful overview of the debate within the LDS hierarchy over the League of Nations, see James B. Allen, “Personal Faith and Public Policy: Some Timely Observations on the League of Nations Controversy in Utah,” BYU Studies 14, vol. 1 (Autumn 1973): 77-98. 124 “Address of Major J. Reuben Clark on Peace Treaty,” Deseret Evening News, Sep. 6, 1919. 129 religious thought. In particular, the controversy highlighted the friction between Mormonism’s progressive and conservative strains, differing interpretations of the Second Coming and the millennium, and most explicitly, of course, disagreements over the best way for America to perform its divine mission. Did the nation have a better chance of wielding a positive influence around the globe by remaining a pure and undefiled, but also somewhat aloof, city upon a hill, or by abandoning its isolationist proclivities and embracing the opportunity to lead by involvement and not simply by example? Not unlike many of their fellow countrymen, the Mormons responded to the outbreak of war in 1914 with a mixture of condemnation upon the warring nations and pleas for the United States to remain neutral. In the first general conference after the war began, Joseph F. Smith expressed dismay that “so-called Christian peoples professing to worship the same God” could be so divided. For Smith this was clear evidence that they lacked the fullness of God’s truth.125 During the same conference, Charles Penrose of the First Presidency offered a special prayer for peace in which he pleaded with God to “turn aside the outpouring of the spirit of war, and grant that the angel of peace may hover over the nations.”126 Church leaders applauded President Wilson for keeping American boys out of Europe.127 In 1916 Utahns showed their support for Wilson’s peace policy by helping elect him to a second term. 125 Joseph F. Smith, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 7. Charles W. Penrose, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 9. 127 Francis M. Lyman, Oct. 1915, Conference Reports, 75. 126 130 But even amidst these genuine calls for peace, there were some in the Mormon community who suggested that the war, while vile and wicked, might actually serve God’s mysterious but glorious ends. In his prayer for peace Penrose expressed hope that regardless of what had started the war, “liberty and freedom” would eventually “come to the oppressed nations of Europe, and indeed throughout the world. We pray that liberty may come out of this oppression, that freedom may come out of this strife.”128 Though he claimed to abhor all forms of armed conflict, B.H. Roberts was nevertheless confident that the present war would “finally end in the higher planes of civilization being reached.”129 In an unpublished paper from 1914 entitled, “Probable Moral Effects of the War,” Mormon philosopher Milton Bennion insisted that “optimism, if it can become general, may even turn this war into a means of moral progress.” Bennion marveled at the sobering impact the war seemed to be having on what had previously been a nation of drunkards. More importantly, he speculated, since “kings, aristocracies, and militarism” had been responsible for unleashing this bloodbath, the war would expose the folly of these systems and precipitate “the end of the reign of kings in civilized countries.”130 Probably the most ambitious attempt to shine a positive light on the gloomy situation in Europe was Roberts’ talk at the October 1914 general conference. Presaging his 1919 proleague speech at the tabernacle, Roberts saw little hope for Europe or the rest of the world unless the United States took the lead in the peace process. Although quick to reiterate his fellow leaders’ calls for American neutrality, 128 Charles W. Penrose, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 9. B.H. Roberts, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 108. 130 Milton Bennion, “Probable Moral Effects of the War,” 1914. The M. Lynn Bennion Papers, Box 5, Folder 6, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 129 131 Roberts nevertheless intimated that if America was ultimately forced to intervene, the end result could be glorious for the cause of Zion. As Roberts’ talk illustrates, the general repudiation in Mormonism of the older apostasy narrative sometimes rested on a new interpretation of America’s nineteenth-century past. As someone who had written extensively on Mormon history, Roberts was acutely aware of past conflicts between the church and the federal government and of the widespread belief among the early Saints that America had fallen from its illustrious founding. But as a result of the Civil War, he argued, the United States had paid the price for its “national sins—including the shedding of the blood of our prophets.” Since that terrible chastisement “that swept the land, that filled it with mourning and sorrow for a generation,” he continued, the American nation had been fulfilling its divine purpose, for “notwithstanding…the corruption that is in our own nation, yet I believe the people en masse are yet sound.” Inasmuch as they continued down this same righteous path, he enthusiastically promised, God would continue to preserve the nation.131 Nineteenth-century Mormons had usually circumscribed America’s mission both geographically and chronologically. As Orson Pratt had argued in 1855, the central role of the United States was to provide an ideal location for Zion’s birth and early development. But America’s mission, if indeed it still had one, seemed unclear after that point.132 For Roberts, by contrast, the United States’ clear purpose was to pave the way for Zion’s worldwide expansion. The spread of America’s constitutional principles, which themselves descended from on high, he predicted, 131 132 B.H. Roberts, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 107-112. Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:70-74. 132 would “break up monarchial institutions, break up militarism, and…exhibit to the nations that there are other forces of government that should prevail.”133 Hence, Roberts could not help but conflate the Great War with the supposedly righteous conflicts of the Old Testament in which God had been “in the battle.”134 By the time the United States entered the Great War in 1917, Americans who viewed the conflict as a necessary evil that could provide a stepping-stone toward a lasting peace increasingly pinned their hopes on the formation of a new international organization. Their most important spokesman was President Wilson. Meanwhile critics of the proposed league had plenty of allies among congressional Republicans, who now formed a majority in the Senate. Alongside a few skeptical Democrats, the Republicans standing in Wilson’s way were divided into two main camps. Following the lead of the Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, most of them self-identified as “reservationists” who would only agree to support the treaty as long as certain articles were modified, namely Article 10, which Republicans feared would override Congress’s authority to declare war. A smaller number of Republicans and two Democrats were self-described “irreconcilables” who would not support America’s entry into the League of Nations under any conditions.135 Having earlier worked in the State Department under Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, J. Reuben Clark had long been a stalwart Republican. Even so, because of his reputation as a leading expert in international relations, the Wilson 133 B.H. Roberts, Oct. 1914, Conference Reports, 109-110. Ibid., 109. 135 On the congressional factions that took part in the League of Nations controversy, see Herbert F. Margulies, The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989); and Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1970). 134 133 administration had asked Clark at the end of the war to conduct a thorough examination of the Treaty of Versailles. As he learned more about the proposed League of Nations embedded in the treaty, the Utah-born, Columbia-educated statesman grew “unalterably opposed” to the idea of American involvement, placing him firmly in the irreconcilable camp. In fact, Clark soon began offering advice to Pennsylvania Senator Philander Knox and other irreconcilables in the Senate.136 Not surprisingly, his September 1919 address at the Salt Lake tabernacle reiterated many of the same arguments against the treaty that Knox and other irreconcilable senators, namely William Borah of Idaho, Hiram Johnson of California, and James Reed of Missouri, were then making on the floor of the Senate. But while his major objections to the league were far from new, Clark did manage to present many of them in a familiar Mormon vernacular. As one of his biographers points out, “It was a Mormon message delivered in Mormon terms.”137 As he would attempt to do in many of his later speeches, especially after becoming a member of the First Presidency in 1933, Clark sought to demonstrate that isolationist policies were in no way antithetical to universal aspirations. Clark began his speech by stating his conviction, “taught from my infancy,” he declared, “that this Constitution of ours was inspired; that the free institutions which it creates and perpetuates were God given.” No differently than B.H. Roberts, Woodrow Wilson, and other league supporters, he viewed these inspired principles and institutions as God’s gift not simply to the American people, but to all mankind. 136 Gene A. Sessions, Prophesying Upon the Bones: J. Reuben Clark and the Foreign Debt Crisis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 45. 137 Fox, J. Reuben Clark, 294. 134 Moreover, Clark saw the United States as the main vehicle for their dissemination. Or as he put it, America’s mission was nothing less than to “act the knight errand, succoring the oppressed of all nations,” and to “see the truth, uphold it, and save the world.”138 President Wilson would sound a similar note during his national tour, promising the American people that if they took the lead in bringing the family of nations together under this new league, “men shall always say that American soldiers saved Europe and American citizens saved the world.”139 Where Clark primarily differed from Wilson, Roberts, and other league champions was his insistence that the United States could best perform its global mission by maintaining a strict policy of political isolation and, most importantly, by demonstrating through its example how a true republican government should operate. Intervening in the affairs of other nations, he feared, would only drag the United States down to their level.140 Clark also took issue with what he saw as the league proponents’ naïve belief that “the great war had somehow changed human hearts and that we are now entering the Millennium.”141 This was a common line of attack from the league’s critics. Seeing themselves as realists, they regularly accused Wilson and other league supporters of irresponsibly succumbing to “millennial notions, with visions of the 138 “Address of Major J. Reuben Clark on Peace Treaty.” In Patricia O’Toole, The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 419. 140 For a clear analysis of Clark’s strong views on American foreign policy, see Robert S. Wood and Stan A. Taylor, “Clark and the American Approach to Foreign Policy,” BYU Studies 13, no. 3 (Spring 1973): 441-452. 141 “Address of Major J. Reuben Clark on Peace Treaty.” 139 135 lion and lamb lying down together.”142 The ugly truth, Clark and other league critics insisted, was that Europe’s weakened but still decadent monarchies wished to use the United States and its idealistic president as pawns in rebuilding their empires. The punitive measures exacted on Germany were clear evidence to Clark that “the same old ambition, the same old lust for power…is everywhere, honesty is not the universal rule, and disease and death still stalk among us.” Far from preventing another war, he predicted, the League of Nations virtually guaranteed the perpetuation of armed conflict. Channeling the more pessimistic strains of Mormon millennialism, he assured his audience that no man-made treaty had the power to inaugurate the thousand years of peace promised in scripture, for “that will come only when you have placed the gospel of Christ…into the heart of all mankind.”143 Roberts’ rejoinder six days later offered a very different, though equally Mormon, perspective on universalism and millennialism. Along the way, it revealed the extent to which Roberts, no less than Clark, had constructed his political theology from sources that lay well outside of Mormondom. Like Clark, Roberts emphasized America’s responsibility to share its constitutional principles with the benighted regions of the globe. However, “we are not going to fulfill our destiny by holding aloof from the nations of the world,” he argued. “Granting that we have a mission to perform, then it is for us to perform it by being in contact with the world, to infuse that world with American ideals.” At the same time, he insisted, the proposed league would only succeed if Americans surrendered some of their national pride and showed a willingness to work as equal partners with dozens of 142 143 Stone, The Irreconcilables, 41. “Address of Major J. Reuben Clark on Peace Treaty.” 136 other nations. One of the flaws in Clark’s reasoning, Roberts complained, was the former’s tendency to draw a stark binary between the United States and the rest of the world. In Roberts’ view, that kind of fortress mentality would forever impede the United States’ ability, as he put it, to Americanize the rest of the world. As the scholar Lloyd Ambrosius shows, this idea of sacrificing a modicum of national sovereignty in order to elevate the rest of the world to America’s level was pure Wilsonianism. As Ambrosius puts it: “This was Americanism as internationalism.”144 Roberts also sought to disprove another common argument emanating from the league’s Mormon and non-Mormon foes—specifically apostle and Senator Reed Smoot—which held that the proposed treaty could not possibly bring peace on earth since the scriptures plainly taught that violence and warfare would never cease until Christ returned to the earth to usher in the millennium. For Roberts this conclusion resulted from a clear misunderstanding of Mormon scripture. To be sure, he did not expect the mere formation of the league to instantly transport the earth into some millennial state, for “no one worth listening to has ever said dogmatically that the moment this treaty is ratified ipso facto the world will have peace.” And yet, his own reading of Mormon scripture convinced Roberts that the earth would in fact grow more peaceful as the Second Coming drew nearer. His eschatology was largely derived from several Book of Mormon passages, taken practically verbatim from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, which prophesied that once Zion was “established in the top of the mountains,” the nations of the earth would “beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,” eventually culminating in the 144 Ambrosius, Wilsonianism, 24. 137 long-anticipated moment when “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.” He did not ignore the gloomier prophecies of disease and destruction that would likewise precede the Second Coming, and indeed, he contended, the recent war had witnessed their fulfillment. But now that Zion had been established in the top of the (Rocky) Mountains, he declared, Isaiah’s promise of universal peace would shortly come to pass.145 A few weeks after Roberts’ speech at the tabernacle, church President Heber J. Grant and several members of the Council of the Twelve used the October 1919 general conference as a platform from which to voice their support for the League of Nations. Grant’s address firmly denounced the claim that “the standard works of the Church are…opposed to the league of nations.” He also lamented the intrachurch partisan bickering the league controversy had engendered.146 For Grant and other league supporters in the church hierarchy, this was not a political but a moral issue since this new international organization, they believed, offered the best chance for peace on earth in the wake of the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. Thus, while Clark, Smoot, and other Mormon critics of the league were undoubtedly pleased when the treaty failed in Congress the following November, they had been unable to convert most of the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve to their position. As the competing speeches of J. Reuben Clark and B.H. Roberts help to demonstrate, the intra-Mormon debate over the League of Nations constitutes further evidence of the profound Americanization that Mormon political thought had undergone during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The patriotic 145 146 “Hon. B.H. Roberts Defends Peace Treaty,” Deseret Evening News, Sep. 13, 1919. Heber J. Grant, Oct. 1919, Conference Reports, 17. 138 rhetoric of these two prominent church members shows the extent to which the Mormon people had forgiven the U.S. of its earlier sins and once again elevated it to the status of God’s favored nation. Furthermore, the passion with which both Clark and Roberts sought to convert the citizens of Utah to their respective positions illustrates the genuine concern that twentieth-century Mormons now felt for the wellbeing and progress of the American nation. But to the deep concern of many LDS leaders in the twentieth century, Americanization had also resulted in the erosion of much of nineteenth-century Mormonism’s ideological and political unity. Although the Republican Clark and Democrat Roberts agreed on many of the same fundamental Mormon beliefs, they ended up translating these broad scriptural and doctrinal concepts into contrasting bodies of political thought. For example, both men believed that Jesus Christ would literally return to earth at some unknown point in the future to inaugurate Zion’s millennial reign. But while Roberts suggested that the league might serve as a divine instrument paving the way for these eschatological events, Clark ridiculed the notion that man-made treaties or human legislation could bring the world any closer to millennial utopia. Clark and Roberts also agreed that the United States was the world’s most exceptional nation with a critical role to play in the unfolding of God’s plan. However, they fiercely disagreed over how exactly America ought to perform its divine mission. Thus, by the time the Progressive Era had drawn to a close in the early 1920s, the Americanization of Mormon political thought had given rise to the kind of political pluralism within Zion that nineteenth-century Mormon leaders had so vigorously opposed. CHAPTER 4 THE HIERARCHY AND THE PEOPLE IN THE 1930s In July 1933 one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest advisors, Harry L. Hopkins, sent the journalist Lorena Hickok on a tour of the United States to discover firsthand what the American people thought of the recently launched New Deal.1 On the final leg of her journey Hickok spent several days in Utah, one of many states in which the Great Depression had wrought considerable hardship. By 1933 its agricultural and mining industries were in shambles. Without a strong industrial sector to counteract these losses, unemployment in Utah would reach as high as 36 percent.2 While making her way through the state, Hickok stopped off in Salt Lake City to meet with the three members of the Mormon First Presidency. Seated in “three big, deep, soft chairs, in a dim and luxuriously furnished office,” she later recalled, were church President Heber J. Grant, first counselor Anthony Ivins, and the newest addition to the church’s highest governing body, second counselor J. Rueben Clark, who had just concluded a three-year stint as United States ambassador to Mexico 1 Richard Lowitt and Maurine Beasley, eds., One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1981), ix. For an overview of Hickok’s complete tour of the United States, see Richard Lowitt, The New Deal and the West (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 8-32. 2 May, Utah: A People’s History, 173-182. Wayne K. Hinton, “The New Deal Years in Utah: A Political History of Utah, 1932-1940” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1963), 4-5. 140 under the Hoover administration. Accompanying Hickok was a New Dealer from Utah named Dean R. Brimhall. Though descended from Mormon ancestry, Brimhall was a self-described “apostate” who, in Hickok’s words, “is not exactly an enthusiastic supporter of the Church.” Indeed, Hickok could not help noting the irony that while the members of the First Presidency spoke, “across the room, sat the grandson of one of Brigham Young’s right-hand men, the son of a former president of Brigham Young university—literally writhing in a rage to which he dared not give expression!” Brimhall’s writhing stemmed not only from his personal animus toward his former church. As both Hickok and Brimhall later noted in their respective accounts of this meeting, the First Presidency’s hostility toward the new administration and its program for confronting the Depression was palpable from the outset. At the conclusion of her letter to Hopkins, Hickok made what she probably considered a safe prediction: “After that conversation,” she wrote, “I don’t think the New Deal can count on much understanding or support from the Latter Day Saints of Utah!”3 When it came to most members of the LDS hierarchy, Hickok’s prognosis largely came true. Far from simply opposing specific New Deal measures, the conservatives who held the upper hand in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, heavily influenced by the towering presence of J. Rueben Clark, grew increasingly convinced that the Roosevelt administration posed nothing less than an existential threat to the future of the republic. In public discourses, 3 Lorena Hickok to Harry L. Hopkins, September 1, 1934. Copy in the Dean R. Brimhall Papers, Box 12, Folder 9, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. Dean R. Brimhall to Leonard J. Arrington, July 14, 1966. Brimhall Papers, Box 12, Folder 9. 141 newspaper editorials, and private letters from the 1930s and early 1940s, church leaders accused the New Deal of eroding the pioneer virtues of hard work and selfreliance while threatening the Constitution and importing the same dangerous statism that was currently taking hold in Germany and the Soviet Union. As their predecessors in the nineteenth century had so often done, Mormon leaders in these years frequently resorted to the language of the apostasy narrative. “Our nation cannot be preserved if the present governmental policies shall continue,” the First Presidency asserted in a letter to William C. FitzGibbon of the U.S. Treasury Department. “This much we feel we can definitely say,” the letter continued, “that unless the people of America forsake the sins and the errors, political and otherwise, of which they are now guilty…there will be no exaltation for them spiritually, and politically we shall lose our liberty and free institutions.” To prevent this slide toward national suicide, the letter counseled, the American people and their elected leaders needed to “turn squarely about and return to the old-time virtues” upon which the United States had originally been founded.4 Convinced that the government in Washington was leading the American people astray from the sacred principles enshrined in the Constitution, church leaders in the 1930s sought to insulate Zion from whatever calamities might soon befall the nation. The most concrete expression of this inward turn was the establishment in 1936 of an ambitious church welfare program, which conservatives in the hierarchy lauded as a God-given alternative to the New Deal 4 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Copy in the Robert H. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 142 that would allow the Saints, in Clark’s words, to “get back to first principles and take care of our own.”5 Fearing that their beloved America was once again heading in the wrong direction, Mormon leaders in the 1930s embraced their own, updated version of Zion nationalism. At the same time, even the most pessimistic church leaders were hopeful that their fellow Americans would reject the dangerous ideologies and policies taking shape in Washington and throughout Europe and follow Zion’s shining example. Indeed, in addition to protecting the Saints from the ravages of the Great Depression and the debilitating moral effects of the New Deal, the new Mormon welfare plan was also meant to serve as a proverbial light upon a hill that would show the American people a better way out of the current crisis. In the final paragraph of their letter to FitzGibbon, the First Presidency expressed hope that “the Lord will point out some way, will somehow bring about a rejuvenation of the American spirit.”6 Nevertheless, at no previous point in the twentieth century had the LDS hierarchy been so critical of the government in Washington or held such a gloomy outlook toward America’s future. To the Mormon people, by contrast, the political developments of the 1930s often looked very different. Contrary to their church leaders, many influential Latter-day Saints in politics, journalism, academia, government, business, and even some in the church hierarchy believed the United States was moving in the right direction under President Roosevelt. After three decades as a dependable 5 “Mormons Explain their Relief Plan,” New York Times, May 25, 1936. The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10. 6 143 Republican state, Utah swung to the Democrats in the “Roosevelt landslide” of 1932. This included the humiliating defeat of long-time senator and Mormon apostle Reed Smoot to a political newcomer named Elbert D. Thomas. To be sure, the electoral results of 1932 were less an endorsement of the Democrats than a backlash against the Hoover administration’s seemingly inept response to the Depression. Yet four years later Utahns reelected FDR by a wide margin, and two years after that they returned Elbert Thomas to the Senate. They also awarded both of their House seats to Democrats, elected Democrat Henry H. Blood for governor in 1932 and again in 1936, and gave the Democrats a large majority in the state legislature.7 As future Senator Arthur V. Watkins later noted when reflecting upon the dismal prospects of Utah Republicans in the 1930s: “I became irked with New Deal policies and thought about running for the Senate,” he wrote. But “the idea of winning seemed utterly impossible,” for “the New Deal was in full flower.”8 For Senator Thomas, a practicing Mormon who had been a political science professor at the University of Utah, the New Deal placed the United States in a better position than ever before to fulfill its divine mission to bless the nations of the earth. “The new deal business to me is very much bigger than anyone yet has expressed it,” Thomas told a friend in 1934. “It means a changed attitude which, of course, would affect the lives of everyone...Roosevelt to me hits pretty closely the fundamental striving of a great mind for an attunement with the world’s universal striving. He seems really to have caught the spirit of what one of the Hebrew prophets called the 7 8 Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 161. Arthur V. Watkins, Enough Rope (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1969), 9. 144 desire of the nations.”9 Whereas Clark and other conservative church leaders warned the Mormon people that “whether [the Constitution] shall live or die is now in the balance,” Thomas believed “America’s ability to advance God’s purposes is greater today than in 1787.”10 With his embrace of the New Deal and rejection of the hierarchy’s updated apostasy narrative, Thomas was one of many dissenting voices in the Mormon community whose political outlook did not align with the anti-New Deal posture of Clark and other LDS leaders. Lorena Hickok’s prediction that the New Deal would fail to generate support among the Latter-day Saints in Utah was therefore only partially correct, as she had allowed her assessment of the LDS leadership to bias her perspective toward the Mormon people as a whole. As FDR’s domestic reforms became more entrenched throughout the nation and in Utah, Mormon leaders sought to convert their people to their anti-New Deal philosophy. But this proved challenging. For one thing, the hierarchy had to take on Roosevelt and the New Deal without appearing to engage in overt partisanship. “We care nothing as Church leaders about partisan politics as such,” the First Presidency would insist in their letter to FitzGibbon, “nor about the dominance of one party or the other.”11 While this may have been entirely sincere, the New Deal was so inextricably fused to the Democratic Party that it was virtually impossible to attack the former without appearing to attack the latter. Furthermore, ever since the Smoot hearings the hierarchy had made it a point to highlight the Mormon people’s 9 Elbert D. Thomas to Colonel E. LeRoy Bourne, January 6, 1934. The Elbert Duncan Thomas Papers, Box 14, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, UT. 10 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1942, Conference Reports, 58. Elbert D. Thomas to Frank H. Jonas, September 22, 1943. Thomas Papers, Box 1. 11 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10. 145 political independence. But with so many Latter-day Saints now backing a program that church leaders feared would endanger the nation’s divinely inspired Constitution, that same political independence came back to haunt them. As Senator Thomas happily observed to his friend Frank Jonas, “The state of Utah has now in two or three elections definitely decided to choose the leaders which the people wanted even against the advice of self-constituted leadership and the leadership which comes from economic, social, and sad to relate, religious power.”12 Never before in the history of Mormonism had there been such a wide gulf separating the theocratic and democratic halves of theodemocracy. Conservatism, Progressivism, Communism: Mormons and the New Deal It was during his acceptance speech at the close of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in July 1932 that former New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt first promised a “new deal” for the American people. As the Great Depression neared its third full year with no sign of recovery on the horizon, the Democrats in Chicago were confident that Americans would turn on the party in power and look to their candidate for a way out of the economic crisis. But if FDR already knew which reforms would make up his proposed new deal, he chose not to divulge them. The only specific policy change he endorsed in an otherwise vague acceptance speech was the repeal of prohibition. Nevertheless, by making the bold decision to fly to Chicago to accept the Democratic nomination in person, Roosevelt hoped to signal his willingness to abandon timeworn political and economic 12 Elbert D. Thomas to Frank H. Jonas, January 9, 1941. Jonas Papers, Box 79, Folder 18. 146 orthodoxies in favor of newer, experimental solutions. “Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions…I pledge you—I pledge myself,” he concluded, “to a new deal for the American people.”13 Although his campaign may have been short on details, its confident promise of change and convincing disparagement of the GOP as a reactionary party of unfeeling rigidity helped Roosevelt trounce the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in the November election. FDR’s victory was so complete that it brought former Republican strongholds into the Democratic ranks. One of these was Utah, which had elected Republican candidates in all but two presidential elections since gaining statehood in 1896.14 This included being one of only two states in the entire nation to elect William Howard Taft in 1912. Twenty years later, 58 percent of Utahns cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate and his promise of a new deal.15 Even as Hoover’s inability to stem the tide of depression sowed the seeds of imminent collapse for his once-dominant party, Utah Senator Reed Smoot continued to look invulnerable to many political insiders. “When Thomas was nominated by the Democrats,” Smoot biographer Milton Merrill observed, “the general opinion was that he was just another sacrificial lamb offered on the altar of the Smoot prestige.”16 After withstanding the intense scrutiny of the four-year-long Smoot hearings, the apostle-senator had gone on to win reelection four consecutive times. Moreover, just a few days before the 1932 election, Mormon President Heber J. 13 Basil Rauch, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt: Selected Speeches, Messages, Press Conferences, and Letters (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1957), 69-74. 14 These two exceptions were the 1896 and 1916 elections, when the majority of Utahns voted for William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, respectively. 15 Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 161. Jonas and Jones, “Utah Presidential Elections,” 289-307. 16 Merrill, Reed Smoot, 232. 147 Grant told reporters that as a private citizen he intended to vote for Smoot and President Hoover, even though in his capacity as church president, he carefully added, he was entirely neutral and “has no suggestions to make.”17 But to the shock of many Utahns, the results were not even close. Despite never having run for political office, Thomas defeated Smoot by roughly the same margin as Roosevelt’s victory over Hoover.18 Grant’s desire to see both Smoot and Hoover win reelection was just one indication that the Mormon prophet’s long-standing commitment to the Democratic Party was beginning to wane.19 Nothing was more responsible for eroding Grant’s support for Democrats than their aggressive efforts after 1932 to overturn the Eighteenth Amendment. In 1928 the question of retaining prohibition had provoked bitter discord in the Democratic ranks and helped ruin the chances of their Catholic candidate, Al Smith. In his acceptance speech at Chicago four years later, FDR congratulated his fellow Democrats for respecting the will of the people by adding repeal to their national platform. He then promised the nation that “from this date on the Eighteenth Amendment is doomed.”20 As Grant and other prohibitionists in the Mormon hierarchy anxiously recognized, a vote for FDR, Thomas, and other Democrats was not only a vote for some experimental, vaguely defined “new deal.” It was also a clear vote against a law that many church leaders believed had been inspired by God. 17 “Pres. Grant Backs Smoot Personally,” Deseret News, Nov. 3, 1932. Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 161. 19 According to James Henry Moyle, “President Grant has in recent years become more of a Republican than a Democrat.” Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 286. 20 Rauch, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 72. 18 148 Roosevelt wasted little time acting on his campaign promise. During his first month in office he signed the Beer-Wine Revenue Act, legalizing the mildest forms of liquor in advance of the Twenty-first Amendment. A month earlier Congress had voted by overwhelming margins in both houses to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment. It was now up to three-fourths of the states to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment, the only amendment in American history with the sole purpose of repealing an earlier one.21 Fearing that the existing state legislatures would be more obeisant to the temperance lobby than to the will of the people, Congress required the states to organize special ratifying conventions. The statewide election to select delegates for Utah’s ratifying convention was scheduled for early November.22 The demise of national prohibition was probably inevitable by 1933, but that did not stop church leaders from doing everything in their power to keep Utah from joining the repeal bandwagon. Midway through 1932 the hierarchy sent a “NonPartisan Letter” to the leaders and officers of the church’s main auxiliary organizations, calling upon each of them to organize and campaign against the proposed amendment.23 Mormon prohibitionists frequently rehashed the same arguments they had been making since the early part of the century. Foremost among these was their tendency to classify prohibition as the logical extension of the Word of Wisdom. According to Grant, these two laws would bring “temporal salvation” in the form of improved physical health, a stronger work ethic, and 21 David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 138. 22 John Kearnes, “Utah, Sexton of Prohibition,” Utah Historical Quarterly 47, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 6-7. 23 George Albert Smith et al., “A Call to Arms, Mobilize Your Forces: A Non-Partisan Letter to Church Leaders,” August 1, 1932. LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 149 greater material prosperity. “If the Latter-day Saints as a people never touched tea, coffee, tobacco, coca-cola, or liquor of any kind or description,” Grant claimed in a sermon from 1933, “we would soon become the most prosperous people in all the United States of America.”24 Prohibition’s opponents frequently countered with their own economic argument, insisting that legalization would bring much needed tax revenue to the depression-stricken nation. Taking a class-based approach, Mormon prohibitionists responded that while wealthy corporations would surely welcome new sources of government revenue that might ease their own tax burden, the nation’s workers “will pay literally billions for drink, which billions the laborers are now spending for shoes, food, clothing,” and other necessities.25 The letter may have lambasted the rich for their greed, but it also adopted a condescending posture toward the poor by assuming they would waste their money on booze. Even among active church members, the traditional Mormon arguments for prohibition were proving far less persuasive by 1933. One critic of the prohibitionists’ tendency to conflate the Eighteenth Amendment with the Word of Wisdom was B.H. Roberts. Emphasizing the difference between coercion and persuasion, Roberts reminded a friend that “the Word of Wisdom is just what its name implies, namely a Word of Counsel from the Lord…but it is not given by way of ‘compulsion’ or ‘constraint’; and certainly does not rest upon physical force as state prohibition does.”26 Another Mormon critic of the Eighteenth Amendment was Senator Thomas, who flew back to Utah on the eve of the November election to 24 Heber J. Grant, “M.I.A. Conference Address of President Heber J. Grant: Opposing Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment,” June 9, 1933. LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. 25 Smith, “A Call to Arms.” 26 Quoted in Kearnes, “Utah, Sexton of Prohibition,” 18. 150 influence the final vote. Speaking before a large audience in Ogden, Thomas introduced himself as “a personal dry and a political wet.” Echoing Roberts' preference for persuasion over coercion, the senator complained that “People have misunderstood the idea of temperance.” A temperate lifestyle encompassed far more than simply abstaining from liquor, he argued, and it could only be acquired through one’s own free will, not imposed on someone by law. “Whenever a man stands for something…and tries to cram it down the necks of the public by putting it into the fundamental law,” Thomas declared, “he makes a great mistake.”27 When the November election arrived, the majority of Utah’s voters decided to abandon the so-called “noble experiment.” In the twelve counties that voted for repeal, Latter-day Saints made up an estimated 55 percent of the population. Adding to the hierarchy’s disappointment and embarrassment, the following month Utah became the thirty-sixth and thus the final state needed to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment.28 Outside newspapers reveled in the irony that a predominantly Mormon state had cast the deciding vote to restore liquor to American life. “The London newspapers say, ‘The Latter-day Saints did it,’ ‘Prohibition dead—Mormons killed it!’” an article from The Relief Society Magazine, the official publication of the LDS Church’s women’s organization, complained. “We have sowed the wind,” it concluded, “we fear we will reap the whirlind.”29 Coming on the heels of the 1932 elections, Utah’s vote to repeal prohibition was further evidence of the declining 27 “Thomas Opens Repeal Campaign at Large Gathering in Ogden,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 24, 1933. Kearnes, “Utah, Sexton of Prohibition,” 19-21. 29 “Eighteenth Amendment Repeal,” The Relief Society Magazine 20, no. 12 (Dec. 1933): 747. 28 151 political influence of the LDS hierarchy and the growing political independence of the Mormon people. Following the dreary winter of 1932-33, Roosevelt’s inauguration marked the official beginning of the New Deal era, finally revealing to the nation what the new president had either kept hidden or what had not yet crystallized in his mind during the campaign. During his first hundred days in office FDR took full advantage of his popular mandate and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to put in place what historian William Leuchtenburg called “the most extraordinary series of reforms in the nation’s history.”30 This included legislation to rescue the nation’s ailing banks, emergency aid to the states, massive public works projects, and the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, an army of previously unemployed young men charged with improving the nation’s forests, campgrounds, and parks. The First Hundred Days also saw the enactment of a new farm bill called the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a new public corporation that would erect dams and extend electric power to millions of Americans in the South, and the founding of perhaps the most controversial of all New Deal agencies, the National Recovery Administration.31 Notwithstanding the novelty of many of these reforms, not to mention the unprecedented speed with which they had been rushed through Congress, the crisis of the Depression and the American people’s urgent desire for change initially gave FDR nearly unimpeded freedom to engage in novel experimentation with little fear 30 William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1963), 61. 31 Ibid., 41-62. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, 131-159. 152 of opposition. The president was also a masterful communicator who quickly took advantage of the new medium of radio to inject confidence and hope into living rooms across America. In the summer of 1933, hundreds of thousands of people showed their support for Roosevelt by parading through the streets of New York City to promote the newly established NRA. The first six months of FDR’s presidency may have constituted the most exuberant, idealistic chapter of the entire history of the New Deal.32 At the first LDS general conference following Roosevelt’s inauguration in March 1933, B.H. Roberts reflected the newfound optimism sweeping the nation with a discourse on America’s bright future and continued alliance with the Kingdom of God. As he had done in previous discourses, Roberts acknowledged the persecution that earlier generations of Americans had inflicted on the Saints. But now that they had repented and paid the price for those earlier sins, he declared, the American people “shall have lot and part with the people of the Lord in building up Zion and accomplishing the purposes of the Lord.” As proof of the nation’s increased devotion to God, Roberts cited President Roosevelt’s recent decision to enter his Episcopal church and offer a public prayer en route to his inaugural address. In striking contrast to what Clark and other conservatives in the hierarchy would soon be preaching, Roberts firmly believed America was heading in the right direction.33 In September of that same year, Roberts spoke at the World Fellowship of Faiths Conference in Chicago in what turned out to be his final public address before passing away only a few weeks later. This time he identified the New Deal as 32 33 Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 63-66. B.H. Roberts, Apr. 1933, Conference Reports, 115-120. 153 evidence that America was moving ever closer to “a new economic policy, for a new age, to take the place of the capitalistic system and its spirit, wherein shall exist more equality and more justice than in the age now passing.” The economic principles that Joseph Smith had imparted to the early Saints, namely the voluntary redistribution of surplus wealth to lift up the poor and ensure the public good, he implied, would undergird this new economic age. Echoing his promise back in 1919 that the League of Nations was a God-given instrument for the promotion of world peace, Roberts now hailed the New Deal as the inspired stepping-stone toward a utopian economic age.34 Robert’s passing cost the New Deal one of its few advocates in the LDS hierarchy, one who might have served as a counterweight to Presidents Grant, Clark, and several members of the Twelve. During the first year of Roosevelt’s presidency, however, there were few indications that this kind of countervailing voice would be needed. In fact, the hierarchy’s most common reaction to the opening phase of the New Deal was to encourage their people to view it with an open mind. At the October 1933 general conference, for example, three Mormon apostles defended the president’s new economic program on the grounds that “in times of great stress, when the very nation itself is languishing for want of something constructive to lift itself out of un-heard of conditions,” the American people needed to give their government “a fair opportunity.”35 34 Brigham H. Roberts, Discourses of B.H. Roberts of the First Council of the Seventy, ed. Elsie Cook (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1948), 116-126. 35 Stephen L. Richards, Oct. 1933, Conference Reports, 64. 154 Latter-day Saints also found a church-sanctioned voice of support for the early New Deal in the editorial section of the Deseret News. The paper’s lead editor, Joseph J. Cannon, urged his predominantly Mormon readers to support sensible reforms to the existing capitalist system in order to forestall the need for more revolutionary changes down the road. He warned corporate leaders that their refusal to cooperate with government might eventually lead to the complete nationalization of their businesses. Moreover, Cannon insisted that reform unfold peacefully and within the constraints of the Constitution. “There is no place for either violence or dictatorship in this country. All lovers of America should be willing…to accomplish changes patiently and constitutionally,” he wrote. If that required amending the Constitution from time to time, he observed, then so be it, for “those who believe that the Constitution is an inspired document,” he pointed out, “must believe that the inspiration applied equally” to the framers’ decision to allow for amendments.36 By the fall of 1934, the hierarchy’s initially lukewarm support for the New Deal was rapidly cooling. Mormon leaders’ increasingly negative perceptions of FDR’s presidency make little sense apart from the changing makeup of the First Presidency during 1933 and 1934. After the death of his first counselor Charles Nibley, Heber J. Grant appointed J. Reuben Clark as his new second counselor in April 1933. Although his new ecclesiastical assignment effectively shattered his long-held dream of one day becoming a United States senator, Clark now found himself in a position, assuming he chose to exploit it, to potentially influence the 36 “The Constitution,” Deseret News, October 17, 1934. 155 political thought and actions of hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints in the Intermountain West. In addition to his outspoken isolationism, Clark was also a firm believer in fiscal discipline for individuals, families, and nations. Since it was primarily the absence of such discipline that had, in his mind, created this problem in the first place, he was convinced from the outset of the Depression that only by restoring such traditional economic values as hard work, thrift, and sacrifice could the American people make their way out of this crisis. His dogmatic adherence to an older set of economic principles almost immediately put Clark at odds with the experimental and pragmatic philosophy of the New Deal. As historian Gene Sessions writes: “He would preach the orthodox dogma against the withering onslaught of heretical notions from the false prophets of the New Deal.”37 The following year Grant called David O. McKay, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve since 1906, to fill the newest vacancy in the First Presidency following the death of Anthony Ivins. Although never as openly critical of the New Deal as either Grant or Clark, the “lifelong Republican” McKay was so committed to protecting individual freedom and intellectual tolerance that he began to see the expansion of the federal government under FDR as a dangerous slide toward the kind of totalitarian state that might one day regulate the lives of its citizens.38 Thus, by 1934 the First Presidency consisted of a disenchanted Democrat and two conservative Republicans, one who had served many years in government under various Republican administrations. Following these changes, the hierarchy’s 37 38 Sessions, Prophesying Upon the Bones, 50. Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 40-45, 334. 156 campaign against the New Deal escalated over the next four years and then temporarily subsided as the nation’s attention shifted to the looming threat of war. Of all the condemnations that Mormon leaders began to heap upon the New Deal, the most common was that it tempted their people and American citizens in general to take easy money from the government rather than put their faith in hard work, sacrifice, and self-reliance. Only a year after admonishing church members to give New Deal programs like the NRA a “fair trial,” Stephen L. Richards of the Twelve warned of “an ever-growing and deeply regrettable tendency to ‘sponge’ on the government and take every gratuity possible to obtain.”39 During the same conference, Clark urged church members “for the sake of the government which we love, for the sake of the government which we believe was divinely inspired,” not to “soil our hands with the bounteous outpouring of funds which the government was giving unto us.”40 An unsigned editorial in The Relief Society Magazine criticized people “who have had plenty to live on” but who nevertheless “accepted flour and money from the Government, probably feeling that since there was something given away they wanted to get all they could for themselves.” For the author this was the very antithesis of patriotism, which “means not how much one can get from his country, but what can he do to raise and uphold its standards, further its stability and maintain its integrity.”41 None of these individuals explicitly blamed the New Deal for this dangerous trend, and in fact, Richards made it a point to distinguish the unseemly idlers who took advantage of government programs from those who 39 Stephen L. Richards, Oct. 1933, Conference Reports, 64. Stephen L. Richards, Oct. 1934, Conference Reports, 35. 40 J. Rueben Clark, Oct. 1934, Conference Reports, 97. 41 “Patriotism,” The Relief Society Magazine 20, no. 7 (July 1933): 443-444. 157 actually oversaw them. Nevertheless, the underlying implication was that by offering supposedly easy forms of relief, the New Deal could undermine people’s work ethic and the essential virtues of republican citizenship. Throughout the LDS community, the so-called dole was considered the most dangerous form of New Deal relief. According to William Leuchtenburg, as many as twenty million Americans were receiving direct government aid by the end of 1934.42 Mormon critics of the dole frequently cited Brigham Young’s warning that to give charity to people who “are able-bodied and can work and earn what they need…would ruin any community in the world and make them idlers.” For several weeks in the fall of 1936, the Deseret News placed Young’s quote atop its editorial page. Clark asserted that the “true heroes” of this crisis were those church members “who under this terrible depression, deprived of their jobs and livelihood, have lived on, struggling, using up the accumulation of the years that they might keep off the ‘dole.’”43 Although generally supportive of most New Deal programs, Joseph Cannon condemned the early policy of distributing relief in the form of charity instead of wages as “manifestly disastrous,” insisting that “Work is the wholesome answer to need.”44 Opposition to the dole was in no way confined to Latter-day Saints. In fact, one of the most vocal critics of direct government relief was none other than President Roosevelt. In a speech to Congress he described it as “a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” In an effort to “quit this business of relief,” Roosevelt 42 Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 124. J. Rueben Clark, Oct. 1936, Conference Reports, 113. 44 “New Relief Bill,” Deseret News, May 10, 1933. 43 158 began steering the New Deal from the dole to more public works programs at the beginning of 1935. This resulted in the creation of the massive Works Progress Administration, or WPA, which provided temporary employment to millions of Americans who built new roads, bridges, public buildings, parks, and other kinds of infrastructure.45 But while slightly less egregious than an outright dole, Mormon leaders often maligned public works as a kind of de facto dole that awarded workers the same wage whether or not they put in an honest day’s work. In a somewhat contentious correspondence with David K. Niles of the WPA, Heber J. Grant implied that this New Deal agency was simply another form of government gratuity because it failed to distinguish freeloaders from hard workers.46 “I have watched men at work on these government jobs,” the church’s president complained to the Chicago Tribune. “In some cases I have counted to as high as forty between shovelfuls—and they were mighty skimpy shovelfuls at that.”47 Grant repeatedly admonished church members who worked for the WPA to resist the temptation to work by the day, and to work instead by the job.48 Even then, church leaders warned, public works posed the risk of breeding an unhealthy dependence on government wages. “Instead of waiting expectedly for the government to find work for us,” McKay told the Saints, “let us look around and see if there is not work near at hand.”49 Public works rarely received a favorable reception from conservative church leaders who feared that 45 Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 124-125. Heber J. Grant to David K. Niles, Nov. 26, 1937. Copy in the Hinckley Papers, Box 52, Folder 6. 47 “Lure of WPA Foils Mormon Self-Aid Aims,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1938. 48 Heber J. Grant, Oct. 1936, Conference Reports, 13. 49 David O. McKay, Apr. 1938, Conference Reports, 19. 46 159 government employees would either shirk their responsibilities, or perpetually choose public over private employment. The hierarchy later extended its opposition beyond the dole and public works to likewise target the government’s efforts during the latter half of FDR’s first term to lay the foundation for a national welfare state. This was primarily done through the passage of the Social Security Act in the summer of 1935. In addition to creating a system of old-age insurance, the new act also committed the federal government to partner with the states in providing financial aid to other dependent groups, including the disabled and widows.50 Although the First Presidency never officially condemned social security or forbid church members from receiving its benefits, much of their rhetoric classified the new act as yet another example of the federal government overstepping its bounds by seizing responsibilities that traditionally belonged to families, local communities, and churches. In a 1938 conference address, Clark stated that “the prime responsibility for supporting an aged parent rests upon his family, not upon society.” Clark did acknowledge the government’s responsibility to provide for the elderly in the event that their family lacked the financial means, but this was very different from “saying that every person reaching a fixed age shall thereafter be kept by the state in idleness,” he declared. “Society owes to no man a life of idleness, no matter what his age.”51 In their letter to William C. FitzGibbon of the U.S. Treasury Department, the First Presidency insisted that “according to the Gospel plan under which the Church is 50 51 Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 130-133. J. Rueben Clark, Apr. 1938, Conference Reports, 107. 160 established and operates, the care of the widow, the orphan, and the poor, is a Church function…It is not a function of civil government.”52 Despite FDR’s unprecedented popularity and continued political support, members of the LDS hierarchy were far from alone in casting aspersions on his administration’s plan for tackling the Depression. Among the most vocal and influential critics were members of the radical left who, especially after 1934, began accusing the president of adhering too closely to timeworn constitutional and economic orthodoxies at the expense of millions of downtrodden farmers and factory workers. One such radical figure was Louisiana Senator Huey Long, who publicly advocated a massive program of wealth redistribution that would empower the federal government to confiscate all personal wealth over a set limit from those who presumably had too much, and then transfer it to those who had too little. In California, a bastion of agrarian radicalism in the 1930s, the novelist Upton Sinclair ran for governor on a platform of bequeathing government lands and unused factories to destitute farmers and workers and then allowing them to eat and produce what they needed.53 Evincing little sympathy for these and other panaceas, Mormon leaders who publicly attacked the New Deal had far more in common with political and business conservatives for whom the New Deal was already far too radical. Among several conservative anti-New Deal coalitions to emerge after 1934 was the American Liberty League. Its founders were disgruntled business elites, conservative 52 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10. 53 Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 95-117. 161 Republicans, and disgruntled Democrats.54 Like Heber J. Grant, J. Rueben Clark, and several Mormon apostles, its members regularly accused such New Deal remedies as the dole, public works, and social security of eroding Americans’ proud work ethic and fiscal discipline. Both groups of conservatives frequently warned that once given economic assistance, ordinary citizens would immediately become lazy and abandon the desire for upward mobility for which the American people had long been famous. Both sets of anti-New Deal discourse betrayed the same inherent distrust of the masses that Charles Penrose had earlier exhibited in his 1912 general conference exchange with B.H. Roberts. The political discourse of the LDS hierarchy in the 1930s thus resembled and may even have derived guidance and a familiar political vocabulary from such conservative organizations as the American Liberty League. But while their anti-New Deal language was sometimes indistinguishable from that of other groups of economic and political conservatives, members of the hierarchy were usually careful, especially when they spoke at general conference, to present their veiled criticisms of the current administration in a distinctly Mormon vernacular. Of all the tropes Mormon leaders employed in an effort to undermine their people’s confidence in the New Deal, none was more common than their warning that relying on government in times of need ran completely contrary to the heroic, independent instincts of their pioneer forebears. As Mormon conservatives were fond of pointing out, the early Saints who had come to the Salt Lake Valley and constructed Zion in this barren wilderness had succeeded without government 54 Ibid., 91-92. 162 charity. “When our people first came to Utah,” the First Presidency boasted in their letter to FitzGibbon, “they came as refugees.” But this had actually been a blessing in disguise, the letter continued, for “Of necessity the people had to become selfsupporting,” thus imbuing them with “the sterling qualities of thrift, industry, honesty, integrity, sobriety, independence, love of liberty, and all the sterling virtues that go to make up a great people.”55 For conservative church leaders the lessons of their own history were crystal clear. If they wished to acquire the same virtues and accomplish equally remarkable feats as their hearty pioneer ancestors, they needed to endure hardships with patience and rely on one another rather than put their trust in a historically oppositional federal government. With their tendency to hearken back to the era of the fabled pioneer when Mormon separatism was at its peak, church leaders who opposed the New Deal drew much of their guidance and inspiration from one of the oldest Mormon political traditions. Yet this was by no means the only Mormon political tradition available to church members in the 1930s. For Latter-day Saints who supported the New Deal, perhaps no other tradition was more influential than their own recent involvement in and support for various progressive causes. Like their conservative co-religionists, Mormon progressives hoped to extend their religious ideals beyond Zion to reach a national and ultimately global audience. One major difference between Mormon conservatism and Mormon progressivism, however, was that the latter was generally more receptive to the idea of employing what were sometimes 55 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10. 163 considered secular means, especially social reform and government, to enhance Zion’s universality. Although they often displayed the same disappointment as conservative church leaders over the repeal of prohibition, Mormon progressives in the 1930s frequently saw continuity between the political and social reforms they had long advocated and various facets of the New Deal. This was especially true of the new federal programs designed to succor and elevate society’s most vulnerable members, including mothers and children, the elderly, and those without consistent employment. With newly enfranchised members of the LDS Relief Society leading the way, Mormon progressives in the 1920s had used their political clout to help push maternalist legislation through the Utah Legislature. Their most satisfying achievement was a 1923 bill that brought Utah into compliance with the provisions of the federal Sheppard-Towner Act. Enacted by Congress in 1921, SheppardTowner called for increased cooperation between the federal government and the states in order to make quality medical care more accessible to expectant mothers and babies.56 With the Relief Society once again playing a leading role, Mormon progressives in the late 1920s also succeeded in convincing the legislature to provide funds for the construction and maintenance of a state institution for the mentally handicapped.57 Regardless of party affiliation, Mormon progressives in the 1930s perceived a similar commitment to maternalist reform animating many of FDR’s new recovery 56 Hall, A Faded Legacy, 90-91. Amy Brown Lyman, In Retrospect: Autobiography of Amy Brown Lyman (Salt Lake City: General Board of Relief Society, 1945), 71. The institution was eventually constructed in American Fork. 57 164 programs. In her address at the April 1934 Relief Society conference, for example, first counselor Amy Brown Lyman boasted that “no government has ever tried harder to meet a situation than has ours, and many remarkable things have already been accomplished.”58 As a Republican member of the state legislature in the early 1920s, Lyman had first introduced the bill calling for Utah’s acceptance of the Sheppard-Towner Act.59 By 1934 she was praising the myriad achievements of a largely Democratic government. She lauded public works programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the new federal housing program, and federal aid for adult education. She was especially pleased with the National Recovery Act for its efforts to eliminate the final vestiges of child labor. “In the cotton industry in one large city,” she excitedly reported, “1,000 children were thus released.” Typical of the rhetoric of Mormon progressivism, Lyman’s discourse emphasized traditional gospel values while advocating up-to-date means of confronting new challenges. In encouraging Mormon women to play a more active role in the nation’s public life, Lyman reminded her fellow Relief Society sisters that “there is no substitute for religion and religious faith as a force and as a support.” Yet she also urged her audience to embrace new economic and social policies, contending that “our theory of social economy is obsolete. We are trying to run a new world today on plans that are a century old.”60 In an earlier editorial for The Relief Society Magazine, Lyman foreshadowed the 1935 Social Security Act by calling for the creation of national unemployment 58 Amy Brown Lyman, The Relief Society Magazine 21, no. 5 (May 1934): 287. Lyman, In Retrospect, 70. 60 Lyman, Relief Society Magazine, 286-289. 59 165 insurance and pensions for the elderly. Whereas Clark would later praise those church members who, in the spirit of the early pioneers, chose to rely on their own savings rather than “sponge” on the government, Lyman cited recent scholarly studies showing that “millions have an earning power so little above standards of decency that saving is impossible.” Yet she refused to classify either unemployment insurance or old-age pensions as government charity. Sharing the near universal Mormon disdain for the dole which, she went on to write, “is very embarrassing to the man who is anxious to work,” Lyman drew a clear distinction between emergency relief derived from increased taxes, on the one hand, and a national plan of unemployment and old-age insurance that would draw upon workers’ own financial contributions, on the other.61 Conservative church leaders usually overlooked such distinctions by conflating all government-run safety nets with the original dole. Three years later, The Relief Society Magazine included a lengthy exposition and defense of the new Social Security Act by church member Hugo B. Anderson. While the new act “is not perfect by any means,” Anderson wrote, “I believe that it is the greatest single step which this Government has ever taken to unify our welfare service and safeguard people against the major hazards of life.” One of Anderson’s underlying themes was that because it provided specific assistance to such at-need groups as the elderly, the blind and disabled, as well as widows and dependent children, the Social Security Act represented a kind of culmination of decades of progressive mobilization on behalf of maternalist reform. Yet he also framed social 61 Amy Brown Lyman, “Unemployment Insurance,” The Relief Society Magazine 20, no. 11 (Nov. 1933): 658-660. 166 security as a necessary enlargement of the earlier progressive vision, for as he implicitly pointed out, the Depression had revealed in stark detail the financial vulnerabilities of ordinary Americans. According to Anderson the fact that the nation’s wealth was so unevenly distributed meant that “a large proportion of the people in this country are in good times so near the dependency line that any major misfortune in life immediately presses them down below the dependency line and places them in a position where they need assistance.” Responding to conservative critics of the new act, Anderson agreed that in an ideal world, individuals in dire financial straits would need to look no further than to their own families. But what if an individual’s family was unable or unwilling to help? Should the law force them to provide assistance? “Who would be the judge?” Anderson rhetorically inquired. “If the relatives being able will not assist,” he concluded, “all we can do is to take care of the needy applicant.”62 In addition to appealing to Relief Society women’s innate sense of compassion for the historically downtrodden, Anderson’s defense of social security also rested on a realistic assessment of where the average American family stood in the early 1930s. While the tradition of Mormon progressivism made it easier for many Latterday Saints to support FDR, church members who gravitated toward the New Deal increasingly found themselves in the awkward position of listening to their religious leaders denounce their political views as contrary to the spirit of Mormonism. The form this most commonly took was to accuse the New Deal of violating the Constitution, a document that Mormons across the political spectrum viewed with 62 Hugo B. Anderson, “Social Security Program, Western States,” The Relief Society Magazine 23, no. 6 (June 1936): 356-363. 167 the utmost reverence. In a 1935 radio address celebrating national Constitution Day, Senator Thomas chided those whom he labeled “self-appointed” defenders of the Constitution who took advantage of Americans’ unfortunate ignorance of their founding document to promote a narrow political or ideological agenda. Because “Americans like their Constitution” and “do not want to see it marred,” he opined, “anyone who shouts, ‘let’s stand by our Constitution,’ receives applause.” But for Thomas these cries usually came from people who possessed only a shallow understanding of the history and content of the document they were purporting to protect. What these supposed champions of the Constitution failed to appreciate was that what he called “the soul of the American people…is a still growing organism.” As long as the republic endured, Thomas implicitly argued, the inspired work of the framers would remain open-ended. Not only had twenty-one amendments already been added to the original document since its inception, he explained, but the Constitution had also undergone a necessarily continuous evolution resulting from the government’s efforts to apply its overall framework and general provisions to a rapidly changing world. Another reason “our Constitution makes no statement about the last word in government,” he went on, is because instead of lodging ultimate sovereignty in itself, “American theory is that it rests in the people.” Echoing B.H. Robert’s underlying argument in his 1912 general conference exchange with Charles Penrose, Thomas espoused the democratic principle that the Constitution and government in general exist to serve the people, not the other way around. 168 For Thomas these were precisely the qualities that allowed the Constitution to adapt to changing times and confront unforeseen challenges, including the ongoing Depression. For the New Deal’s critics, too much adaptation risked transforming the Constitution into a superficial shell of its former self. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1935 ruling in the Schechter Case that the NRA was unconstitutional, they increasingly sounded the warning that the Constitution’s very existence was in serious jeopardy. But for Thomas this too rested on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Constitution actually was. Because it was not a rigid set of laws but rather a flexible guide to an ever-changing world, he went on, “What the Supreme Court does is not to mar or to save our Constitution, but to develop it, and a law which is declared unconstitutional does not wreck the Constitution, it merely brings new definitions of how to work under the Constitution.” Thomas also assured his listeners that because the Constitution decentralized and diluted power in such a wise manner, Americans need not fear the emergence of some tyrannical leader hell-bent on destroying the republic. These confident assurances highlight one of the major differences between Mormon supporters and critics of the New Deal. While conservative church leaders increasingly spoke in the vernacular of the apostasy narrative with its dire warnings about the downfall of the American republic, Mormon liberals in the 1930s could not have been more optimistic. As Thomas proclaimed at the close of his radio address: “You cannot destroy the Constitution of the United States by the passage of a bad law, you cannot destroy the Constitution of the United States by a decision of the Supreme Court, you cannot destroy the Constitution of the United States by a 169 mal-administration on the part of the executive. The Constitution has withstood all these things and has an answer for each one of them.”63 No less than his critics in the church hierarchy, Thomas fully embraced the traditional Mormon belief that God had inspired the framing of the Constitution. However, while conservatives like Clark often made it sound as if that inspiration had ceased the moment the Constitutional Convention adjourned, Thomas viewed that inspiration as an ongoing phenomenon that would continue to protect the nation’s divine system of government. Mormon progressives in this period agreed with Thomas on the need for governments and societies to adapt to changing times. This was evident both in Amy Brown Lyman’s article on unemployment insurance as well as in Hugo Anderson’s defense of the new Social Security Act. Yet the rhetoric of Mormon progressives also shows their continued respect for traditional Mormon values and folk-ways. Lyman went out of her way, for example, to insist that unemployment insurance was in no way synonymous with a debilitating dole. Anderson, meanwhile, went to great lengths to demonstrate continuity between social security and earlier Relief Society crusades on behalf of society’s most vulnerable members. This evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach to change—what apostle James E. Talmage had called “constructive progressivism”—thus remained one of the defining characteristics of left-leaning Mormon political thought.64 63 Elbert D. Thomas, “The Constitution and its Meaning,” September 17, 1935. Jonas Papers, Box 85, Folder 7. 64 James E. Talmage, Oct. 1912, Conference Reports, 126. 170 While critics and supporters of the New Deal continued to fine-tune their respective ideological positions, the members of the First Presidency were growing increasingly concerned over the spread of communism both overseas and especially within the United States. To be sure, in the minds of conservative church leaders communism and the New Deal were far from unrelated dangers. As subsequent events would reveal, in fact, at least a few members of the hierarchy were already convinced that FDR’s policies marked a dangerous pathway toward Soviet-style despotism. Yet rather than pursue the inflammatory course of openly equating the New Deal with totalitarian collectivism, the First Presidency instead decided to publicly condemn what was, even before the Cold War, a relatively easy target. In the summer of 1936, the First Presidency issued its first ever formal renunciation of communism.65 In releasing this statement, the First Presidency’s main priority was to inform church members that while they enjoyed the utmost freedom to align with the political party of their choice, communism was a rare exception that lay outside the bounds of acceptable political affiliations. For one thing communism “undertakes to control, if not indeed to proscribe the religious life of the people living within its jurisdiction,” the document read. Another reason “no loyal American citizen and no faithful Church member can be a Communist,” the statement went on, was that communism could never exist alongside the Constitution. “Communism…is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government,” the declaration contended, “and it would be necessary 65 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:17-18. 171 to destroy our government before Communism could be set up in the United States.” The statement thus constituted yet another example of the fusion in modern Mormon political thought between Mormonism and Americanism. That being said, nowhere in the text were church members explicitly told that joining the Communist Party would result in excommunication.66 Though in some ways contiguous with the hierarchy’s earlier campaign against socialism, the 1936 statement also marked the beginning of a new campaign to protect the Mormon people from what their leaders considered an even more dangerous foe. Yet in certain respects this new campaign began on a somewhat nebulous foundation. Perhaps its most glaring omission was its failure to explain just what the First Presidency meant by communism. Did their condemnation encompass all attempts to supplant systems of private property, money, and credit with experiments in communitarian economics, or was it merely directed at communism’s more recent Marxian variants? For all of its warnings about the spread of communism within the United States, moreover, the statement offered no specific theory as to how communism might take hold within a democratic nation. Although it implied that communism could only take power through violent revolution, it was not clear from the statement alone whether the First Presidency believed this revolution would be preceded and facilitated by a gradual enlargement of the welfare state, as in the New Deal, whether it would take the form of a populist revolt against the excesses of capitalism and autocratic government, as in the 66 Ibid., 6:17-18. 172 Russian Revolution, or whether it would succeed through a combination of such ominous developments. The 1936 statement was at least explicit on one point: Whatever the claims of communist propaganda to the contrary, it read, “Communism is not the United Order, and bears only the most superficial resemblance thereto.”67 To eradicate any possible notion among church members that communism was an inspired program designed to prepare the earth for the restoration of Zion’s perfect economic order, church leaders employed two main rhetorical strategies. One argument was that communism could not possibly serve as a forerunner for the United Order since no secular, man-made program could be a forerunner for the United Order. “We believe in the United Order,” Clark affirmed in 1934, but “when the Lord wants his people to move into the United Order he will use his anointed servant to direct the way.”68 The 1936 statement reiterated this rejection of secular forerunners. “The United Order will be established by the Lord in His own due time,” it read, “and in accordance with the regular prescribed order of the Church.”69 Not only did these remarks directly refute the idea that communism might pave the way for the eventual restoration of the Law of Consecration; they also indirectly cast aspersions upon the hopes of some Mormon liberals who believed the New Deal might serve as a passageway from the current capitalist economy to a communitarian system resembling the United Order. 67 Ibid., 6:18. J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1934, Conference Reports, 98. 69 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:18. 68 173 Their other approach was to highlight the clear differences between communism and the United Order. Similar to the church’s campaign against socialism in the early part of the century, this involved denouncing communism as a counterfeit system that sought to create the Kingdom of God on earth through “forceful despoliation and confiscation” rather than by “voluntary consecration and sacrifice.”70 In later discourses Clark went to even greater lengths to sever the association in church members’ minds between these two economic systems. As he would go on to argue, the major difference was that “the United Order is an individualistic system, not a communal system.” The United Order was indeed grounded in the principle that everything on earth belongs to God, Clark acknowledged. This doctrine lay behind the commandment to the early Saints to consecrate all of their property to the church. Yet once the Saints who had voluntarily consecrated their wealth and property had received their appropriate stewardships, he argued, those stewardships were thereafter regarded as personal property, to be overseen and administered as each participating member saw fit. “It was not contemplated that the Church should own everything,” Clark explained, “or that we should become in the Church…the same kind of automaton, manikin, that communism makes out of the individual.” In contrast to communism’s consistent disparagement of individuality and individual property rights, Clark concluded, “the fundamental principle of [the United Order] was the private ownership of property.”71 So while his interpretation of the United Order implied that consecration and stewardship could actually function within a broader capitalist 70 71 Ibid., 6:18. J. Rueben Clark, Oct. 1942, Conference Reports, 54-59. 174 framework, Clark saw no compatibility whatsoever between the United Order and communism. While their official condemnation of communism upset few people outside the American Socialist Party, the First Presidency’s next attempt to intervene in the political realm would prove far more inflammatory. In the hopes of persuading church members to cast their vote for FDR’s Republican opponent, Alf Landon, Grant instructed Clark to write an editorial for the Deseret News just a few days before the 1936 presidential election. Trying to make a strong case for Landon without appearing to engage in overt partisanship, Clark chose to emphasize principles over personalities. Simply entitled “The Constitution,” his editorial carried no signatures and never actually mentioned either Landon or President Roosevelt by name. After reminding its readers of “the peculiar relationship which the people of the Church have towards the Constitution and its preservation,” the editorial accused FDR of publicly mocking the Constitution while rashly pushing through Congress legislation “which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.” It then proceeded to praise “The other candidate [who] has declared he stands for the Constitution and for the American system of government which it sets up.” Near its close the editorial reminded church members of the First Presidency’s recent admonition to oppose communism and “all persons wherever placed, who in any way advocate or sustain it.”72 Despite its tactful evasions and refusal to directly accuse Roosevelt of furthering a communist agenda, the message of the editorial was still crystal clear— 72 “The Constitution,” Deseret News, Oct. 31, 1936. 175 church members who loved the Constitution and hated communism could not possibly cast a vote for Roosevelt and his sinister New Deal. Two days later the Deseret News defended its decision to print Clark’s editorial. “Where great moral issues are involved,” the paper asserted, it had an ethical responsibility to “tell the people of its views.”73 While this justification undoubtedly resonated with some, it failed to prevent over a thousand readers from canceling their subscriptions to the church-owned paper.74 Furthermore, just a few days later nearly 70 percent of Utahns went to the polls and helped reelect President Roosevelt.75 Utah voters reaffirmed their support for the New Deal two years later when they returned Elbert Thomas to the U.S. Senate. A few weeks before the election, Thomas’s Republican opponent, Franklin S. Harris, sent identical letters to a number of Mormon bishops, or leaders of local LDS congregations, asking them to support his candidacy. Harris admitted to not knowing how these particular bishops had voted in the past, but according to his letter that no longer mattered since “the old party lines have largely vanished.” The New Deal was of course to blame, he contended, for “the Democratic party which so long championed local self government and economy has completely abandoned these principles and has thrown the nation into dangerous centralization of authority and an unheard of spree of spending.” Harris’s letter also reiterated the First Presidency’s warnings 73 “A Principle of Church Rule,” Deseret News, Nov. 2, 1936. Thomas G. Alexander, Utah: The Right Place, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 2003), 332. 75 Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 161. 74 176 that the New Deal threatened to replace the pioneer spirit of self-reliance and hard work with a new generation of “leaners instead of lifters.”76 Not all bishops took kindly to Harris’s letter. One sent a copy of the letter along with his own response to Harris to the Salt Lake Tribune. The bishop chastised the Republican candidate for injecting religious influence into the political campaign, arguing that “Members of the Church are capable of making up their own minds on political matters.” He also took issue with Harris’s denigration of New Deal supporters as “leaners.” The anonymous bishop informed Harris that he was in fact a hard working farmer. While he had known only suffering during the “Hoover blight of 1932,” he wrote, the New Deal had at least tried to lift him and his fellow farmers out of poverty. For this reason, he told Harris, “I shall vote Democratic again.”77 As was true of the 1936 presidential election, historian Linda Muriel Zabriskie notes, the 1938 Utah Senate race “had revolved almost exclusively around the New Deal.”78 Six years into FDR’s presidency, then, and the majority of Utah voters still backed a program that Mormon leaders had openly accused of betraying their pioneer past, violating the Constitution, and facilitating a dangerous slide toward communism. The way the anonymous Mormon bishop saw things, when the Great Depression was at its worst and the American people had nowhere else to go for help, the FDR administration had stepped in and enacted bold changes. If the Mormon hierarchy had succeeded in protecting their people from the ravages of 76 Franklin S. Harris, “My Dear Bishop,” October 10, 1938. Jonas Papers, Box 167, Folder 16. “The Good Dr. Harris Gets a Kickback,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 28, 1938. 78 Linda Muriel Zabriskie, “Resting in the Highest Good: The Conscience of a Utah Liberal” (PhD dissertation, The University of Utah, 2014), 182. 77 177 depression back in 1931 or 1932, church members may have been more likely to zero in on the New Deal’s liabilities instead of its assets. But the Great Depression caught Mormon leaders completely off guard. During the first year of the New Deal, moreover, they had actually encouraged their people to give FDR’s program a fair trial. Not until the fall of 1936 had their opposition become clear. That same year the First Presidency announced a new welfare program that church leaders hoped would restore the original pioneer spirit. Yet because they had waited several years to launch this ambitious operation, they now faced the daunting challenge of having to convince their people to look to the church, not to the state, for temporal salvation. Shades of Zion Nationalism: The Church Welfare Plan In 1966 an elderly Dean Brimhall wrote a letter to Mormon historian Leonard J. Arrington in which he recounted the visit he and Lorena Hickok made to the members of the First Presidency in 1934. Displaying a remarkable memory, Brimhall’s account almost perfectly mirrored the letter Hickok wrote to Harry Hopkins the same day the meeting took place, even though Brimhall had never laid eyes on Hickok’s letter. In one important respect, however, Hickok’s account failed to corroborate Brimhall’s memory. According to Brimhall’s letter to Arrington, at one point in the interview Hickok leaned forward and gently asked the three LDS leaders if they were then in a position to provide for their people’s temporal needs. “There was dead silence for fully a minute,” Brimhall wrote. “She sat tight and finally Clark looked down at the table and slowly shook his head. Grant was looking at 178 Clark and without a word shook his head. Then Ivins did the same. And that was that.”79 By the time he penned this letter to Arrington, Brimhall had been an outspoken critic of the LDS hierarchy for several decades. Since the 1930s he had been fond of boasting that the New Deal had done far more than the LDS Church to lift the Mormon people out of poverty. Coupled with Hickok’s inexplicable omission of this incident in her letter to Hopkins, Brimhall’s well-known animus against the Mormon leadership causes one to question whether this interaction really took place, or, if something similar did transpire, whether Brimhall was guilty of overdramatizing the First Presidency’s response to Hickok’s pointed inquiry. Yet however fictional this story might be, it still illustrates a historical truth: The LDS Church had not protected its people from poverty in the early years of the Great Depression, and church leaders knew it. As more of their people looked to Washington for temporal salvation, they eventually saw the need to inaugurate an independent church welfare program.80 79 Dean R. Brimhall to Leonard J. Arrington, July 14, 1966. Brimhall Papers, Box 12, Folder 9. The extent to which the Church Welfare Plan was intended as a Mormon rival to the New Deal is a question that has provoked some debate ever since the plan was announced in 1936. In his 1964 article on the origins of the plan, historian Leonard Arrington rejected the common tendency to characterize it as a “politically motivated…gesture of defiance against the New Deal.” Arrington cited numerous statements from church leaders and publications that denied any intention of removing church members from New Deal work projects or that required Mormons to refuse social security benefits. Arrington also discussed a meeting between Mormon apostle Melvin J. Ballard and President Roosevelt not long after the welfare program was announced. Ballard assured FDR that the church’s new plan was intended to supplement rather than compete with New Deal projects. According to Arrington, the main impetus for the plan was a 1935 church study revealing that over 80,000 members were receiving some kind of government relief. With the federal government increasingly intimating that it would soon shift the bulk of its relief burden over to the states, he argues, and “aware that the local governments in Utah and surrounding states were not in a position to assume a large burden of this nature,” church leaders saw the urgent need to “assure that at least its own faithful members were taken care of.” Arrington and Hinton, “Origin of the Welfare Plan,” 6786. The major value of Arrington’s article is its reminder of the multifaceted origins of the plan. To 80 179 Initially entitled the Church Security Plan in 1936 before being rechristened the Church Welfare Plan two years later, its underlying objectives, in the words of the First Presidency, were to set up, in so far as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift, and self respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership.81 As was true of the church’s earlier welfare efforts, general and local leaders would continue to call for monetary donations from the Mormon people in order to fund work projects on LDS farms and to furnish the church’s many storehouses with food, clothing, and medicine to help members in need. What made the new plan different was a degree of centralization not seen since the days of Brigham Young. To ensure greater efficiency at the local level, the First Presidency divided the entire church into thirteen welfare regions and formed a central committee charged with directing and overseeing all of the church’s welfare operations.82 reduce its birth to a mere conservative gesture of opposition to the New Deal would be to ignore the other factors that contributed to its creation, including the desire to establish a more centralized, efficient program, to help church members in poverty, and, as Arrington noted, to prepare for the possibility of the federal government shifting the bulk of its relief burden to local agencies. As historian Brian Q. Cannon persuasively argues, however, Arrington did not sufficiently appreciate the role that the hierarchy’s militant anti-New Deal stance had also played in paving the way for this plan. In speech after speech, Cannon shows, church leaders framed the plan as a righteous alternative to the New Deal that would eventually, if not immediately, remove all worthy church members from any reliance on government. At the same time, Cannon observes, Mormon leaders envisioned the new welfare program as a way to improve the church’s public image. Cannon, “’What a Power We Will Be in This Land,’”66-75. 81 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oct. 1936, Conference Reports, 3. 82 Garth Mangum and Bruce Blumell, The Mormons’ War on Poverty: A History of LDS Welfare, 18301990 (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1993), 132-135. 180 Despite these new features, church leaders presented the plan as “a return to that which is old…a return to first principles.”83 The Mormon people were promised that if they took care of one another without any outside help, they could follow in the footsteps of the hearty pioneers and stave off the degrading moral effects of government dependency. As President Grant put it: “Let us hope that that spirit of independence that was with our pioneer fathers may be re-awakened in us.”84 After praising the pioneers for surviving and prospering without any help from the state, Clark promised in 1939 that just as “We Mormons have cared for the essential needs of our own in the past; we can do it now. We can do it in the future.”85 To be sure, Mormon leaders were not so idealistic as to expect their members to immediately sever all of their former reliance upon the state. Nor were church leaders oblivious to the political consequences of framing their new plan in direct opposition to the New Deal. Thus, when the Church Security Plan was first announced at general conference in October 1936, the First Presidency was careful to include the caveat that church members employed with the WPA “continue on these projects, making sure to give a full day’s work.”86 In a radio address later published in the Deseret News, future apostle Henry D. Moyle clarified: “It is not and has not been the purpose of the social security program of the Church to duplicate 83 Joseph Fielding Smith, Oct. 1936, Conference Reports, 59. Heber J. Grant, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 11. 85 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:67-69. 86 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oct. 1936, Conference Reports, 3. 84 181 the work of any municipal, state or federal relief agency, but rather to supplement their work and prepare to minimize the necessity therefor.”87 While this early strategy of characterizing Mormon welfare as a supplement to government welfare raised the possibility of an ongoing partnership between the two, according to Moyle the end goal of supplementing the government was to “minimize the necessity therefor.” Church leaders recognized their people’s shortterm reliance on public relief agencies, but their long-term objective was to remove the Saints from government dependency by creating their own safety-net. According to an official statement from the church’s new welfare committee: “The ultimate objective is to set up within the Church an organization to make it possible for the Church eventually to take care of all of its people exclusive of government relief and to assist them in placing themselves on a financially independent basis.”88 Updating the Saints on the plan’s success the following year, Clark affirmed “there is no letting up. There are still a few who must be taken care of, off the government relief.”89 Clark also framed the new plan as an early step toward the eventual restoration of the United Order. Responding to some in the church who had been clamoring for a return to the older pioneer communitarianism, Clark made it clear that “the Welfare Plan is not the United Order and was not intended to be.” But “when the Welfare Plan gets thoroughly into operation,” he predicted, “we shall not be so very far from carrying out the great fundamentals of the United Order.”90 However suspect on historical grounds, the case for continuity between the welfare 87 Henry D. Moyle, “The Church Security Program,” Deseret News, Sept. 12, 1936. “Church-Wide Security Program Organized,” Improvement Era 39, no. 6 (June 1936): 337. 89 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 106. 90 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1942, Conference Reports, 57. 88 182 program and the United Order was advantageous for several reasons. It further solidified the hierarchy’s presentation and packaging of their plan as a throwback to the pioneer era. Because it was designed to function within a capitalist framework, moreover, conflating the welfare program with the United Order gave more credence to Clark’s conservative, individualist exegesis of the Saints’ communitarian past. Finally, characterizing the plan as a bridge toward the United Order added another layer to the long-standing argument of Mormon conservatives that the church alone, not the New Deal, communism, or any other secular forerunner, could permanently eradicate poverty and economic inequality, first within Zion, and eventually, throughout the globe. In a 1938 article in The Nation, non-Mormon journalist Martha Emery described the Mormons’ ambitious new venture as “an ultra-conservative gesture of withdrawal into the old isolation which in the past was a major source of the church’s strength.”91 Emery was right to see the welfare plan as “an ultraconservative gesture of withdrawal,” but she was wrong to conflate it with the “old isolation” of the Saints’ pioneer past. In other words, the 1930s version of Zion nationalism came far short of matching the radical separatism of the nineteenth century. Mormon leaders in the 1930s genuinely feared for the future of their nation, and these fears fueled their urgency to put up barriers between their people and the federal government. Yet they also envisioned their welfare plan as a model for the United States and other struggling nations to follow. “If we utilize the organization which the Lord has provided us for taking care of our own,” Clark 91 Martha Emery, “Mormon ‘Security,’” The Nation, Feb. 12, 1938, 182-183. 183 promised in 1937, “we should become an ensign and an example, a city upon a hill pointing the way to the rest of the world.” With their eyes fixed upon Zion, he warned, the peoples of the earth were waiting to see whether the Saints actually knew a better way out of the global crisis.92 Likewise placing this challenge in a global context, Melvin J. Ballard of the Twelve promised: If we persist in this program as we certainly shall do…in due time we will solve the problem, and when we have done it, it will be a monument to us that will attract the ends of the earth; because we are dealing with a problem that is world-wide, every nation, every community has the same identical problem and they are struggling, by various ways and means, some by Communism and some by Fascism and some by other methods to solve the problem; but we know that it can only be solved in the Lord’s way.93 In the minds of its most enthusiastic sponsors, the Church Welfare Plan would not only provide for the temporal needs of the Latter-day Saints. It would also show the rest of the world how to avoid communism, fascism, and other wicked, man-made panaceas. Even as they dabbled in their own version of the apostasy narrative, then, Mormon leaders in the 1930s could not quite join Brigham Young in consigning America and the rest of the world to hell. Not all church members responded to the plan with such unmitigated enthusiasm. Mormons who supported the New Deal were understandably uncomfortable with some church leaders’ politicized framing of the new program, not to mention the enthusiastic praise it received from conservative news outlets.94 One concerned Mormon was Senator Thomas, who feared that the Church Security Plan might engender friction between his church and the FDR 92 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 106. Melvin J. Ballard, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 21. 94 Arrington, “Origin of the Welfare Plan,” 68-69. 93 184 administration he supported. As Thomas recognized, it was not the plan itself so much as the manner in which it was presented to the public that risked planting a wedge between the church and the federal government. Two months after the plan was officially announced, Thomas wrote a personal letter to David O. McKay. In his conversations with leaders in Washington, Thomas told McKay, he had described the plan as more spiritual than temporal, identifying its underlying objective as the “revitalization of the lives of people who have become discouraged and a respiritualization of the whole Church.” Placing too much emphasis on its temporal side, the senator implied, would only heighten the perception that the church plan was intended as a Mormon alternative to the New Deal. Because he was responsible for ensuring that Utah “continues to be properly represented in the government’s relief program,” Thomas did not want leaders in Washington to fall prey to the illusion that Utahns were either opposed to or no longer in need of government aid. Thomas concluded his letter by gently asking McKay to exercise the same level of care in his own presentations of the plan.95 Even without the exigencies of the Depression, Thomas still would have advocated strong and consistent cooperation between Utah and the federal government. In a letter to political scientist Frank Jonas, Thomas offered his own theory as to why he and Clark, despite their shared religious beliefs and equal reverence toward the U.S. Constitution, held such diametrically opposed views of American federalism. “I think that history bears out the fact that when our State has cooperated with the Federal Government our people have prospered,” he wrote. 95 Elbert D. Thomas to David O. McKay, June 5, 1936. Thomas Papers, Box 17. 185 “When they have been in conflict, they have not prospered.” Thomas was no less respectful of the accomplishments of the early pioneers, but he saw no reason to return to that more trying period before statehood when Mormons were at odds with the federal government.96 Another prominent church member with mixed feelings about the new plan was James Henry Moyle, who had been a key figure in the Utah Democratic Party since the 1890s. Moyle admired church leaders for wanting to restore the pioneer qualities of independence and self-sufficiency, but he also feared that because “it runs so counter to man’s self-interest,” the new welfare program “seems destined to failure.” Furthermore, he did not believe it was right for church leaders to discourage tax-paying Mormons from receiving government aid, especially since they were also required to donate a tenth of their income to the church. Like Senator Thomas, Moyle worried less about the plan itself than with the rhetoric in which it frequently came packaged. The problem with the latter was that it risked saddling Mormon welfare with unrealistic expectations while breeding misunderstanding and even hostility among Mormon and non-Mormon Democrats.97 If Moyle and Senator Thomas preferred a depoliticized Mormon welfare plan in the interest of church-state harmony, Dean Brimhall went to great lengths to convince insiders and outsiders alike that it was nothing more than a fraud. As a New Dealer who was employed with the WPA when the church plan was announced, Brimhall was unceasingly irritated by the favorable attention the plan received from people outside Utah. Among dozens of pro-Mormon articles to appear 96 97 Elbert D. Thomas to Frank H. Jonas, Sept. 22, 1943. Thomas Papers, Box 1. Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 277-279. 186 in the nation’s newspapers during Roosevelt’s second term, a 1938 editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune claimed that the LDS Church had succeeded in removing all of its members from government dependency. Even better, the article asserted, the Mormon plan steered clear of the character-depleting dole by encouraging its people to work their way out of poverty.98 To the chagrin of Brimhall and the delight of J. Reuben Clark, the underlying implication of this and similar articles was that the Mormons were indeed showing their countrymen a better way out of the current crisis. One of Brimhall’s most consistent complaints was that these comparisons between the church plan and the New Deal frequently attacked a straw-man by falsely accusing the government of maintaining a dole. In addition to blaming the media, Brimhall also called out church leaders for perpetuating this myth. In a letter to Mormonism’s presiding bishop, Sylvester Q. Cannon, Brimhall expressed astonishment that so many Utahns continued to believe that government relief came in the form of a dole, especially since “there is hardly a town in Utah that has not benefited by water works, sewers, repair of schools, betterment of health conditions, education, art, music, and the like, none of which has been done except by workers who are paid only for what they do.”99 The greatest lie Brimhall sought to expose was that Mormon welfare had done more than the New Deal to provide for the Latter-day Saints’ temporal needs. As historian Joseph Darowski shows, Brimhall went as far as to hire University of Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth to prepare a study comparing the achievements of 98 99 “Mormon ‘Work and Eat’ Relief Plan Succeeds,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1938, 12. Dean R. Brimhall to Sylvester Q. Cannon, June 17, 1936. Brimhall Papers, Box 26, Folder 18. 187 the Church Welfare Plan against those of the WPA. Although never published, the study firmly demonstrated that “Utah Mormons,” Darowski writes, “were consistently overrepresented in relief statistics throughout the course of the Great Depression.”100 In fairness to their leaders, the popular myth that Mormons took care of their own during the Depression frequently originated with non-Mormon conservatives who sought to use the Church Welfare Plan as a convenient foil with which to attack the New Deal. In a heated rebuttal to Brimhall’s charges that Mormon leaders had failed to dispel the baseless rumors surrounding their plan, apostle Albert E. Bowen denied being responsible for “what the people of ‘the East’ may think with respect to the completeness with which the Church plan is conformed to by its members.” As Bowen accurately observed, several church leaders in the past, including President Grant, had frankly admitted that the church had not succeeded in removing all of its members from government dependency. Yet neither Grant nor Bowen was prepared to admit that the plan itself had any shortcomings. Echoing Clark, Bowen reiterated the church’s ability to “care for its own. It means just that and can do it,” he wrote. “But the Church neither has nor desires coercive power. It can only care for its own if they accept its program and cooperate.” As the leaders of the church knew all too well, Bowen concluded, too many of its people, especially those whom he labeled “mere paper members,” preferred to lean on the government rather than follow the Lord’s system.101 Hence, even as he denied any responsibility on the part of the 100 Joseph F. Darowski, “The WPA Versus the Utah Church,” in Brian Q. Cannon and Jessie L. Embry, eds., Utah in the Twentieth Century (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), 167-185. 101 Albert E. Bowen to Dean R. Brimhall, Aug. 6, 1946. Brimhall Papers, Box 12, Folder 21. 188 church hierarchy for either inventing or circulating the idea that the Mormon Church had taken care of its people without any help from the government, Bowen nevertheless made it clear that from its very inception, the underlying goal of the Church Welfare Plan was to do exactly that. As the nation’s attention shifted from FDR’s domestic reforms to the global threats emerging in Europe and the Far East, the political repercussions of Mormon welfare began to dissolve. Church leaders expressed disappointment and regret that so lofty a program had ever gotten mixed up in partisan bickering in the first place. In an article for the Deseret News, David O. McKay blasted an unnamed church member who had accused the hierarchy of launching the welfare program simply to further a partisan agenda. “There has never been a more false accusation,” McKay responded. “Those who have selfishness in their hearts would like to see it fail,” he went on, “but it is not going to fail, you mark that, because it is right.”102 While there is no reason to doubt McKay’s sincerity, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Mormon leaders bore much of the blame for the politicization of a program they attributed to divine inspiration. Church leaders may not have undertaken this ambitious and challenging venture in order to promote or undermine a specific party or candidate, yet by couching so much of the need for their new plan within an anti-New Deal framework, it is hardly surprising that Mormon welfare did not emerge from the contentious political atmosphere of the 1930s unscathed. The budding rift within Zion between conservative critics of the New Deal and its far more numerous liberal and centrist supporters was in many ways 102 David O. McKay, “Four Fundamentals of the Church Security Program,” Deseret News, Feb. 13, 1937. 189 emblematic of the new ideological and political divide stretching across the nation. By the middle of FDR’s second term, the older progressivism had evolved into New Deal liberalism. In contrast to progressivism’s earlier bipartisan appeal, the new liberalism had become almost exclusively associated with the Democratic Party.103 Meanwhile the New Deal’s opponents—mostly though not entirely affiliated with the Republican Party—increasingly self-identified as conservatives. With spokesmen such as Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and organizations like the American Liberty League as their primary outlets, the new conservatives accused the New Deal of undermining self-reliance and free enterprise, of attacking states’ rights, and of plunging the government into irreparable debt, all while disregarding the fundamental laws of the land embodied in the Constitution.104 Although still decades away from being the leading force in the Republican Party, these new conservatives were laying the foundation for their eventual takeover of the GOP.105 Uniquely Mormon versions of these broader ideological categories took shape in the LDS community in the 1930s. As the speeches and writings of such leftleaning Latter-day Saints as B.H. Roberts, Elbert Thomas, Amy Brown Lyman, and Hugo Anderson illustrate, the new Mormon liberalism of the 1930s probably exceeded New Deal liberalism in its continued reverence for the older progressivism, evidenced by Mormon liberals’ enthusiastic support for New Deal 103 Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). 104 On Senator Taft’s role in the early conservative movement, see Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism, 9-38. On the American Liberty League, see Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands. 105 Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). 190 programs that paid special attention to society’s most downtrodden members. Like their conservative church leaders, Mormon liberals in the 1930s also derived inspiration and guidance from their pioneer past. But while conservatives tended to esteem the pioneer as a model of self-reliance and independence from the state, liberals were more likely to highlight early Mormonism’s anticapitalist, communitarian leanings. But the most important characteristic of the new Mormon liberalism was its emphasis on balance and moderation. Believers in a strong relationship between the church and the federal government, and supporters of a fruitful amalgamation of past tradition and modern innovation, Mormon liberals in these years were anything but radical. They typically viewed the nation’s future and the continued alliance between the United States and Zion with optimism, especially when Democrats were in power. By contrast, the new Mormon conservatism resurrected much of the separatist language and imagery employed by LDS leaders in the 1850s and 1860s. Fearing a widespread abandonment of the pioneer virtues, a blatant disregard for the Constitution, and a gradual slide toward communism, its spokesmen warned the Latter-day Saints of the self-inflicted destruction possibly awaiting the United States. As the establishment of the Church Welfare Plan shows, Mormon leaders sought to protect their people from the effects of this demise. At the same time, their hope that this new program might serve as “an ensign and an example” reveals that even the most jaded church leaders believed their nation could still reverse its present course. This tension among Mormon conservatives between the pessimism of the apostasy narrative, on the one side, and the divine mission they continued to 191 envision for their nation, on the other, would go on to engender such conflicting reactions as apolitical aloofness, mainstream political engagement, and the embrace of extremist ideas, movements, and personalities. In the history of Mormon political thought in the 1930s, then, one can discern many of the underlying characteristics that would continue to define Mormon liberalism, Mormon conservatism, and the many variations lying within each category in the decades to come. CHAPTER 5 ENEMIES AT HOME AND ABROAD Nearly three months after Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as the nation’s newest president on January 20, 1953, members of the LDS faith saw a familiar face donning the cover of one of America’s most popular magazines. The face was that of sitting Mormon apostle Ezra Taft Benson, the publication was Time, and the impetus was Benson’s recent appointment as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture.1 A member of the Council of the Twelve since 1943, Benson had spent much of his youth and early adulthood laboring on his family’s farm in Idaho.2 Alongside his lifelong affinity for the soil, he was also a zealous champion of American exceptionalism. From his selective reading of the Book of Mormon, which he “fell in love with” as a young man, historian Patrick Mason notes, Benson had come away convinced that the United States was God’s chosen nation in the latter days, divinely called and uniquely qualified to challenge the Satanic forces that 1 “Apostle at Work,” Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine, Apr. 13, 1953, 13-16. Brian Q. Cannon, “Ezra Taft Benson and the Family Farm,” in Mathew L. Harris, ed., Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 2352. 2 193 threatened the political freedoms that he and a growing number of postwar Saints viewed as the lifeblood of the restored church.3 Fearing to “take a job where politics might compromise his principles,” Benson initially hesitated to accept the president’s offer. Eisenhower’s response, in effect, was that Benson should view the prospective assignment as an extension of his apostleship. “We have a mandate from the American people to restore their faith in the U.S. Government,” Eisenhower told him. “Surely you agree that that is a spiritual job?”4 Benson then sought counsel from the LDS Church’s new president, David O. McKay, who was immediately taken with the idea of one of his most trusted apostles joining Eisenhower’s cabinet. With the president of his church fully on board, Benson wasted little time agreeing to the position.5 For many of his fellow general authorities, Benson’s inclusion in Eisenhower’s cabinet was further evidence that after two decades of dangerous New Deal policies emanating from Washington, the U.S. government was once again moving in a righteous direction. For LDS conservatives, one of the earliest signs of this political and cultural shift was Elbert Thomas’s welcome defeat in the 1950 Utah Senate race. Thomas’s opponent and fellow church member, Wallace F. Bennett, had framed his campaign as a repudiation of the New Deal and a return to what he deemed authentic American principles. Now that the Great Depression had come to an end and the threat of international and domestic communism been fully 3 Patrick Q. Mason, “Ezra Taft Benson and Modern (Book of) Mormon Conservatism,” in Patrick Q. Mason and John G. Turner, eds., Out of Obscurity: Mormonism Since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 63-80. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “And it came to pass, one day the Book of Mormon overtook the Bible—in LDS eyes,” Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 10, 2015. 4 “Apostle at Work,” 13-16. 5 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 283. 194 exposed, Bennett argued, “it would appear that our innate sense of independence and self-reliance is causing us to reconsider our recent trend toward governmental centralization and domination.”6 Two years later Republicans captured the White House for the first time since 1928. One American who was especially thrilled with Eisenhower’s victory was McKay, who had just succeeded George Albert Smith as church president two years earlier. As Heber J. Grant’s second counselor in the 1930s, McKay had seen up close the internal backlash that had ensued when their growing opposition to the New Deal had tempted the First Presidency to intervene in electoral politics. McKay had therefore been careful during the 1952 campaign to keep his personal political preferences tucked away. Shortly after the election, the new Mormon prophet sent the new American president a congratulatory letter that hailed his recent victory as “a manifestation of Providential watchfulness over the destiny of this land of America.”7 Benson’s subsequent appointment as Secretary of Agriculture only confirmed McKay’s premonition that the church finally had a dependable ally in Washington.8 Latter-day Saints in the 1940s and 1950s were no less convinced than their predecessors that they alone belonged to God’s one true church on earth. At the same time, the robust Americanism that had become so intertwined with their faith made them more willing to join their fellow citizens in embracing a kind of JudeoChristian ecumenism that was seen as an essential bulwark in the fight against 6 Wallace F. Bennett, Faith and Freedom: The Pillars of American Democracy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 108. 7 Quoted in Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 351. 8 Ibid., 283. 195 Nazism, fascistic militarism, and especially godless communism. During his presidency Eisenhower would famously remark that “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is.”9 While not going that far, Secretary Benson would impart his own brand of ecumenical religious nationalism to his fellow Latter-day Saints during his return visits to Salt Lake City for the church’s biannual general conferences. To one congregation of assembled Saints, Benson complemented Eisenhower’s religiosity and praised the members of his administration as “men of faith, men who are willing to join with me weekly in prayer in our staff meetings, men who love our free institutions, men who want to keep America strong.”10 With such “men of faith” as President Eisenhower now keeping “America strong,” many Latter-day Saints concluded, the United States was thus poised to continue its grand purpose of providing both a safe haven as well as a jumping-off point for the Kingdom of God. Yet even among Mormonism’s most stalwart conservatives, this newfound optimism could not eradicate the lingering influence of the apostasy narrative. The increasingly anxious tenor of Benson’s general conference talks over the course of the 1950s is just one indication of this deep-seated pessimism to which Mormon political thought had always been susceptible. After thanking God in October 1954 for showering his blessings upon the United States, for example, Benson warned the Saints not to allow these blessings to become a curse. Americans were clearly enjoying an unprecedented season of material prosperity, Benson acknowledged, 9 Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 88. 10 Ezra Taft Benson, Apr. 1954, Conference Reports, 57-58. Ezra Taft Benson, Apr. 1953, Conference Reports, 40. 196 but “as nations tend to enjoy higher and higher standards of living, greater and greater comforts, greater and greater material blessings,” he cautioned, “there seems to be a tendency for them to become more and more interested in preserving their luxuries and their comforts than in preserving and safeguarding the ideals and principles that have made them great.”11 “In the hour of our success,” he warned the following year, “is our greatest danger.”12 The growing tension between the Mormons’ continued belief in America’s chosen status, on the one hand, and heightened fears of American declension, on the other, formed the major theme in the history of Mormon political thought from World War II to the close of the Eisenhower era in 1960. New threats to the United States from foreign powers and alien ideologies could not help but reinforce the Mormon people’s ingrained sense of patriotism. Church members saw America as the one righteous nation that could rid the world of Nazism, imperialism, and communism while continuing to pave the way for Zion’s worldwide expansion. But alongside this renewed surge of nationalist hubris, many Latter-day Saints anxiously wondered whether their nation was in fact adopting the same ungodly features as its enemies. As the United States faced greater opposition abroad, leaders and lay members intimated that the real danger to the republic actually came from more sinister enemies at home. This omnipresent fear of national suicide went clear back to Mormonism’s founding text. The Book of Mormon tells the tragic story of the rise and collapse of the Nephite nation—the Lord’s chosen people in ancient America. The book’s 11 12 Ezra Taft Benson, Oct. 1954, Conference Reports, 120. Ezra Taft Benson, Oct. 1955, Conference Reports, 109. 197 ancient authors make it abundantly clear that if not for their own internal wickedness, the Nephites would never have suffered defeat at the hands of their historical enemies, the Lamanites. As several Mormon leaders and scholars in this period came to see it, the general conditions preceding the extinction of the Nephite nation looked eerily similar to the American people’s own plight during the first two decades of the Cold War.13 Like modern Americans, the ancient Nephites had also been locked in an existential battle with a seemingly ruthless enemy. Yet rather than look to God for continued protection, the Nephites eventually succumbed to pride, materialism, and excessive militarism. This in turn gave way to religious and class conflict as the wealthier Nephites turned their backs on the poor, indulged in the wearing of costly apparel, and sought to manipulate the government for their own ends. Corruption and discord eventually opened the door for wicked conspiratorial groups intent on seizing power and reinstating monarchy. In the end their society was so riven by social and political faction that the Nephites lost their cold war and were completely destroyed as a people.14 From the perspective of the twenty-first century, the United States that emerged from the Second World War as the strongest military and economic power on earth hardly seems vulnerable to the kind of internal collapse of which the Book of Mormon endlessly warns. Yet Mormons were far from alone in viewing the 13 See Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah: The Book of Mormon in the Modern World (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1967), 373-409; Glenn L. Pearson and Reid E. Bankhead, A Doctrinal Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Inc., 1962); and Ezra Taft Benson, “The Book of Mormon Warns America,” in Ezra Taft Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist (Salt Lake City: Parliament Publishers, 1969), 328-342. For an insightful analysis of Benson’s politicized reading of the Book of Mormon, see Mason, “Ezra Taft Benson and Modern (Book of) Mormon Conservatism,” 63-80. 14 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 525-549, 642-668. 198 nation’s future with a great deal of alarm. As scholar Jason W. Stevens persuasively demonstrates in his study of American political and religious thought during the early stages of the Cold War, the widespread backlash against modernist optimism following two world wars and the Holocaust had persuaded many Americans of their own innate capacity to emulate their enemies by turning to the dark side. As such disparate public figures as Billy Graham and Reinhold Niebuhr could agree, in every American soul lay a potential communist. Meanwhile, Stevens points out, for other Americans it was not the communists-in-hiding so much as the irrational, populist communist hunters like Senator Joseph McCarthy who revealed the true depths to which this democratic nation could fall.15 As their nation transitioned from World War II to the new global struggle against communist Russia, the Saints’ deep-seated fear of American declension at the hands of homegrown enemies placed them squarely within the national mainstream. Although Mormon leaders and lay members on the right—namely David O. McKay, J. Reuben Clark, Ezra Taft Benson, W. Cleon Skousen, and Wallace Bennett— tended to exhibit more concern over the nation’s future than moderate and liberal church members, the influence of the surrounding Cold War culture and the pervasive message of national apostasy found in the Book of Mormon could not help but imbue Latter-day Saints across the political spectrum with some degree of anxiety over the continual wellbeing of their nation. But if most Mormons could agree that the greatest dangers to the republic came from within, they often disagreed over which groups, institutions, and developments posed the greatest 15 Jason W. Stevens, God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual History of America’s Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 1-26. 199 threat. For example, while Mormons on the right were far more paranoid over the possibility of communists masquerading as socialists, union leaders, or even just plain Democrats, for centrist and liberal church members it was not the perceived presence of communists in the United States, but rather, the disproportionate and hysterical reaction that communism engendered that made it so dangerous. That being said, the political disagreements that periodically seeped into Zion in the 1940s and 1950s rarely placed the Latter-day Saints in radically different camps from one another. In stark contrast to either the 1890s or the 1930s, the history of Mormon political thought from World War II to the close of the Eisenhower era was one of relative consensus, especially as more church members gravitated toward the economic and political conservatism of their leaders. At the same time, one can also discern in the 1940s and 1950s the chief sources of contention and misunderstanding that would make the following decade and a half one of the most divisive eras in twentieth-century Mormonism. American Militarism in War and Peace Of the many scenarios leading toward American declension that different groups of Latter-day Saints envisioned, one that gained significant traction in the 1940s, was the possibility that as the nation grew into the world’s foremost military power, it risked forfeiting its unique position as a virtuous and exemplary republic by succumbing to militarism and imperialism. As many church leaders and lay members saw it, this particular brand of national apostasy could have disastrous consequences for the Kingdom of God. Among these was the potentially degrading 200 effect of military service upon LDS youth. Hoping to insulate Zion from this and other dangers, the Mormon hierarchy advocated an isolationist, America-first policy during the first two years of the emerging world war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 broke this isolationist consensus apart. Although J. Reuben Clark continued to urge Americans to avoid like a plague what he condemned as an evil war for empire, other church leaders and most lay members came to regard America’s participation in the newest global conflict as necessary, and even righteous. By 1945 his rigid isolationism and willingness to publicly chastise the nation’s political and military establishment had turned Clark into a kind of lone Jeremiah in the Mormon hierarchy. But as the widespread opposition within the Mormon community to the idea of universal military training illustrates, Mormon concerns about the dangers of militarism would persist even after most church members had come to support American involvement in the Second World War. Not long after war resumed in Europe in September 1939, the same isolationist philosophy that once lay behind Clark’s opposition to the League of Nations emerged as the dominant foreign policy position of the LDS hierarchy. Clark’s influence was nowhere more apparent than in the First Presidency’s official statement on the war issued the following month. Given America’s eventual alliance with the British and the French, the First Presidency’s initial reluctance to blame one side may come as a shock to contemporary Latter-day Saints. Attempting to place themselves above the wicked fray, members of the First Presidency instead condemned all forms of war as a clear violation of God’s commandment against 201 killing and pled with national leaders to “deal unselfishly and righteously one with another.” The statement then concluded with what might have been a veiled attack on British and French political leaders who sought to drag the United States into the conflict, asking the Lord to “overrule the plans and designs of man that this war shall not spread to countries not now involved, and especially that America shall escape the material and spiritual ravages of war.”16 As his numerous public statements between 1939 and 1941 make clear, Clark perceived his beloved America standing at a critical crossroads that could determine the nation’s fate for many years to come. Because of the New Deal, he frequently implied, the United States was currently on a downward slide that risked eroding its historic exceptionalism and increasing its moral equivalency with other wicked nations. Responding to what he saw as hateful anti-German propaganda sweeping the nation in the late 1930s, Clark asked his fellow Mormons to “consider whether or not we Americans who have gained the most of the land which we possess—including that on which we stand—by conquest…are in a position to condemn without mitigation some other nation which is merely attempting to march along the way of empire which we and those other nations followed.”17 In condemning America for its earlier military conquests, Clark channeled the dualistic rhetoric of Brigham Young and Orson Hyde rather than the conciliatory, patriotic language of LDS leaders at the turn of the twentieth century. According to Clark “our real threat comes from within and not from without…from that underlying spirit common to Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, namely, the spirit which would array 16 17 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:90-91. J. Rueben Clark, Oct. 1938, Conference Reports, 136. 202 class against class, which would set up a socialistic state of some sort, which would rob the people of the liberties which we possess under the Constitution.”18 Thus, one of the preeminent leaders of the Mormon Church was accusing the nation that George Q. Cannon had once hailed as “the head of all the nations of the earth” of hovering dangerously close to despotism. Reacting to what he viewed as the nation’s obvious moral decline, Clark increasingly minimized Mormonism’s historical reputation as an American faith, partly by emphasizing Zion’s global aspirations. Although no other Mormon leader in the late 1930s and 1940s spoke more frequently of America’s inspired founding and divine mission, he nevertheless contended in 1937 that “this is not an American Church. This is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its destiny as well as its mission is to fill the earth.”19 Even after America officially entered the war, the First Presidency reiterated Zion’s standing as “a worldwide Church” whose members “are in both camps.” “On each side,” the statement continued, “our brethren pray to the same God, in the same name, for victory. Both sides cannot be wholly right; perhaps neither is without wrong.”20 In a modest way this kind of rhetoric marked a return to Joseph Smith’s earliest depictions of Zion as a place of peace and refuge that was wholly detached from the wicked nations of Babylon, of which the United States was an equally sinful part. Yet even as they reaffirmed Zion’s lofty position as judge of Babylon, the First Presidency also acknowledged the 18 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to William C. FitzGibbon, October 11, 1941. Hinckley Papers, Box 24, Folder 10. 19 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1937, Conference Reports, 107. 20 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:159. 203 unfortunate truth that Zion’s citizens were also, for the time being, at least, citizens of Babylon. Despite its current march toward apostasy, Clark believed the United States still had ample opportunities to repent of its wicked ways. But what exactly was the key to this national redemption? The United States could only recapture its earlier innocence, he proclaimed, by resisting “the old spirit of hatred and envy that has afflicted Europe for a period of a thousand years at least,” and by fulfilling its Godgiven role as “the great neutral nation of the earth.”21 Echoing his 1919 addresses against the League of Nations, Clark reminded a Mormon youth group in 1940 of America’s responsibility to prepare the earth for Zion’s eventual worldwide expansion. But “this destiny of ours is to come not through bloody conquests of war,” he warned. If the American people were not careful, he added, they would find themselves on the same pathway toward national suicide as the ancient American civilizations from the Book of Mormon, forcing God to work out his plan through some other nation.22 In the mind of at least one member of the LDS First Presidency, then, neutrality and isolationism were the primary means whereby the United States could wash itself clean of the national sins of the New Deal era and resume its rightful place as “head of all the nations of the earth.” In the years following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several prominent church leaders began to deviate from Clark’s position by characterizing America’s involvement in the new world war as a positive step toward fulfilling its divine mission. To be sure, Mormon leaders rarely went to the opposite extreme of 21 22 J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1939, Conference Reports, 15. Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:110. 204 indulging in rabid jingoism. Even those who came to support the Allied cause continued to “abhor war with all its savagery, its human wastage and its moral degradation.” They also regularly warned the Saints not to succumb to national pride and self-righteousness. In the first general conference after the declaration of war on Japan, Albert Bowen of the Twelve conflated the current war with the Civil War by describing both conflicts as God’s punishment for “our national sins.” But while the United States may have deserved some of the blame for this new world war, he concluded, the nation’s victory was absolutely essential, “for its loss would mean the end of liberty as we have come to esteem it.”23 During the same conference Stephen L. Richards lamented that despite all its scientific and material progress, the nation still languished in sin. If only the people had “listened to inspired prophets,” he argued, the current war and “many preceding wars would never have begun.” But now that the war was underway, he concluded, it was his prayer that “our nation shall come to victory and glorious triumph.”24 Although Mormon leaders sometimes viewed the outbreak of war as a partial consequence of national sin, they increasingly described America’s participation in the global struggle against authoritarianism and militarism as a pathway toward national redemption, and by implication, as the key to a stronger partnership between Zion and the republic. Two of the most outspoken proponents of American involvement were Stephen L. Richards of the Twelve and David O. McKay of the First Presidency. Unlike Clark, neither Richards nor McKay took the cynical view that this was simply another European conflict into which the United States had been 23 24 Albert E. Bowen, Apr. 1942, Conference Reports, 58. Stephen L. Richards, Apr. 1942, Conference Reports, 64-70. 205 dragged for the sole purpose of tipping the scales in favor of one lustful empire over another. For these two Mormon apostles, what elevated the American cause to a higher moral plane was the nation’s historic commitment to religious liberty and individual freedom. Repeating LDS dogma that stretched clear back to the 1830s, Richards reminded the Saints in early 1943: “We never could have begun this work in any country other than America. American freedom has furnished the environment in which and out of which the Church of Christ has grown and developed.” For Richards, “the preservation of liberty in the earth”—the only context in which Zion could thrive—was absolutely dependent on American victory over the Axis nations. Hence, in giving his life “to the cause of freedom,” he declared, the American soldier also “gives to the cause of Christ.” Victory for America was therefore synonymous with victory for Zion.25 In his public discourses on the war, McKay also sought to reconcile his belief in the inherent wickedness of armed conflict with his support for the Allied cause. “War is basically selfish,” McKay declared in his first conference talk after Pearl Harbor. “Its roots feed in the soil of envy, hatred, [and the] desire for domination.” For this reason, he went on, “war is incompatible with Christ’s teachings. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of peace. War is its antithesis, and produces hate.” McKay thus made it clear that a righteous nation should never instigate or even desire war. Nevertheless, he went on to cite a small number of conditions “which may justify a truly Christian man to enter—mind you, I say enter, not begin—a war.” 25 Stephen L. Richards, Apr. 1943, Conference Reports, 77-80. 206 Foremost among these, McKay argued, was the need to defend and even advance free nations, institutions, and belief-systems against forces and ideologies seeking to rob mankind of their divine gift of free agency. “Without freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom of action within lawful bounds,” he explained, “man cannot progress.” Viewing the present conflict as the newest chapter in the eternal struggle between God’s plan of liberty and Satan’s plan of slavery and coercion, McKay assured the youth of Zion who were serving in the American military that they were “fighting for an eternal principle fundamental to the peace and progress of mankind.”26 By drawing a stark line between the Allied and Axis powers, McKay’s subsequent addresses implicitly rejected Clark’s characterization of this conflict as a futile war among equally wicked nations. As someone who regularly chastised his fellow countrymen for what he saw as a host of national sins, McKay was hardly a believer in American innocence. But if ever there was a clear case of good versus evil, he implicitly argued, it could be found in the present conflict. For in response to “a few gangsters fired by selfishness, revenge and desire for conquest,” he stated in 1944, “There was nothing left for law-abiding, peace-loving people to do but to try to prevent their depredations and murder.”27 By the end of the war, McKay had also distanced himself from Clark by fully repudiating the apostasy narrative. By standing up to godless tyranny and refusing to remain aloof, as Clark had urged, the United States had once again taken its rightful place as “head of all the nations of the earth.” Looking beyond to the post26 27 David O. McKay, Apr. 1942, Conference Reports, 70-74. David O. McKay, Oct. 1944, Conference Reports, 78. 207 war world, McKay perceived “two great forces leading the way from the abyss of another World War into the realm of peace and progress—America and the gospel of Jesus Christ.” By working together, he believed, the United States and Zion could bring political and spiritual salvation to all of God’s children.28 Meanwhile, Clark had grown even more convinced that America’s increased militarism constituted a betrayal of the nation’s original, divine mission. His Jeremiads reached their peak when he publicly condemned what he called “the crowning savagery of the war,” when “we Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan.” Clark did not confine these criticisms to government officials. From his perspective the American people as a whole had been shockingly tolerant of “this fiendish butchery.” “Thus we in America are now deliberately searching out and developing the most savage, murderous means of exterminating peoples that Satan can plant in our minds,” he concluded in a statement foreshadowing the coming arms race. “We do it not only shamelessly, but with a boast. God will not forgive us for this.”29 Clark fully appreciated the Mormon people’s obligation to support the war effort and for Mormon youth to serve in the military. As D. Michael Quinn observes, at no point did he encourage young people to avoid the draft.30 Nevertheless, throughout the war he warned both Saints and Gentiles of the punishments he believed God would inflict on the United States for its decision to take up arms rather than pursue a diplomatic resolution. 28 Ibid., 82. J. Reuben Clark, Oct. 1946, Conference Reports, 88-89. 30 Quinn, Elder Statesman, 301. 29 208 Thus, over the course of the war Clark and McKay offered conflicting perspectives on America’s involvement in the Second World War. By 1945 McKay’s outlook was far more representative of the average church member. One year earlier, more than 60 percent of Utah voters had shown their support for FDR’s wartime policies by reelecting him a fourth time. Four years later, they elected the president who had overseen the end of the war and personally approved the use of atomic bombs on Japan.31 Church members also made up a large portion of the nearly 71,000 Utahns who had served in all branches of the military during World War II.32 But if most Latter-day Saints could justify the unprecedented buildup of weapons and soldiers that were needed to defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, the persistence of American militarism in peacetime would prove far more controversial. The strongest evidence was the fierce opposition within the post-war LDS community to the idea of universal military training, or UMT. The campaign for UMT began in 1943 as a brainchild of the U.S. Army before eventually gaining the support of many prominent politicians, among them President Harry S. Truman. The plan called for all eligible eighteen-year-old males to undergo a year of full-time military training, after which they would belong to a massive military reserve unit that could be called upon in the event of war.33 Although military leaders began pushing for UMT in 1943, it did not become a major 31 Jonas and Jones, “Utah Presidential Elections,” 304. Charles S. Peterson and Brian Q. Cannon, The Awkward State of Utah: Coming of Age in the Nation, 1896-1945 (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2015), 317. 33 William A. Taylor, Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training After World War II (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 1-5. 32 209 public issue until 1945. President Truman’s decision that year to embrace UMT was the most significant factor behind its politicization. Instead of emphasizing its military value, however, the president tended to highlight what he saw as UMT’s potential social benefits, such as instilling into young men a greater sense of national belonging or making quality medical and dental care more accessible to the masses.34 Yet despite opinion polls showing that most Americans favored the new program, it soon fell victim to a sustained and ultimately crippling attack from labor leaders, educators, and churches. In 1948 Congress elected to bypass UMT in favor of a selective service system that required all young men to register for the draft without undergoing compulsory military training.35 The Mormon Church’s involvement in the battle over UMT began in the form of a private letter from the First Presidency to Utah’s two senators and two congressmen in December 1945, less than two months after President Truman had publicly urged Congress to enact UMT into law.36 The letter was then released to the public the following February.37 It began with the painful acknowledgment that UMT now had the backing of the Truman administration. The First Presidency regretted having to openly disagree with the government in Washington, the letter went on, but “we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position…that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations.” What followed was a list of seventeen reasons why Utah’s Congressional Delegation should do everything in 34 Ibid., 1-3, 91. Ibid., 157-159. 36 Ibid., 99. 37 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:239-242. 35 210 their power to “defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry.” Most of these objections fell into two broad categories. The first revolved around the many dangers that UMT posed to the young men who would actually undergo military training. Like other religious leaders who likewise spoke out against UMT, the First Presidency feared that taking young men from their homes and families at such an impressionable age would expose them to all forms of vice while threatening their family relations and undermining their faith in God. Yet alongside these familiar concerns over the consequences of removing young men from parental and clerical authority, the letter also displayed a strong prejudice against military service in general, making it very likely that Clark was its principal author. Not only would young men be taken from their homes or experience interruptions to their schooling, the letter warned, but compulsory military training would also “teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill.” The letter also predicted that military service would sap the pioneer virtues of individual initiative and self-reliance by teaching young men “that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.” Perhaps surprisingly to contemporary Latter-day Saints, the letter made no mention of the potential conflicts that might arise between compulsory military training and the church’s program of sending young men on proselyting missions.38 The second set of objections presented the argument that UMT ran completely counter “to the true purposes for which this government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution.” Echoing a familiar pillar of 38 Ibid., 6:239-242. 211 classical republican thought, the letter envisioned UMT giving rise to a great standing army that might one day turn on its own people if the wrong kind of leader came to power.39 According to the letter such a massive reserve force would at the very least tempt American politicians to employ the military more often, and since the United States inspired so many imitators throughout the world, they continued, other nations would quickly adopt the same system of national defense until “we shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies…will never rest till they are at one another’s throats.” Among the surprising omissions in the First Presidency letter is the absence of any discussion of the Mormon doctrine of free agency. Although Mormon leaders had cited free agency in the past as the basis for their attacks on socialism and unions, and would do so again in the future as part of their ongoing campaign against communism, nowhere in this letter did they suggest that forcing young men to undergo a year of military training infringed on their free agency.40 Several church members quickly followed the First Presidency’s lead by taking part in the anti-UMT chorus. However, lay Mormons did not always oppose UMT for the same reasons or support the same alternatives. For example, in an article for the December 1945 issue of the Improvement Era entitled, “Is Universal Military Training Desirable?,” Utah’s Superintendent of Public Education, E. Allen Bateman, also urged American leaders to seek peace through diplomacy rather than treat the next great global conflict as inevitable. But while the First Presidency had 39 On the classical republican fear of standing armies in peacetime, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 61-66. 40 Ibid., 6:239-242. 212 failed to offer any specific suggestions on how to achieve such diplomacy, Bateman saw the formation of a new international organization as the surest means of avoiding nuclear war and ensuring a lasting peace. For Bateman UMT risked interfering with America’s ongoing efforts to persuade even rival nations to enter a new international league. To adopt UMT at such a crucial moment would send a message to the rest of the world “that we had no hopes for international cooperation. Other nations would ignore our attempts to organize for peace and would multiply their efforts to prepare for war.”41 Bateman also departed from the First Presidency by attacking UMT on pragmatic rather than moral grounds. In this new age of atomic bombs and supersonic rockets, he argued, massive infantry units were quickly growing obsolete. If the United States could not achieve peace through a new league of nations, Bateman therefore reasoned, the best way to ensure national security was to produce “the latest and best weapons.”42 The palpable antimilitary tenor that characterized the First Presidency letter was thus completely absent from Bateman’s article. Senator Thomas also succeeded in criticizing UMT without casting any aspersions on the U.S. military. According to Thomas military service only had a corrupting influence on men who had no business being soldiers to begin with— “the misfits and failures in civilian life who take refuge in the Army because of its security and freedom from responsibility.” To motivate the kinds of young men 41 E. Allen Bateman, “Is Universal Military Training Desirable?” Improvement Era 48, no. 12 (December 1945): 753. 42 Ibid., 782. 213 “who can sell America to suspicious Italians, cynical Germans, and bewildered Japanese” to voluntarily enlist, he wrote, the military simply needed to offer more competitive inducements. This in turn would increase the size of the military and thus eliminate the need for UMT, which for Thomas was both “undemocratic and unAmerican.”43 For J. Reuben Clark, UMT was merely one facet of the frightening militarization that America’s government and society had been undergoing since 1941. The boldest presentation of this narrative was his 1947 speech in Chicago before the Life Insurance Agency Management Association. To illustrate that America was now in the midst of what he called “our apostasy from peace,” Clark employed one of his favorite rhetorical devices of contrasting the national sins of the present with the supposed virtues of earlier times.44 In Clark’s mind the current political and military leadership of the country had tragically forgotten the example of Appomattox and had thus turned their backs on “the idealism and lofty conduct and purpose of our whole history.”45 Instead of emulating Generals Grant and Lee who were willing to forgive the other side and take steps to ensure the permanent cessation of bloodshed, he complained, today’s politicians instead sought revenge at Nuremburg while “our own military establishment seem to be now deliberately planning and preparing for another great war.” Even worse, he continued, “our military branches seem in almost complete control of our government,” making it 43 Elbert D. Thomas, “We Don’t Need the Draft,” The American Magazine, December 1945. Copy in the Jonas Papers, Box 78, Folder 9. 44 J. Reuben Clark, J. Reuben Clark Selected Papers: On International Affairs, ed. David H. Yarn Jr. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1987), 278. 45 Ibid., 271. 214 very possible that “we shall become as thoroughly militarized as was Germany at her best, or worst.” Although his speech made no specific mention of UMT, Clark surely had it in mind when he predicted that “our militarists will no more be able to let a great army lie unused than they were able to withhold the use of the atom bomb once they had it.”46 As the church leader who had done the most to initiate the Mormon campaign against communism in 1936, Clark viewed the growing strength of the Soviet Union with tremendous alarm. But he also believed the surest way to avert World War III was for the United States to follow the wisdom of its founders by emphasizing diplomacy over militarization, and most importantly, by minding its own business. Just as he had done during the war, David O. McKay once again provided the Mormon people with an alternative perspective on issues of war and national security. As the precarious alliance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union unraveled in the late 1940s and early 1950s, McKay grew more vocal about the need to use military force, if necessary, to defend God’s gift of free agency from communist enslavement. In 1950 he painfully acknowledged that “our government must keep armies abroad, build navies and air squadrons, create atom bombs to protect itself from threatened aggression of a nation which seems to listen to no other appeal but compulsion.”47 McKay had not strayed from his earlier teaching that war was an abomination in the eyes of God, but as he taught the Saints at the April 1955 general conference, some conditions were even worse than war. “We love peace, but not peace at any price,” he declared in a clear allusion to communism. “There is a peace 46 47 Ibid., 275. David O. McKay, Apr. 1950, Conference Reports, 35. 215 more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of the body. Chains are worse than bayonets.”48 The political thought of these two long-time members of the LDS First Presidency were not all that different. Clark and McKay were both firm believers in American exceptionalism and both men hated and feared communism in any form. However, their respective characterizations of American militarism both during and after the war seemed to come from two different places. Clark spoke from the vantage point of a more distant, separatist Zion, one that cast judgment on the nations of Babylon for their warlike behavior. McKay employed a more realistic vernacular. He seemed more cognizant of the fact that Zion presently existed within the United States, and consequently, that Latter-day Saints had a civic obligation to support their government’s efforts to protect Americans from tyranny. Both strands of thought were deeply embedded in the Mormon experience. But as the nation moved forward to confront the growing communist menace—both foreign and domestic—McKay’s outlook would take center stage in Mormon political discourse, while Clark’s was increasingly relegated to the sidelines. The Evolution of Mormon Anticommunism The First Presidency’s warning to church members in 1936 about the dangers of communism may have predated the McCarthy era by more than a decade, yet it also marked a somewhat shallow beginning to the hierarchy’s campaign against this grave new threat. The brief statement was mostly limited to the 48 David O. McKay, Apr. 1955, Conference Reports, 24. 216 following key points: communism was utterly incompatible with America’s constitutional system and was therefore unacceptable as a political option, communism sought to curtail and even extinguish the religious freedom of its subjects, and communism had nothing to do with the United Order.49 During the Cold War, Mormon anticommunism evolved beyond this simple foundation. If the First Presidency in 1936 had been content to disparage communism mostly on the grounds that it was un-American, leaders and lay members now sought to demonstrate that communism was nothing less than Satan’s most formidable strategy for undermining God’s eternal plan. If the 1936 statement had only vaguely suggested how communism might take hold in the United States, Mormon anticommunists now offered more specific, albeit conflicting, theories as to how communist subversion might succeed in a democratic nation. While there is no denying the influence in this period of such right-wing Mormon anticommunists as J. Reuben Clark, Ezra Taft Benson, and W. Cleon Skousen, Mormon anticommunism was far from a monolithic phenomenon. Liberals and centrists in the LDS community were no less persuaded that communism was an evil ideology that posed a real danger to God’s plan of agency and eternal progression. However, they could not stomach the right-wing tendency to denigrate any institution, practice, or belief-system that even remotely resembled communism. For liberals and centrists, this stark view of the Cold War had caused some of their conservative co-religionists to draw foolish conclusions and, ironically, 49 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:17-18. 217 to endorse methods that actually weakened America’s ability to fight this new enemy. Near the close of his April 1948 general conference talk, David O. McKay told the Saints that the world in which they now lived was caught in the middle of a stark binary. “The choice today is between dictatorship with the atheistic teachings of communism, and the doctrine of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, obedience to which alone can make us free.”50 McKay had thus framed communism not merely as an enemy of the republic, but more importantly, as an enemy to Mormonism. As church member John J. Stewart would write in his polemic, Mormonism vs. Communism, “Mormonism and Communism are the two most powerful forces for good and evil, respectively, upon the face of the earth. The struggle in which they are engaged is the most vital, the most crucial, of any in the history of man.”51 Of course, the fact that their scripture classified the Constitution as an inspired document had always made it easy for Latter-day Saints to conflate Mormonism and Americanism. If communism stood opposed to the former then it also naturally stood opposed to the latter, and vice versa. At the basis of both Mormonism and Americanism, church members across the political spectrum agreed, lay the doctrine of the agency of man. In Mormon scripture, God the Father had endowed his spirit children with the gift of agency during their pre-earth life. Before his rebellion, Satan had proposed a plan that promised to “redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost.” Although 50 David O. McKay, Apr. 1948, Conference Reports, 70. John J. Stewart, Mormonism vs. Communism (Salt Lake City: Mercury Publishing Company, Inc., 1961), 4-5. 51 218 subsequent verses failed to specify exactly how Satan planned to bring about such universal salvation, they did clarify that he “sought to destroy the agency of man.”52 In the Manichean atmosphere of the Cold War, Mormon leaders naturally assumed that Satan’s plan, like the popular image of communism, would use force and coercion to ensure mankind’s perfect obedience. “Even in man’s pre-existent state, Satan sought power to compel the human family to do his will by suggesting that the free agency of man be inoperative,” McKay taught. “If his plan had been accepted, human beings would have become mere puppets in the hands of a dictator.”53 Mormon scripture went on to explain how the Father’s rejection of Satan’s plan had instigated a kind of ideological war in heaven. A third of God’s spirit children defected to Satan’s side while the rest remained faithful to the Father. Those who saw through Satan’s supposedly easy plan voluntarily agreed to leave their pre-existent state to inherit mortal bodies on earth. Thanks to the voluntary sacrifice of God’s firstborn son, Jesus Christ, they could learn from their earthly mistakes and eventually progress to the status of their maker.54 To its Mormon foes, communism was nothing less than Satan’s attempt to reimpose his original plan by other means. He may have failed in the pre-existence, but clearly he had not given up. “Through Communism Satan is making a last desperate effort to defy God’s decision,” Stewart wrote. “Through Communism he is making a last desperate effort to deny man his free agency and to put into practice 52 Joseph Smith Jr., trans. The Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, 1981), 9. 53 David O. McKay, Apr. 1950, Conference Reports, 34. 54 Smith, Pearl of Great Price, 38. 219 upon the earth his own plan of compulsion.”55 To a remarkable degree, the popular Mormon image of communism that emerged during the Cold War was rooted less in reality or direct knowledge than in the assumption, bolstered by anticommunist propaganda sweeping the nation, that communism was essentially synonymous with Satan’s premortal plan of compulsion. Once they embraced this picture of how communism actually operated behind the Iron Curtain, it was a simple step for Mormon anticommunists to then deduce that for people trapped in such oppressive communist systems, it was exceedingly difficult if not impossible to fulfill what McKay once called “the purpose of the Lord that man become like him.”56 Thus Satan had inspired communism not only to rob men and women of their divine gift of agency, but even more threatening, to frustrate God’s plan of eternal progression for his children. By contrast, McKay and other Mormon leaders taught, whatever the risks of living in a free and open society such as their own, in no other environment could men and women come closer to reaching their divine potential. Alongside a system of republican government, another indispensable bulwark of free agency for Mormon anticommunists was a system of free enterprise capitalism. According to right-wing LDS author Cleon Skousen, the genius of capitalism lay in its responsiveness to mankind’s innate desire for economic freedom. While the architects of communism completely “misinterpreted the nature of man” by assuming he desired security over freedom, Skousen wrote, capitalism 55 56 Stewart, Mormonism vs. Communism, 34. David O. McKay, Apr. 1950, Conference Reports, 32. 220 “allows each man to do anything he wishes so long as he can survive at it.”57 But capitalism did more than just respect freedom, its defenders argued. It also generated unparalleled material prosperity, thereby enhancing people’s economic and social freedom. In a 1948 speech entitled, “Survival of the American Way of Life,” Ezra Taft Benson boasted that thanks to their heritage of free enterprise and individual initiative, Americans now made more money, produced more goods, and enjoyed more leisure time than citizens of any other nation.58 Unfortunately too few people in capitalist societies used their wealth for righteous ends, Benson lamented. Failing to understand that “Stewardship, not conspicuous consumption, is the proper relationship of man to material wealth,” he complained, too many Americans were going into debt to purchase wants instead of needs, and too many were taking foolish financial risks in order to emulate their wealthier neighbors.59 “As a nation we have spent twice as much money for liquor and tobacco as for medical care,” he fretted in his 1948 speech, “about the same for movies as for the support of the churches, and almost as much for beauty parlor services as for the private social welfare.” Benson then blasted the nation’s business elites for placing profits above the promotion of spiritual and moral values. “We all admit there are abuses,” he confessed.60 So while he celebrated the freedom that undergirded capitalism and pointed to the wealth it engendered as further evidence 57 W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Company, 1958), 241, 245. 58 Ezra Taft Benson, “Survival of the American Way of Life,” Improvement Era 51, no. 6 (June 1948): 364. 59 Ezra Taft Benson, Apr. 1957, Conference Reports, 54-56. 60 Benson, “Survival of the American Way of Life,” 364, 404. 221 of its superiority over rival economic systems, neither did Benson overlook the materialism and greed that too often prevailed in capitalist nations. In the dualistic environment of the Cold War, however, Mormon anticommunists on the right were far more devoted to championing than constructively criticizing the nation’s free enterprise system. Benson in particular believed that drawing too much attention to capitalism’s occasional drawbacks only furthered the communist strategy of sowing doubts in the American mind. If enough Americans began to question their traditional free market system, he warned, “the tendency in this country will be to demand that the government take over more and more of the economic and social responsibilities and make more of the decisions for the people. This can result in but one thing: slavery of the individual to the state.”61 Thus the perceived need to protect free agency from communist enslavement tended to engender even greater respect for capitalism among Mormon anticommunists across the political spectrum, although conservative and right-wing church members were capitalism’s staunchest defenders. Because communism was so foreign to the American experience, few LDS conservatives envisioned it seizing power in the United States through a sudden, violent revolution as it had in Russia. As Benson stated in his 1948 speech: “In a democracy the real danger is that we may slowly slide into a condition of slavery of the individual to the state.”62 From this general premise was extrapolated the more specific thesis that communism could take hold in America only through a gradual, piece-meal enlargement of the state—what Benson and others called “creeping 61 62 Ibid., 404. Ibid., 404. 222 socialism.”63 For Mormon conservatives this process had been underway since the early 1930s and was now reaching dangerous proportions. “It is not necessary to be a pessimist in order to recognize the fact that freedom is in danger,” soon-to-be Senator Wallace F. Bennett warned in his campaign tract, Faith and Freedom. “It may even be that the historians of the future will regard ours as a time of crisis in the history of liberty…because of our propensity for accepting the proposals of well intentioned but philosophically immature searchers for Utopia.”64 President McKay viewed the growth of the state in Great Britain as a frightening harbinger of what could happen at home. Having tolerated decades of mounting socialism, he opined, the British people were now “on the verge of a totalitarian state.” “People are bargaining their liberty for a chimera of equality and security,” he concluded, “not realizing that the more power you give the central government, the more you curtail your individual freedom.”65 Thus neither nation was seen as the potential victim of some violent communist takeover from without. For Mormon anticommunists on the right, communism could never take power in America unless its people grew so dependent on government as to voluntarily acquiesce to their own enslavement. If Mormon conservatives in the 1930s had objected to the growth of the state under the New Deal primarily on the grounds that it risked eroding the pioneer spirit, by the late 1940s and 1950s their most common line of attack was that government expansion constituted nothing less than the road to communism. Cold War LDS conservatives were thus suspicious of even the mildest forms of state 63 Ezra Taft Benson, The Red Carpet: Socialism—The Royal Road to Communism (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, Inc., 1962), 65-83. 64 Bennett, Faith and Freedom, 118. 65 David O. McKay, April 1950, Conference Reports, 35. 223 socialism. They regarded as one of the worst heresies of modern times the naïve belief that socialism and capitalism could actually coexist. Though he took great comfort from knowing that most Americans had no interest in communism, Bennett was nevertheless shocked that so many in his midst “actually seem to believe that in some strange way they can advantageously combine those basic American concepts…with those contradictory others which, to some degree at least, include state planning, government control, the nationalization of medicine and industry, and the consequent subjection of the individual to the demands of the state.”66 For a growing number on the Mormon right, there was really no difference at all between communism and socialism. “We must ever keep in mind that collectivized socialism is part of the communist strategy,” Benson wrote. “Communism is fundamentally socialism. We will never win our fight against communism by making concessions to socialism.”67 In Benson’s mind the difference between capitalism and socialism was nothing less than the difference between freedom and slavery. Because they rested on contrary and even antagonistic principles, he often implied, at a certain point the nation would have to become all one thing or all the other.68 For many Mormon anticommunists, socialism was merely one of several evil “isms” which, over the past century or so, had served as forerunners for the present communist threat. The others, which included rationalism, evolution, the Social Gospel, and the higher criticism of the Bible, all fell under the broad rubric of modernism. Similar to fundamentalist Protestants at the turn of the twentieth 66 Bennett, Faith and Freedom, 3. Benson, The Red Carpet, 75. 68 Ibid., 65-83. 67 224 century, conservative Latter-day Saints in the postwar years began to accuse modernism, with its alleged mockery of miracles and diminution of Christ from Son of God to great moral teacher, of constituting the road to atheism.69 As historian Philip Barlow shows, J. Rueben Clark was the most outspoken enemy of modernism in the postwar LDS hierarchy. “What disturbed [Clark] most deeply,” Barlow argues, “was what he viewed as the tendency to reduce the divine status of Jesus and the supernatural dimension of scripture.”70 To the 1945 graduating class at Utah State Agricultural College, Clark issued a warning that modernist “‘isms’ would destroy the worship of God, obliterate Christianity, and make of Christ a myth.”71 Beyond simply concluding that modernism had aided the communists by tearing down religious faith and thus preparing people for their atheistic philosophy, Mormon anticommunists often went further by characterizing communism as a secular religion. As Cleon Skousen theorized in his popular book, The Naked Communist, the gradual erosion of traditional religious faith by modernist philosophies had not eradicated mankind’s innate desire to find ultimate meaning. Communism was certainly atheistic, Skousen acknowledged, but it also positioned itself as the natural successor to Christianity by offering these confused individuals “a framework of ideas designed to explain everything in existence.”72 69 On the debate over modernism that split several Protestant denominations in the early decades of the twentieth century, see George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 70 Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 162. 71 J. Reuben Clark, J. Reuben Clark Selected Papers: On Americanism and National Affairs, ed. David H. Yarn (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1987), 125. 72 Skousen, The Naked Communist, 31, 285-316. 225 However problematic as a description of how communism actually functioned in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, the idea that communism and totalitarianism in general constituted what the public intellectual Eric Voegelin called “political religion” gained many adherents in the postwar era, including prominent Cold War intellectuals such as Voegelin, C.S. Lewis, and Reinhold Niebuhr, popular preachers such as Billy Graham, and government officials such as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.73 In Graham’s words communism was “Satan’s version of religion.”74 For Hoover it was “a way of life; a false, materialistic ‘religion.’”75 In his 1958 anticommunist tract, Masters of Deceit, the Machiavellian FBI director attributed the shocking growth of communism in the land of the free to what he called “the Case of Lost Faith.” To illustrate, Hoover told the story of a Midwesterner named Jack who had turned to communism as a university student to fill “a spiritual vacuum” left by his recent loss of faith in traditional Christianity.76 As scholar Jason Stevens points out, Hoover’s and many other Cold War Americans’ version of the political religion thesis rested on the assumption that “the human being is structured so that he cannot rest without belief in something that will forgive his guilt, give him hope of continuity despite his finitude, and restore meaning to a reality that appears fragmented to him.”77 That Skousen had adopted precisely this assumption is clear when, in the pages of The Naked Communist, he urges his 73 On the so-called “political religion” thesis, including its contributors and detractors, see Stevens, God-Fearing and Free, 16-26. 74 Quoted in Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 81. 75 J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958), vi. 76 Ibid., 106-107. 77 Stevens, God-Fearing and Free, 24-25. 226 readers to preempt one of communism’s strongest appeals by exposing the modernist “isms” that chip away at traditional faith and thus leave people vulnerable to secular counterfeits.78 Since several of the most influential Mormon anticommunists of this era were either conservative members of the LDS hierarchy, namely David O. McKay, J. Rueben Clark, and Ezra Taft Benson, or popular right-wing authors like Cleon Skousen, it is tempting to see Mormon anticommunism on the whole as simply an outgrowth of the Mormon conservatism that first took shape in the 1930s. But just as liberals and centrists throughout the nation succeeded in fashioning their own brand of anticommunist thought during the Cold War, liberals and centrists in the Mormon Church promoted an alternative strand of anticommunism that many church members welcomed as a moderate, sensible corrective to the extremism taking shape on the Mormon right.79 One outspoken critic of the conservative anticommunism gaining stature within the church was Brigham Young University history professor Richard D. Poll. According to Poll few planks in the emerging right-wing orthodoxy were more fanciful or dangerous than the view that socialism, in the words of Ezra Taft Benson, was “the royal road to communism.”80 Poll confessed that as a moderate Republican he had little sympathy for inefficient and costly government programs and was certainly no advocate for the kind of “comprehensive or ‘blueprint for Utopia’” socialism that had won so many converts in the early twentieth century. But right78 Skousen, The Naked Communist, 285-316. For the quintessential articulation of liberal anticommunism during the Cold War, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949). 80 Benson, The Red Carpet. 79 227 wing anticommunists had gone to the opposite extreme of denouncing all forms of socialism as inherently evil without providing a convincing explanation, he charged in a letter to conservative radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. “There are good arguments against socialistic ventures,” he acknowledged, “but the fact that they are socialistic is not one.”81 According to Poll most Americans had come to accept and even embrace a system in which necessary government programs existed alongside a high degree of free enterprise capitalism. How many Americans truly wished to jettison public schools and parks, bridges and highways, or social security, he asked, and were not these beneficent government programs socialistic? Poll identified those nations “which combine a high degree of private enterprise with broad public programs of a ‘welfare state’ character”—namely New Zealand, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries—as models for the United States to emulate.82 Right-wing Mormons tended to ascribe the spread of communism to a vast conspiracy. Under the pretense of providing equality and security, they argued, communists-in-disguise sought to slowly supplant free enterprise systems with state socialism. By the time people awoke to the reality that they were in fact slaves completely dependent on the state, they predicted, it would be too late.83 While this theory undoubtedly resonated with many church members who feared national suicide over foreign invasion, according to Poll it had no grounding whatsoever in reality. “All I want is one—just ONE—historical case of a people progressing into tyranny and misery through too much democratic social legislation,” he insisted in 81 Richard D. Poll to Fulton Lewis Jr., March 9, 1949. The Richard D. Poll Papers, Box 35, Folder 9, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 82 Ibid. Richard D. Poll, This Trumpet Gives an Uncertain Sound (Richard D. Poll, 1962), 12. 83 Clark, On Americanism and National Affairs, 185-188. Benson, The Red Carpet, 72-83. 228 his letter to Lewis.84 For Poll it was not social programs but economic deprivation, misery, and general lack of concern from government that made people susceptible to communism. By blunting the excesses and shoring up the inadequacies of capitalism, he concluded, socialism could actually perform a valuable service to America’s free enterprise system.85 Poll included many of these arguments in his 1962 review of fellow church member Cleon Skousen’s well-known polemic, The Naked Communist. Entitled, “This Trumpet Gives an Uncertain Sound,” Poll’s pamphlet came as a breath of fresh air to many liberal and centrist church members not only because they disagreed with the emerging right-wing orthodoxy, but more importantly, because many of their fellow Latter-day Saints were beginning to regard it as gospel truth. Fellow historian James B. Allen described Poll’s rejoinder as “exactly what I needed to help meet some of the extremism I have run across among people in the church who seem to accept ‘Skousenism’ as an integral part of the church itself.”86 Another Mormon historian, Davis Bitton, mentioned in his complimentary letter to Poll that Ezra Taft Benson and Cleon Skousen had both recently spoken at his LDS congregation and used it as a platform to broadcast their extreme anticommunist views. Bitton summarized Benson’s discourse as follows: “Communism and socialism are the same thing; no one can be a Latter-day Saint and a socialist; and for the past many years (read since 1932) this country has been on the high road to socialism.”87 84 Richard D. Poll to Fulton Lewis Jr., March 9, 1949. Poll Papers, Box 35, Folder 9. Poll, This Trumpet, 12. 86 James B. Allen to Richard D. Poll, January 31, 1962. Poll Papers, Box 45, Folder 3. 87 Davis Bitton to Richard D. Poll, December 7, 1962. Poll Papers, Box 45, Folder 3. 85 229 Not every reader was so enthusiastic. Several church members including some who regarded Poll as a friend were unwilling to endorse his pamphlet. In a personal letter to Poll one of these critics agreed that “Skousen is a careless scholar [and]…his book is full of inaccuracies.” Yet this reviewer saw in Poll’s pamphlet the shades of “an even greater menace and that is the assumption that everyone who is zealous in fighting communism must be stopped.” The self-proclaimed enemies of extremism risked engendering a new form of McCarthyism coming from the other side, this reader implied.88 As his critical letter to Poll suggested, the nationwide debate over communism was also beginning to generate contention within Zion. Another critic of the emerging right-wing orthodoxy was University of Utah philosophy professor Obert C. Tanner. In a 1959 debate at Brigham Young University against Skousen, Tanner argued that Americans should seek peace rather than victory over the communist world since the latter was simply too risky. Skousen assured their audience that if the Cold War ever devolved into a “hot war,” the United States would almost certainly enjoy the upper hand. But for Tanner, “anyone who talks fast and loose about our chances of survival renders no service. Consider this beautiful valley—beautiful homes and schools, churches, this great university—all just a bunch of fallout rubble in twenty minutes.”89 Since the communists were here to stay for at least the foreseeable future, he reasoned, the American people needed to learn how to live alongside them. More importantly, he continued, it was incumbent upon the people of a mostly Christian nation to love their enemies. Communism itself may have been an evil system and communist 88 89 Bob Halladay to Richard D. Poll, April 30, 1962. Poll Papers, Box 45, Folder 3. “Rejoinders and Questions and Answers.” Poll Papers, Box 45, Folder 2. 230 leaders were undoubtedly tyrants, but the millions of ordinary people living within the Soviet Union are our brothers and sisters, Tanner declared. “Can we coexist peacefully with Russia?” he concluded by asking. Yes, if we…now change the earlier cold war principles of ill will and animosity toward communist leaders and communist nations—replace these for policies of trade with communist nations, for policies of far greater cultural exchanges between free and communist peoples, of teaching only the truth in our schools, and of practicing only love in our hearts for all men everywhere.90 Anticommunism had not been a major source of friction within the LDS community in the 1930s and 1940s. This largely stemmed from the fact that Mormon anticommunism in these years was still more general than specific. Latterday Saints across the political spectrum agreed that communism was antithetical to their American and Mormon ideals. Beyond that, there was little else to discuss. But as Mormon anticommunism evolved over the course of the 1950s, periodically 90 Obert C. Tanner, “Is Peaceful Coexistence with Russia Possible?,” delivered at Brigham Young University, October 22, 1959. Poll Papers, Box 45, Folder 2. In addition to illuminating how liberals and conservatives in the church were beginning to differ over the question of how best to confront communism abroad, the 1959 debate between Skousen and Tanner also reveals how liberals and conservatives nationwide were beginning to question and even jettison the foreign policy dogmas of their respective pasts. By the mid-1950s the Republican Party’s conservative wing, in the words of historian Sean Wilentz, “had passed from the dour, midwestern, anti-New Deal isolationism of Robert A. Taft to a far feistier right-wing anticommunism proclaimed by younger westerners such as Barry Goldwater.” Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 19. Like the Cold War conservative intellectual James Burnham, Skousen rejected both the isolationism of the Old Right along with the internationalism of mainstream Republicans and Democrats, advocating instead an aggressive unilateralism that he and other conservatives believed would roll back earlier communist gains and bring the Cold War to a victorious end. On the shift among conservative intellectuals from Old Right isolationism to New Right interventionism during the 1950s, see Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 134-148. On the other side of the debate, meanwhile, O.C. Tanner’s position anticipated the eventual rupture in American liberalism between Old Left advocates of containing the spread of communism through political and even military means, on the one hand, and New Left critics of American foreign policy who favored more dialogue and the pursuit of peaceful coexistence with what they increasingly regarded as a polycentric communist world, on the other. Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1986), 376-389. 231 extracting guidance and motivation from the broader anticommunist movement, its right-wing variants began to target not only communists, but socialists and even liberals, as well. As it telescoped from the general into the specific, Mormon anticommunism grew far more divisive. Just as it was doing throughout the nation, a phenomenon that should have been promoting unity among Latter-day Saints was instead beginning to breed divisions. Republicanism Resurgent: Utah’s Shift to the Right in the 1950s Notwithstanding their increasingly public vilification of President Roosevelt and the New Deal, the Mormon First Presidency had been powerless to stop the Democratic Party from dominating Utah’s political landscape between 1933 and the late 1940s. But in the early 1950s, Utah began to swing from the Democrats back to the party that had enjoyed the upper hand in the Beehive State during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In 1952 Utah voters helped propel Republican Dwight Eisenhower to the presidency, a position he would retain for the rest of the decade. Also in 1952 Arthur Watkins was reelected to the U.S. Senate and both of Utah’s House seats went Republican. With Wallace Bennett having already replaced Elbert Thomas in the Senate two years earlier, the GOP now monopolized Utah’s Congressional Delegation. Utah Republicans also gained decisive majorities in both houses of the state legislature, and the conservative incumbent J. Bracken Lee won his second consecutive gubernatorial race.91 91 Jonas, “1952 Elections in Utah.” 232 Nevertheless, Utah’s shift to the right in the 1950s could not quite equal in longevity its earlier alignment with FDR’s New Deal Coalition. In 1958 Utah Democrats won back the Senate seat they had lost to Arthur Watkins twelve years earlier. Six years later Utahns contributed to Barry Goldwater’s crushing defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. These and other reversals were due in large measure to Republican infighting over such issues as the United Nations, civil rights, and most polarizing of all, the behavior of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and other extreme communist hunters. Despite the GOP’s impressive comeback in Utah in the early 1950s, by the end of the decade the political future of the nation’s most Mormon state was still far from decided. When the decade began, Utah Democrats were confident that their party’s record of combating the Depression and leading the nation to victory in World War II would propel Elbert Thomas to a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. But as the Thomas campaign soon realized, the international and domestic climate in 1950 was far different than it had been just five years earlier. During the war Utah’s senior senator had taken part in the campaign to persuade the American people that the United States and its new wartime ally, the Soviet Union, could in fact get along even after their common Axis enemies were defeated. In a 1943 speech celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army, Thomas unabashedly conflated the history and ideals of these two erstwhile antagonists. “Soviet Russia’s first twentyfive years of history resemble our own first twenty-five years,” he confidently stated. “The ideals of the American Revolution struck so hard at age-old injustices, that of course the Revolution was misunderstood from one end of our world to the 233 other. The Russian Revolution also struck at age-old injustices, and it, too, was bound to be misunderstood.”92 In his 1944 book, The Four Fears, he gently chided his fellow Americans for what he viewed as their irrational fear of the Soviet Union based on the ludicrous idea “that the Russians have deep-laid plans to rule the world.”93 In predicting a more amicable future for Soviet-American relations, Thomas was simply echoing the hopes of his party’s chief standard-bearer. During most of the war, President Roosevelt was convinced that earlier animosities between the two nations had grown out of mutual ignorance, and that the Russians’ well known paranoia was understandable given the external threats their country had faced over the centuries. “They didn’t know us,” FDR assured Americans in 1944. “They are a friendly people. They haven’t got any crazy ideas of conquest.” As historian John Lewis Gaddis points out, FDR hoped to defuse Soviet aggression by integrating the U.S.S.R. into the international community once the war ended.94 While FDR did not live long enough to witness the failure of this approach, Thomas’s assurances to the American people that they had nothing to fear from the Soviet Union soon came back to haunt him. By 1950 the Soviets had converted Eastern Europe into their own sphere of influence and broken America’s nuclear monopoly by successfully exploding their own atomic bomb. Communist insurgents under Mao Tse-Tung had seized power in 92 Elbert D. Thomas, “Washington’s Birthday and the Red Army Anniversary,” February 22, 1943. Jonas Papers, Box 84, Folder 10. 93 Elbert D. Thomas, The Four Fears (Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1944), 58. 94 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 9-13. 234 China, and North Korean troops with the tacit support of Stalin and Mao had crossed the 38th parallel in an effort to unify the Korean Peninsula under communist rule.95 Since these and other communist actions had occurred under Truman’s watch, the Democrats acquired the reputation of having been soft on communism. On the domestic front, meanwhile, the return of economic prosperity to the U.S. made it easier for Republicans to associate the New Deal with socialism and brand its supporters as not sufficiently capitalistic. As historian Stephen J. Whitfield puts it: “The Cold War put the reformist strategies of the New Deal and the Fair Deal on ice, as though those experiments were part of the continuum that stretched all the way to Moscow.”96 As a prominent New Dealer who had once downplayed Russia’s ideological convictions and imperialist ambitions, Thomas spent most of the 1950 campaign on his heels. As political scientist Frank Jonas shows, Thomas’s Republican opponents employed various forms of propaganda in an effort to depict the three-term senator as a hapless tool in the hands of socialists and corrupt labor leaders. At least one political cartoon highlighted his authorship of The Four Fears and claimed “It was so pro-radical that ‘the new masses,’ communist monthly magazine, offered Thomas’ book on a subscription with the magazine.”97 Thomas attempted to salvage his declining reputation by taking a tougher stance against the Soviets, even going so far as to reverse his earlier position on UMT. Neglecting to mention his earlier opposition to compulsory military training, Thomas attributed the government’s 95 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 19. 97 Frank H. Jonas, “The Murder of a Reputation,” in Jonas, Political Dynamiting, 83-86. 96 235 failure to thus far enact this policy on “the failure to recognize the gravity and character of the Soviet threat.”98 Unfortunately for Thomas, too many Utahns had already concluded that he and his party had not been tough enough on communism. When election day arrived, Wallace Bennett captured over twenty-thousand more votes.99 The brief contest between Arthur Watkins and Marriner Eccles for the 1952 Republican senatorial nomination further illustrates the growing backlash against the Democratic Party and the declining popularity of New Deal liberalism in 1950s Utah. Born into a polygamous family in 1890, Eccles followed in the footsteps of his entrepreneurial father to become one of the richest bankers in Utah by the 1920s. His success in keeping his banks afloat during the Depression, coupled with the public testimony he delivered before the Senate Finance Committee in 1933, caught the attention of President Roosevelt, who went on to name Eccles chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the end of 1934. In this capacity he played a key role in shaping several pieces of New Deal legislation, most famously the Banking Act of 1935, or so-called “Eccles bill.”100 Despite accumulating an impressive resume, Eccles’s earlier contributions to the New Deal had become a political liability by 1952. His campaign literature seized every opportunity to remind Utah voters that his governorship of the Federal Reserve had been on a completely nonpartisan basis. “Mr. Eccles always has been a 98 99 “Statement by Senator Elbert D. Thomas,” 1950. Jonas Papers, Box 78, Folder 16. For a more detailed treatment of the 1950 Utah Senate race, see Zabriskie, “Resting in the Highest Good,” 253-278. 100 Sidney Hyman, Marriner S. Eccles: Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant (Palo Alto: Stanford University Graduate School of Business, 1976). Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 158-160. 236 Republican, his father was a Republican, his whole family have been and are Republicans,” one campaign tract stated. “In the big depression crisis, he was asked by our government to accept public service. And he responded as any loyal American would in such a crisis—regardless of party or political faith.” The same pamphlet also differentiated between Eccles’s support for what it called “the sound and permanent reforms” of the 1930s, on the one hand, and his fervent opposition to the New Deal philosophy as a whole, on the other. Eccles had always loathed the New Deal’s “Class Legislation” and “Socialistic measures,” the pamphlet asserted.101 In the conservative climate of early 1950s Utah, however, Eccles’s well-known involvement with past Democratic administrations gave him very little chance against a sitting Republican senator.102 So effective was the Watkins team at casting doubts on Eccles’s self-identification as a Republican, let alone a conservative, when the Republican primaries arrived he was soundly defeated.103 Not coincidentally, Utah began shifting to the right just as different factions of conservatives nationwide—namely economic libertarians devoted to tearing down the New Deal welfare state, religious and cultural traditionalists hoping to arrest the spread of unbelief and moral relativism, and militant anticommunists intent on rooting out domestic subversives and rolling back communist advances around the world—were laying the foundations for a new and far more robust conservative movement to take the place of the marginal Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s.104 101 “About Marriner Eccles…What he has done and believes.” Poll Papers, Box 35, Folder 8. Watkins, Enough Rope, 156-157. 103 Hyman, Marriner S. Eccles, 368-374. 104 On the emergence of the so-called New Right in the 1950s and 1960s, and specifically on the “fusion” between economic libertarians, defenders of traditional moral and religious values, and 102 237 Although they never managed to achieve an ideological consensus, members of the New Right mostly agreed that working within the mainstream party system, specifically through the vehicle of the Republican Party, offered them the best chance of implementing the principles and policies on which most could agree. But in what has been a recurring challenge for Republicans ever since, the conservative quest to seize control of the GOP rather quickly gave rise to contentious intraparty feuding, as upstart conservative interlopers who attacked the establishment and pledged to trump ideology over compromise did battle with more moderate and liberal elements within the party.105 Since mainstream political parties in America have always been broad coalitions rather than narrow ideological factions, tensions between the various wings of each party are as old as the parties themselves. Yet rarely do these internal battles spill out into the public arena and sabotage one party’s prospects as dramatically as they did during the 1958 Utah Senate race. The specific issue that polarized Utah Republicans during this strange campaign was the legacy of Joseph McCarthy. In 1950 the junior senator from Wisconsin began making unsubstantiated claims that communist agents had infiltrated the State Department, the Army, and other elite institutions of government. In addition to enjoying the support of many ordinary men and women, McCarthy also initially won over several prominent conservative intellectuals who, militant anticommunists on which it rested, see Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 197-286. On the so-called Old Right which enjoyed a modest presence in both the Republican and Democratic camps in the 1930s and 1940s, see Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). 105 On the New Right’s jolting impact on the Republican establishment of the late 1950s and early 1960s, see Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001). 238 even as they acknowledged his bombastic demagoguery and grossly exaggerated claims, nevertheless reveled in the fact that “McCarthy gave the Right something it had been missing for generations,” writes historian Sam Tanenhaus, “authentic populist fervor.”106 The support he received from figures linked to the New Right stood in stark contrast to the opprobrium leveled at McCarthy from moderate and liberal Republicans. The intra-Republican fissure over McCarthy in the 1950s foreshadowed the later breach between Goldwater conservatives and moderate Republicans at the 1964 Republican National Convention.107 Although McCarthy was dead by 1958, his divisive legacy played a crucial role in deciding that year’s Utah Senate contest. Early in his second term, Utah’s Republican Senator Arthur Watkins had been appointed to head a special committee charged with investigating McCarthy’s actions vis-à-vis his fellow senators. Watkins later insisted that he had nothing but sympathy for McCarthy’s “general objective, to expose communists and communist fellow-travelers in Government.”108 McCarthy’s offense was not that he sought to expose communists, but that he did so in such a way as to bring both his party and the Senate into disrepute, Watkins asserted.109 If that was not enough, the Utah senator also regarded McCarthyism as an affront to his Mormon faith. Because he viewed the U.S. Constitution as “an inspired document,” Watkins later wrote, he could not escape the conclusion that the 106 Sam Tanenhaus, The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and its Consequences (New York: Random House, 2010), 41. For the most well-known example of the conservative intellectuals’ defense of McCarthy, see William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning( Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1954). 107 Perlstein, Before the Storm, 371-405. 108 Watkins, Enough Rope, 1. 109 Ibid., 23-24, 239 “institutions which derive from the Constitution,” including the U.S. Senate, “are entitled to the respect and honor of every citizen.”110 For Watkins, McCarthy’s blatant disregard for his fellow senators was tantamount to riding roughshod over the Constitution. Upon adjourning, the Watkins Committee immediately advised the Senate to issue a public condemnation of the Wisconsin firebrand, which the Senate then proceeded to do. Watkins’ work on the committee earned him the respect of many of his senatorial colleagues and the admiration of enemies of McCarthyism everywhere. Despite his own intense hatred of communism, David O. McKay sent a personal letter to Watkins praising him for his role on the committee.111 But Watkins’ actions had also stoked the ire of McCarthy’s devout supporters, including Utah’s fiery two-time governor, J. Bracken Lee. Known for his extreme fiscal conservatism and willingness to publicly question Eisenhower’s leadership, Lee quickly emerged as the de facto leader of the Utah McCarthyites.112 In an exchange of letters with Richard Poll, Lee tried to rationalize his support for McCarthy. Poll accurately predicted that the rise of right-wing populism engendered by figures like McCarthy would soon split the Republican Party and swing the pendulum back to the Democrats. Lee’s response foreshadowed some of the criticisms Poll would later receive for his attacks on Cleon Skousen’s book, The Naked Communist. “Let’s admit that McCarthy is not perfect—that he has made mistakes,” Lee acknowledged. “I 110 Ibid., x. Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 284. Prince shows that while McKay initially sympathized with McCarthy’s mission, by the summer of 1954 he had come to regard the Wisconsin demagogue as too extreme. 112 Richard Swanson, “McCarthyism in Utah” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1977), 126. 111 240 contend, however, that in rooting out subversives from government he is doing far more good than harm.”113 Lee and other McCarthyites accused the Watkins Committee of conducting their own witch-hunt against a man they regarded as a patriot. As late as 1958, Lee had still not forgiven Watkins for his role in bringing McCarthy’s political career to its ignominious end. Watkins later speculated that Lee was also angry with the former for not supporting the latter’s bid to win the Utah governorship for an unprecedented third time.114 In retaliation Lee mobilized Utah’s remaining McCarthyites and launched his own independent campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1958. Hoping to take advantage of the burgeoning Republican split, Democrats stepped up their campaign and poured additional funds behind their candidate, Frank E. Moss. Reflecting on his defeat to Moss over a decade later, Watkins was convinced that Lee was less interested in winning than in punishing him for his treatment of McCarthy. “I would never have been defeated except for the bitter, McCarthyite, anti-Watkins votes which went to Lee,” Watkins claimed.115 So while Utah’s rightward turn may have helped Watkins defeat Eccles in 1952, the split it soon opened between moderate Republicans like himself and right-wing populists like McCarthy and Lee contributed to his defeat six years later. Alongside the rhetoric and results of national and state elections, Utah’s shift to the right in the 1950s also took the form of a successful campaign to undermine the power of labor unions, the most concrete expression of which was a 1955 “right113 J. Bracken Lee to Richard D. Poll, September 30, 1953. Poll Papers, Box 35, Folder 11. Watkins, Enough Rope, 170-172. 115 Ibid., 178. 114 241 to-work” law that conservatives boasted would restore to all workers the God-given right to freely decide whether or not to join a union. While members of the LDS hierarchy in the 1950s generally avoided direct involvement in state and national elections, when it came to the issue of unions Mormon leaders displayed no such reticence. Like their predecessors at the turn of the century, the newest generation of antiunionists in the church openly accused organized labor of stopping production and raising prices, of embracing radical ideologies and supporting leftwing political movements, and worst of all, of undermining the free agency of both workers and employers through such coercive methods as the closed shop and the strike. But if their specific charges against unions were anything but new, Mormon conservatives now had the advantage of presenting their antiunionism as a key facet in the broader, existential struggle to preserve individual freedom from communist enslavement. In a blistering attack on unions at the October 1946 general conference, apostle Joseph F. Merrill took comfort in his belief that “The spirit of communism is unquestionably wholly foreign to the spirit of true Americanism.” Nevertheless, he went on to warn, “the similarity of the spirit seen in some phases of certain labor troubles with that of communism” was enough to convince Merrill that communists hoped to infiltrate organized labor and then use it as a kind of Trojan horse with which to establish a foothold in American political and economic life.116 Four years later, he saw little difference between unionism and communism. Both systems strove for nothing less than supplanting free agency and free enterprise with a 116 Joseph F. Merrill, Oct. 1946, Conference Reports, 70-73. 242 “form of monopoly…that, if not controlled, imposes a type of slavery on the country unknown and undreamed of by the founders of our glorious republic,” he asserted.117 In the increasingly polarized climate of the early Cold War, unionism fell victim to the same kind of guilt-by-association verdict that also condemned even the mildest forms of socialism. Like Utah’s electoral shift from the Democrats to the Republicans, the growing backlash within the state against the gains of organized labor under the New Deal also accorded with national trends. The most concrete expression of this widespread antiunionism was the passage in 1947 of the so-called Taft-Hartley Act. While labor leaders and their political allies denounced Taft-Hartley as “the slave labor bill,” its supporters claimed it was precisely what was needed to correct the imbalance between capital and labor which, owing to the New Deal, currently tilted unfairly toward the latter.118 One prominent Latter-day Saint who rejected this argument was Senator Thomas. In a 1947 speech before Congress, he argued that Taft-Hartley rested on the naïve expectation that once certain government protections for unions were removed, the two sides would thereafter operate on an equal playing field. But from the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution until the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, Thomas argued, the absence of government intervention on behalf of unions had given capital free rein to abuse labor. Far from creating an equal playing field, he predicted, Taft-Hartley would merely restore to employers all the inherent advantages they had always and would always enjoy 117 Joseph F. Merrill, Apr. 1950, Conference Reports, 59-62. James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50-51. 118 243 over their employees. Did the nation’s business moguls really wish to return to the dark days of violent strikes and class warfare, he rhetorically asked.119 Unfortunately for Thomas, these arguments failed to persuade enough of his congressional colleagues and Taft-Hartley was subsequently passed even over President Truman’s veto. The most controversial section of Taft-Hartley was its provision allowing individual state legislatures to outlaw closed shops, which required workers at certain factories to join unions in order to keep their jobs.120 Mormon leaders since the 1890s had periodically decried the closed shop as the most blatant example of unionism’s utter disregard for the divine gift of free agency.121 Nevertheless, the hierarchy had to wait for Republicans to recapture the state assembly in 1952 to see this provision of Taft-Hartley implemented at the state level. Finally in early 1955, nearly eight years after Congress had successfully overridden Truman’s veto, the Utah Legislature abolished the closed shop.122 Even with this legislative victory, several members of the LDS hierarchy, notably President David O. McKay, remained fearful of any attempts to erode what they considered the sacred principle of voluntary union membership. This danger seemed entirely plausible in the summer of 1965 when, in an effort to fulfill one of President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign promises, congressional Democrats set out to repeal the very section of Taft-Hartley that had permitted states like Utah to enact 119 Elbert D. Thomas, “The Federal Labor Relations Act of 1947,” April 30, 1947. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 120 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 51-52. 121 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 3:278-279. 122 Davies, “Mormonism and the Closed Shop,” 169. 244 “right-to-work” legislation.123 Seeing this as a moral issue, the First Presidency decided to send letters directly to President Johnson, and then five days later, to the eleven church members then serving in Congress.124 As Mormon leaders had consistently done since the turn of the century, McKay and his two counselors once again justified their opposition to compulsory union membership by citing their commitment to “maintaining this free agency to the greatest extent possible.” While the letter contained no binding directives to the Mormon congressmen to whom it was addressed, it nevertheless concluded by expressing the First Presidency’s hope “that no action will be taken by the Congress of the United States that would in any way interfere with the God-given rights of men to exercise free agency in seeking and maintaining work privileges.”125 Perhaps because they failed to recognize that the conservative climate that had prevailed in Utah in the 1950s had, by the following decade, given way to a more balanced mixture of Republican and Democratic leadership representing the state, McKay and his counselors were blindsided by the public backlash their letters quickly engendered. Their most vocal critic was United States Senator and Latterday Saint, Frank Moss. In a letter written for public consumption to the Deseret News, Moss expressed shock and dismay that the church, which in his mind had always been politically neutral, would so forcefully intervene on a matter “where members of the Church disagree by reason of honest difference of belief as to what 123 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 50-52. Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 326. 125 The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to “Dear Senators and Representatives,” June 22, 1965. Copy in the David Oman McKay Papers, Box 60, Folder 2, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 124 245 political or governmental action is desirable.”126 Moss revealed a remarkably naïve understanding of the historical intersection between the Mormon Church and both state and national politics. Not only had earlier First Presidencies interjected themselves into such contentious debates as the League of Nations, prohibition, and the constitutionality of the New Deal, but this was not even the first time church leaders had directly reached out to LDS congressmen in an effort to sway their votes, as they had done in 1945 over the issue of Universal Military Training.127 Perhaps unaware of these earlier episodes, Moss incorrectly characterized this as an unprecedented action on the part of his church. By reducing the debate over compulsory union membership to no more than “a legislative and political matter,” moreover, he also implied that the line between so-called moral and political issues was unambiguous.128 However defective, Moss’s letter inspired several other Mormon congressmen to follow his lead. Along with Moss, four of them sent a letter to the First Presidency asserting that, “in conformity with the highest principles of our church,” by which they meant the doctrine of free agency, they would not accept the First Presidency’s letter as “binding upon us,” overlooking the fact that no such binding commandment appeared in the letter.129 Fortunately for the First 126 “Statement of Senator Frank E. Moss (D-Utah) With Regard to Repeal of Section 14(b),” June 25, 1965. Copy in the McKay Papers, Box 60, Folder 2. 127 Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 6:239-242. Had he chosen to mention the church’s earlier involvement over UMT, Moss could have pointed out that the First Presidency had at that time limited their correspondence to the four members of Utah’s Congressional Delegation, whereas in this case McKay and his counselors had reached out to every single LDS congressman regardless of their home state. 128 “Statement of Senator Frank E. Moss (D-Utah) With Regard to Repeal of Section 14(b),” June 25, 1965. Copy in the McKay Papers, Box 60, Folder 2. 129 “Five LDS Solons Reject Presidency Labor Plea,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 13, 1965. 246 Presidency, the controversy eventually faded from the headlines, especially after President Johnson and congressional Democrats decided to abandon their efforts at repeal. Nevertheless, the episode was a sobering reminder to the First Presidency that while churches have every right under the Constitution to voice their opinions on political issues, they always do so at their own risk. Nor did Frank Moss emerge unscathed. Though he managed to win reelection in 1970, six years later his well known support for labor unions contributed to his defeat at the hands of Republican newcomer Orrin Hatch, in an election that signaled a far more drastic and permanent shift to the right for the state of Utah than any it had experienced before.130 By the early 1950s, the earlier gulf within Zion between theos and demos had been significantly reduced. As the events of the New Deal era had demonstrated, this was not something the Mormon hierarchy could simply order into existence. In fact, church leaders in the 1950s carefully avoided the First Presidency’s earlier mistake of directly intervening in state or national elections. At the same time, they did not hesitate to speak out on such hot-button issues as UMT, compulsory union membership, or socialism. In the conservative climate of the Cold War, their longstanding warnings of homegrown enemies seeking to undermine the Constitution and rob mankind of their free agency achieved a level of resonance and believability they did not previously enjoy. This put church members on the left in a difficult position. Lacking significant representation in the church hierarchy, Mormon liberals in these years viewed as 130 Rogers, “Utah’s Right Turn,” 12. 247 godsends those individuals in the church who, like Richard Poll, could successfully challenge the growing assumption that conservative thought represented the only acceptable application of Mormonism to the political realm. At times it appeared as if Mormon liberalism was on the verge of extinction. But as the following decade and a half would show, any illusions of a return to theodemocracy with church members united by a shared set of conservative dogmas would at least have to wait. CHAPTER 6 THE CONSTITUTION BY A THREAD A little over eight months after his work in the Eisenhower administration came to an end, Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles delivered the most politically charged address he had ever given at a session of general conference. In addition to his polarizing pronouncement that “no true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction,” Benson reprimanded the Saints for what he regarded as their passive complacency in the face of dangerous government growth. Hoping to inspire them to play a more active role in the ongoing battle between freedom and slavery, he quoted a familiar prophecy that supposedly originated with Mormonism’s founder. “Joseph Smith predicted that the time would come when the Constitution would hang, as it were, by a thread,” he declared, “and at that time ‘this people will step forth and save it.’”1 Thirteen years later Eugene England wrote a scathing denunciation of former President Richard Nixon in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate crisis.2 In addition to excoriating the former president, England’s article reproved the many 1 Ezra Taft Benson, Oct. 1961, Conference Reports, 69-75. Eugene England, “Hanging by a Thread: Mormons and Watergate,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 9, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 9-18. 2 249 church members who, in the author’s mind, had excused Nixon’s behavior by resorting to “a frightening kind of situation ethics that they have rightly condemned in others.” According to England too many Latter-day Saints had simply concluded that while Nixon may have broken a few laws, “it was just what every president and politician has done.”3 He warned his readers that this kind of cynicism would drive good and honest people away from public service and thus leave government open to individuals who, like Nixon, had no respect for the rule of law. If the Mormons ever hoped to save the nation’s founding document, he predicted, “it will not be in some dramatic way at a time of crisis but in the steady, supportive service of a large number of Elders and Sisters at all levels of appointed and elected government.”4 Employing the same imagery that Benson had cited back in 1961, the title of England’s article was: “Hanging by a Thread: Mormons and Watergate.” The familiar prophecy in Mormondom that the Constitution and American nation would some day “hang upon a single thread” and that “this people will step forth and save it from the threatened destruction,” was first attributed to Joseph Smith by his successor, Brigham Young, on July 4, 1854.5 While there is no direct evidence that Smith ever used this exact metaphor, he did prophesy in the summer of 1840 that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to peices and tumbling to the ground” and that the Mormon people “will be the Staff up[on] which 3 Ibid., 3. Ibid., 4. 5 Brigham Young, July 4, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 7:15. Young’s first appropriation of Smith’s prophecy predicted that “the destiny of the nation will hang upon a single thread.” Young first employed the imagery of the Constitution hanging by a thread in a discourse given the following year. See Brigham Young, Feb. 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 2:182. 4 250 the Nation shall lean.”6 Whether Young was remembering Smith’s 1840 prophecy or referring to another that was not recorded at the time remains uncertain. Whatever its exact origins, the prophecy became an essential component of Mormon political discourse during the mid to late nineteenth century.7 It succinctly captured two truisms the Mormons had accepted even before their exodus to the Great Basin: The American nation had apostatized and was on the road to collapse, and the Latterday Saints were superior Americans with far more loyalty to the Constitution than the corrupt Gentiles.8 The twin images of the Constitution precariously hanging by a single thread and the Latter-day Saints bravely stepping forward to save it from destruction experienced a remarkable resurgence in Mormon political thought in the 1960s and early 1970s. Notwithstanding the uncertainty of its authorship, the subtle contradictions between many of the surviving accounts, and its origins in a period of militant isolationism and alienation from mainstream American society, Smith’s purported prophecy became a useful metaphor for many church members wishing 6 Jessee, “Joseph Smith’s 19 July 1840 Discourse,” 392-394. Wilcox, The Constitution Will Hang by a Thread. Wilcox finds forty-three statements in the Journal of Discourses between 1854 and 1885 that either directly or indirectly hearken back to Smith’s purported prophecy. 8 The metaphor of the Constitution hanging by a thread is often associated in both the Mormon and American mind with a far more extensive and controversial prophecy that Smith supposedly made in 1843, a prophecy that has come to be known as the “White Horse Prophecy.” It describes the removal of the Saints to the Rocky Mountains and the subsequent collapse of both the United States and other secular governments. It then details how the Mormon people, or “White Horse,” will provide the distressed peoples of the earth with a new form of government while continuing to preserve the essential freedoms embodied in the Constitution. Because the prophecy was not written down until 1902 and not corroborated by other sources, Smith’s purported authorship is impossible to confirm. In addition to its murky origins, the prophecy has evoked controversy for seeming to celebrate the collapse of the United States and the triumph of the Mormon political kingdom. For these reasons the LDS hierarchy has periodically denounced the prophecy while denying that it ever originated with their founding prophet. On the origins of and reactions to the White Horse Prophecy, see Christopher James Blythe, “Vernacular Mormonism: The Development of Latter-day Saint Apocalyptic, 18301930” (PhD dissertation, The Florida State University, 2015), 1-4, 326-331. 7 251 to express both their deep anxiety over the nation’s future, as well as their conviction that the Mormon people had a crucial role to play in keeping the republic afloat. Latter-day Saints who gravitated toward the image of the Constitution by a thread had legitimate reasons for concern. One did not have to be an alarmist in the 1960s to recognize the profound challenges facing the nation. Historians Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin employ the metaphor of a second civil war as a framework for their history of this tumultuous period. “Many Americans came to regard groups of fellow countrymen as enemies with whom they were engaged in a struggle for the nation’s very soul,” they write. “Whites versus blacks, liberals versus conservatives (as well as liberals versus radicals), young versus old, men versus women…everywhere one looked, new battalions took to the field.”9 Compounding the anxiety of many Mormons was the seeming ease with which the most polarizing issues of the day seeped into and bred contention within Zion. This was especially true of three major developments: the continued radicalization of domestic anticommunism, the escalating military conflict in Vietnam, and the nationwide struggle for black rights. Civil rights proved especially vexing to Latter-day Saints since it raised difficult questions about their church’s internal racial policies, as well as how those policies related to the broader movement for racial justice. Since Mormon conservatives in the past had been more prone than their liberal co-religionists to resort to the language of the apostasy narrative, it is hardly surprising that right-wing Mormons in these years were the most likely group to 9 Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4. 252 employ the metaphor of the Constitution by a thread. The more startling development, illustrated by the title of England’s Watergate Jeremiad, was that Mormon liberals were no longer willing to cede this aspect of the Mormon political tradition to their brethren on the right. Mormon liberals in the 1960s and early 1970s were no less convinced that their beloved nation was traveling down a very dangerous road. Unlike most versions of the apostasy narrative from the nineteenth century, moreover, liberals and conservatives in the church were now more willing to pin at least some of the blame for America’s problems on their fellow Saints. But while they agreed on many of the same general premises, Mormons on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum tended to attribute the current national crisis to an entirely different set of causes while endorsing entirely different solutions. One of the consequences of the widening political polarization in the Mormon community was a heightened respect for moderation and suspicion of anything smacking of ideological radicalism. Mormon moderates were far less likely to employ the imagery of the Constitution by a thread. They did not ignore the profound challenges facing the nation nor slight the need for incremental reform, but in contrast to their more anxious co-religionists, they vehemently denied that America was on the verge of forfeiting its chosen status. As a 1966 editorial in the Church News section of the Deseret News insisted, America’s divine role to shelter and even further God’s kingdom “is not yet complete. The destiny of America will continue on into the future, as will also the work of the Church.” Mormons should vigilantly defend their constitutional freedoms, the editorial acknowledged, but the 253 Lord “does not justify radicalism in doing so.”10 One expression of moderation that found favor in these years was a kind of apolitical Zion nationalism. Rather than waste their time and energy on outside political activism, these moderate voices argued, the Mormon people could best solve the nation’s problems by continuing to build up the Kingdom of God. And if saving the nation proved impossible, they concluded, the Saints would still have Zion. After warning church President David O. McKay of the dangers of allowing the Mormons to grow too close to the far right John Birch Society, for example, apostle Mark E. Petersen assured the Mormon prophet: “We have the Church, and if we live up to its teachings, we do not need to worry about what will happen to this country!”11 Each of these responses to the new crises threatening America had precedents in the Mormon past. The political activism of some on both the left and the right hearkened back to Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential run. The calm assurances of Mormon moderates that America remained God’s favored nation echoed the rhetoric of church leaders who oversaw the Americanization campaign at the turn of the twentieth century. The apolitical insularity of a smaller group of leaders and lay members resembled the all-encompassing Zion nationalism of the Jackson County and Utah territorial periods. Hence, the Mormon people in the 1960s and early 1970s had little difficulty finding ample justification for their contradictory outlooks from their shared religious past. As badly as someone like Ezra Taft Benson wished to see the Saints united on matters of religion and politics, the history of Mormon political thought from JFK to Watergate was instead a 10 11 “Politics and Religion,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Mar. 26, 1966. McKay Papers, Box 65, Folder 1. 254 somewhat peculiar microcosm of the extreme polarization sowing divisions throughout the nation. Continuing the War in Heaven: Right-Wing Mormons and Their Critics On April 25, 1966, the Young Democrats and Young Republicans of the church-owned and operated Brigham Young University sponsored a panel discussion entitled “Political Extremism Under the Spotlight.”12 Addressing a “standing-room-only audience” on the Brigham Young University campus were four local professors, two from BYU, one from the University of Utah, and one from Weber State College. The panel’s opposition to political extremism was obvious even before the professors made their individual remarks. The moderator, Dr. John T. Bernhard, introduced the four speakers by observing that “America’s political progress has been achieved through the accommodation of the Republican and Democratic parties to the will of the people as expressed through democratic principles built into our political structure.” The primary impetus for this public forum, he concluded, was the growing “concern felt by many over the growth of political extremism in the last decade.”13 The four panel members then proceeded to eviscerate such contemporary manifestations of political extremism as the John Birch Society and Ku Klux Klan on the right, and the American Communist Party and Students for a Democratic Society on the Left, calling them irrational, revolutionary, and ultimately un-American 12 J. Kenneth Davies, ed., “Political Extremism Under the Spotlight,” from a panel sponsored by the Young Democrats and Young Republicans of Brigham Young University, Apr. 25, 1966. LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT. 13 Ibid., 1-2. 255 groups that were more interested in pushing their narrow ideological agendas than in working for the good of the nation. In fact, the four professors basically agreed that despite lying at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, extremists of the left and right had far more in common with each other than with sensible members of the political center.14 As one audience member cynically observed during the Q&A session, the panel had given the overwhelming impression that “there is something divine about the two-party system,” and that any movement or ideology not firmly associated with the mainstream was detrimental to both the nation and the church.15 Prodded by members of the audience, the panel increasingly honed in on the question of Mormonism’s thorny relationship with the far right. Not surprisingly, several of these exchanges focused on the controversial Mormon apostle, Ezra Taft Benson. After reminding Dr. Quinn G. McKay of Weber State College—who just so happened to be the son of church President David O. McKay—of his earlier characterization of right-wing extremists as “misinformed,” one audience member pointedly asked him: “I would like to know—is Brother Benson misinformed?” Refusing to take the bait by “appearing to oppose the leadership of the Church,” McKay instead drew a line between his support for church leaders in their religious capacity, on the one side, and his freedom to disagree with them when they spoke only as men, on the other. Yet as McKay went on to admit, efforts to relegate Benson’s political activism had so far failed to prevent the fiery apostle from alienating centrist and liberal church members while providing aid and 14 15 Ibid., 3-12. Ibid., 14. 256 respectability to the very extremism the panel was trying to weaken.16 In a 1966 letter to the Salt Lake Tribune, former BYU professor H. Grant Ivins accused Benson’s political discourse of constituting “the most divisive influence in the church today.”17 Why did Benson become such a lightning rod in the Mormon community in the 1960s? After all, his habit of using church settings as venues from which to broadcast his militant anticommunism stretched clear back to his days as Secretary of Agriculture. Not long after his return to church headquarters from his assignment in Washington, however, Benson grew more willing to publicly chastise church members and even fellow general authorities whose political thought and actions did not align with his own. Beyond simply censuring Mormons on the left, Benson actually saved his harshest words for supposedly lukewarm Latter-day Saints who had come to believe, as he put it in a conference talk in 1966, “that the fight for freedom is separate from the gospel.” “Of course, this is dangerous reasoning,” he went on, “because in reality you cannot fully live the gospel without working to save freedom and the Constitution.”18 To illustrate his point, he alluded to the tragic fate of the small number of church members living in Czechoslovakia and Poland. “In both of these freedom-loving nations were members of the Church, striving, as we are, to live the gospel. But it was not enough,” he warned. “It did not stop the Communists.”19 Benson’s critics increasingly accused him of spending more time 16 Ibid., 19-20. H. Grant Ivins to the Salt Lake Tribune, Apr. 11, 1966. Copy in the Gregory A. Prince Papers, Box 41, Folder 3, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 18 Ezra Taft Benson, Oct. 1966, Conference Reports, 122. 19 Ibid., 124-125. 17 257 preaching politics than pure religion. But the way Benson saw things, if the Mormon people continued to closet themselves within Zion and ignore the threats facing the United States, they might soon find themselves in the same desperate plight as their fellow Latter-day Saints trapped behind the Iron Curtain. For Benson and his loyal supporters, then, the so-called freedom battle was not primarily political, but rather, an inextricable part of the restored gospel. While his habit of criticizing church members whom he considered less valiant in the newest phase of the War in Heaven understandably rubbed many the wrong way, Benson’s divisive rhetoric cannot alone account for the controversy he continuously engendered throughout the 1960s. Instead, it was his unflagging public support for the far right, anticommunist John Birch Society that made him the most polarizing figure in the Mormon community in these years. Founded in 1958 by the wealthy businessman Robert Welch and named after an American missionary who had been killed by communist forces in China right after World War II, the John Birch Society quickly gained a reputation as the natural successor to Joseph McCarthy. Echoing McCarthy’s earlier speeches, the society’s literature accused government officials from both parties of engaging in a vast, top-down conspiracy to convert the U.S. government into a communist state. Yet beyond simply labeling many of the people who ran the government as complicit, the Birchers actually exceeded McCarthy in their hatred of government. As Welch succinctly put it in the society’s opening manifesto, “The greatest enemy of man is, and always has been, 258 government.”20 By early 1962, several key leaders of the new conservative movement—namely William F. Buckley Jr. of National Review and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater—had grown so wary of the Birchers’ conspiratorial worldview and so embarrassed by the society’s links to the New Right that they openly called on Welch to either discontinue his egregious accusations against government officials, or else step down as the group’s leader.21 Although McKay never granted Benson the permission he periodically requested to become a formal member of the John Birch Society, he nevertheless took advantage of his visible position in the church hierarchy as well as his status as former Secretary of Agriculture to publicly promote the group at every turn.22 For a growing number of lay members and fellow general authorities, Benson’s well known involvement with the Birchers risked giving the impression that the Mormon Church was somehow tied to one of the most controversial political organizations in the country. It hardly helped matters that Benson made no effort to dispel these rumors. Speaking at a Birch Society banquet in 1963, he did not miss the opportunity to inform his audience that he was “here tonight with the knowledge and consent of…the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President David O. McKay.”23 He even tried on one occasion to convince the aging 20 Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, 9th ed. (Robert Welch, 1961), 138. On the history of the John Birch Society during its heyday in the late 1950s and 1960s, see D.J. Mulloy, The World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism, and the Cold War (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014). 21 Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 186-198. As Bogus notes, Welch refused to either step down or in any way moderate his accusatory, conspiratorial rhetoric. 22 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 289-290, 295, 304. 23 Ezra Taft Benson, Title of Liberty: A Warning Voice, comp. Mark A. Benson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1964), 1. 259 McKay to authorize his image to appear on the cover of the Birchers’ monthly magazine, American Opinion, only to be stopped at the very last minute.24 Though it did very little to dampen his zeal, Benson was fully aware that his association with the Birchers was highly unpopular among his fellow apostles. The most passionate critic was Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency. In addition to sharing the general concern that Benson’s political activism was distracting him from his apostolic duties while breeding divisions within the church, the more liberal Brown also regarded the Birch Society as a dangerous counterfeit. No different from its avowed communist enemy, he charged in a 1963 letter, Birchism “is the opposite of our Constitutional government” and “does not reflect the principles of the gospel nor the brotherhood of the Holy Priesthood.”25 In early 1963, Brown and other Mormon leaders convinced McKay to authorize the church’s first public statement regarding its relationship to the society. While Birch supporters like Benson later insisted that the statement merely clarified the absence of a formal relationship between the church and the Birchers, a full reading of the text leaves no doubt that the First Presidency had in fact, at least on this one occasion, explicitly criticized the society’s methods. “No one should seek or pretend to have our approval of their adherence to any extremist ideologies,” the statement concluded. “We denounce communism as being anti-Christian, antiAmerican, and the enemy of freedom, but we think they who pretend to fight it by 24 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 306-310. The First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Wilson J. Morley, Dec. 12, 1963. Prince Papers, Box 41, Folder 13. 25 260 casting aspersions on our elected officers or other fellow citizens do the anticommunist cause a great disservice.”26 Yet just when the First Presidency appeared to have unequivocally defined their position toward the society, McKay authorized his personal secretary and staunch Birch supporter, Clare Middlemiss, to draft a uniform response to church members who worried that their status as Birchers might jeopardize their standing in Zion. The Middlemiss letter backtracked somewhat from the earlier statement by saying, “The Church is not opposing The John Birch Society or any other organization of like nature.”27 As author Gregory Prince notes, “Within a month of the [original] statement, therefore, both sides had an authoritative source to quote in favor of their own position.”28 Three years later McKay issued a new statement that further convinced Benson and other Birch supporters that the Mormon prophet was fully on their side. The statement differed from the previous two by not mentioning the Birch Society by name. However, in language reminiscent of much of the society’s literature, McKay admonished the Mormon people to “study Constitutional principles and awaken a sleeping and apathetic people to the alarming conditions that are rapidly advancing about us. We wish all of our citizens throughout the land were participating in some type of organized self-education in order that they could better appreciate what is happening.”29 Although he did not explicitly endorse or even defend the society, neither did McKay see fit to echo the 26 “Church Sets Policy on Birch Society,” Deseret News, Jan. 3, 1963. Clare Middlemiss to Nancy Smith Lowe, Feb. 15, 1963. Prince Papers, Box 41, Folder 13. 28 Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 292. 29 David O. McKay, Apr. 1966, Conference Reports, 109. 27 261 anti-Birch language from the 1963 statement. Instead, his words appeared to tacitly encourage church members to take part in the organization. McKay’s dithering partly resulted from the fact that even as many of his most trusted associates and family members warned him of the dangers of allowing the church to become a pro-Birch platform, the Mormon prophet was himself so staunchly anticommunist that he hesitated to take any action that might curtail what he saw as Benson’s righteous efforts to save the Constitution. At the same time, McKay’s advancing age made the already conciliatory church president even more pliable, creating a kind of ideological vacuum at the top that Benson and Brown in particular sought to fill.30 Far from being a solitary prophet of right-wing Mormon thought in the 1960s, Benson was instead the de facto leader of a small but prolific group of LDS authors, professors, and church leaders who generally shared the apostle’s political worldview. While their writings were far from monolithic, they all accepted the axiom that modern liberalism posed an existential threat to the very same free agency that God had gifted his spirit children during their pre-earth life, and for which, Mormon scripture taught, all mortal beings had once fought in the great War in Heaven.31 30 For more detailed accounts of the controversy in the LDS hierarchy surrounding Benson and the John Birch Society, see Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 286-322; and D. Michael Quinn, “Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 1-87. 31 In addition to Benson, this outspoken group included Cleon Skousen, Richard Vetterli, Jerome Horowitz, Hyrum Andrus, Glenn Pearson, David Yarn, Ernest Wilkinson, H. Verlan Andersen, and Jerreld Newquist, among several others. For a small but revealing sample of their work, see Jerome Horowitz, The Elders of Israel and the Constitution (Salt Lake City: Parliament Publishers, 1970); Jerreld L. Newquist, comp., Prophets, Principles, and National Survival (Jerreld L. Newquist, 1964); W. Cleon Skousen, The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing 262 Right-wing Mormons of a Bensonian frame of mind regularly conflated liberalism with “the plan proposed by Lucifer and his hosts in the war in heaven.”32 Like Satan and his minions, they charged, modern liberals could not fathom the idea of granting ordinary men and women untrammeled freedom. “The essence of the collectivist philosophy is that the majority of the people are not intelligent enough to do voluntarily what the collectivists feel should be done,” LDS author Jerreld Newquist wrote in 1964. “To remedy this, the collectivists (who feel they are the intelligent ones) seek for the power to force the rest of mankind to follow their socalled ‘enlightened’ programs.” As an updated and possibly more deceptive version of Satan’s original compulsory plan, Newquist and others argued, modern liberalism brandished such up-to-date weapons as taxation, antidiscrimination laws, and ambitious welfare programs, all in the name of attaining a utopian heaven-on-earth. Even if its stated ends were commendable (a proposition that Mormon conservatives rarely believed), modern liberalism’s inherent faith in the power of the state to produce a righteous citizenry contradicted God’s plan which, Newquist observed, “does not compel compliance…even though God knows that some of His children will freely choose the path that leads to misery and Hell.”33 Despite their repeated calls for untrammeled freedom over and above the powers of the state, right-wing Mormons were neither anarchists nor, for the most Company, 1963); Richard Vetterli, Mormonism, Americanism, and Politics (Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Company, 1961); Richard Vetterli, The Constitution by a Thread (Salt Lake City: Paramount Publishers, 1967); Richard Vetterli, comp., The Challenge and the Choice (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Inc., 1969); Hyrum L. Andrus, Liberalism, Conservatism, Mormonism, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Hawkes Publications, 1972); Ernest L. Wilkinson, Ernestly Yours: Selected Addresses of Dr. Ernest L. Wilkinson, eds., Edwin J. Butterworth and David H. Yarn (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1971); and H. Verlan Andersen, Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen (Provo: Press Publishing Company, 1967). 32 Andrus, Liberalism, Conservatism, Mormonism, 70. 33 Newquist, Prophets, Principles, and National Survival, xiii. 263 part, libertarians. Conspicuously absent from their writings is any opposition to the idea of using government to uphold and even promote a religious-based moral landscape. For the most part, right-wing Mormons of Benson’s ilk would have agreed with earlier LDS apostle Joseph Merrill’s caveat that even though “free agency is a priceless, God-given right to every child born in mortality, it does not include the right to mar, hurt, or destroy the well-being of our fellow men.”34 During the 1960s and early 1970s, Mormons on the far right almost never opposed the idea of harnessing the powers of the state to discourage people from indulging in individual and collective vice. Instead, they consumed far more ink decrying what they saw as liberalism’s hijacking of the state to force people to help the poor, reduce inequality, and alleviate social injustice. It was one thing for government to prohibit individual and collective acts of wickedness, their writings implied. It was quite another for the state to imitate Satan’s premortal plan by forcing people to behave righteously.35 While Hugh B. Brown sought to check Ezra Taft Benson and the spread of right-wing views from his position in the church hierarchy, among lay Mormons a growing number of academics and concerned church members emerged to challenge the right’s assumption that Mormonism and conservatism were somehow intertwined. Of all the conservative dogmas these new critics began to question, perhaps none was more widely accepted among the general membership of the 34 Joseph F. Merrill, April 1951, Conference Reports, 53. For this tendency, see Glenn L. Pearson, “To Help a Neighbor,” in Vetterli, The Challenge and the Choice, 75-80; William E. Fort, Jr., “Freedom and Property,” in Ibid., 81-84; and Ernest L. Wilkinson, “The Changing Nature of American Government From a Constitutional Republic to a Welfare State,” in Wilkinson, Ernestly Yours, 30-55. 35 264 church than the assumption that God’s gift of free agency was essentially synonymous with freedom itself. In a 1966 article in Dialogue entitled “Free Agency and Freedom—Some Misconceptions,” Mormon economist Garth Mangum argued that free agency, “a fundamental theological principle of the Mormon religion,” and freedom, “a basic goal of the American political system…are not the same thing, and Mormons damage both principles through a tendency to confuse them.” Mangum defined agency as the freedom to choose between good and evil and then reap the consequences. Not since mankind’s pre-earth life when Satan and his minions unsuccessfully “sought to destroy the agency of man,” he assured his readers, has this divine gift ever faced a truly existential threat. Ever since losing the War in Heaven, Magnum insisted, Satan’s power has been limited to tempting individuals to misuse their agency. Mangum’s joyous conclusion was that “the War in Heaven was definitive.” No power on the earth—be it communism, socialism, labor unions, or the welfare state—could rob mankind of this divine gift, his article implied. Among the dangers of conflating free agency with freedom, he warned, was that it risked shifting “the responsibility of moral choice” from an internal battle within each individual soul, into an outward battle against convenient scapegoats.36 Bolstering Mangum’s thesis on the invulnerability of free agency was Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley’s 1967 work, Since Cumorah: The Book of Mormon in the Modern World. According to Nibley one of the recurring themes in Mormonism’s founding text is the pervasiveness of both righteousness and wickedness in all 36 Garth L. Mangum, “Free Agency and Freedom—Some Misconceptions,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 4 (Winter 1966): 43-49. 265 societies, including among God’s chosen people. Challenging the tendency of many of its critics to reduce the Book of Mormon to a simplistic narrative of good guys (Nephites) versus bad guys (Lamanites), Nibley contended that good people and bad people are in fact constantly popping up on both sides and just as frequently turning from righteousness to wickedness, or vice versa, with remarkable speed. Righteousness and wickedness in the Book of Mormon are not the characteristics of groups but of specific individuals, he argued. For Nibley this was clear evidence that regardless of one’s external circumstances, free agency “belongs to everybody” and is never truly at risk. “This free agency was given to us in the pre-existence as a basic principle of the plan of life,” he wrote in a passage echoing Mangum. “No mortal can give it to another or take it away from another.”37 In addition to challenging the conservative axiom that certain types of government posed a danger to God’s gift of free agency, critics of the Mormon right also viewed its obsession with government in general and communism in particular as dangerously narrow-minded. Government was far from the only entity in the modern world that threatened freedom, they argued. “Arbitrary government is a danger never to be ignored,” Mangum admitted, “but it appears well down any realistic list of restraints upon choice in our country in our day.”38 In his 1970 book, Mormonism, Capitalism, Communism, church member and self-described foe of both left and right-wing extremism Arza C. Evans pointed out that “Any discussion of freedom must consider (1) freedom from what? and (2) freedom for whom?” Even in the absence of an oppressive political system, he argued, other concentrations of 37 38 Nibley, Since Cumorah, 385. Mangum, “Free Agency and Freedom,” 46. 266 power, if left unchecked, will lead inevitably to an unequal distribution of freedom. To illustrate this point, he asked his readers to consider whether our victory over the communists in Vietnam would actually liberate “the common peasant from domination and exploitation by his landlord or from hunger, poverty, ignorance, disease, fear, and hatred?”39 According to Evans far more Americans suffered from a lack of economic freedom than from a lack of political freedom. Without economic freedom, which, for Evans, meant little more than simply having money, it was nearly impossible to enjoy such additional freedoms as that of mobility, access to quality education, free time, as well as the freedom not to get sick.40 Somewhat ironically, the critics of the self-proclaimed freedom warriors actually possessed a much longer list of forces and entities capable of undermining freedom. LDS critics of the modern right did not deny government’s potential to impinge on all types of freedom. Yet government often posed the greatest danger to freedom not by doing too much, they argued, but by doing too little. As Evans pointed out, the Latter-day Saints in the 1830s and 1840s had railed against the U.S. government because it had failed to protect them from either mob violence or the state of Missouri.41 Since “free institutions and civil liberties are…in constant danger,” Nibley argued, the most righteous governments in the Book of Mormon passed laws to ensure liberty and equality while protecting their people from any form of persecution. The only critics of these laws, he observed, were those who complained that supposedly “artificial barriers erected by law to protect the rights 39 Arza C. Evans, Mormonism, Capitalism, Communism (Arza C. Evans, 1970), 16. Ibid., 22-24. 41 Ibid., 20-21. 40 267 of unpopular and weak minorities” were actually conspiracies designed to rob the majority of their free agency.42 In the largely unacknowledged debate over the political implications of free agency involving a small number of Latter-day Saint leaders, academics, and lay members over the course of the 1960s, those who favored a more positive role for government—including Mangum, Nibley, and Evans—indirectly accused right-wing thought of discouraging American citizens from accessing “a force which, in a free nation, is available to do the will of the people, and which can be used to expand as well as limit our freedoms.”43 The 1960s and early 1970s were difficult years for Mormon conservatives. Alongside having to watch Ezra Taft Benson endure far more criticism than general authorities typically faced, church members on the right were also endlessly shocked at the unwillingness of so many of their fellow Latter-day Saints to join them in the so-called freedom battle. The well known travails of the broader conservative movement compounded their frustrations. Like other conservatives, right-wing Mormons were thrilled when Barry Goldwater—thanks in large measure to support from members of the John Birch Society—captured the 1964 Republican presidential nomination.44 In the general election, however, Goldwater suffered one of the most crushing defeats in American political history, convincing many a pundit, in the words of historian Robert Goldberg, that “the Goldwater movement [was] an aberration now dead.”45 For the next four years, conservatives looked with horror at the continued expansion of the welfare state under LBJ’s Great Society as 42 Nibley, Since Cumorah, 388-389. Mangum, “Free Agency and Freedom,” 49. 44 Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism, 111. 45 Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven: Yale University Press: 1995), 234. 43 268 well as the administration’s inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to defeat a ragtag army of communist peasants in Vietnam. The rupture in the Democratic ranks over Vietnam paved the way for Nixon’s triumphs in 1968 and 1972. But while Nixon proved remarkably adept at appropriating conservative rhetoric and tapping into conservative grievances for political purposes, his actions in the White House confirmed many conservatives’ suspicions that he had never truly aligned with them ideologically. Then came Watergate.46 At the same time that Nixon was proving a disappointment to many conservatives, Ezra Taft Benson’s political activism was undergoing a sharp decline. Benson lost his most important ally in the church hierarchy when David O. McKay passed away in early 1970. McKay’s immediate successors as church president— Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee—had long been vocal critics of Benson’s controversial activities. This was not because they shared Hugh B. Brown’s more liberal worldview. Instead, they saw Benson’s activism as a source of unnecessary discord. In one of his first general conference addresses after succeeding Smith as church president, Lee urged the Saints not to align with outside organizations “which, no matter how sincere,…have set brothers against brothers in the Church and thus weakened the unity of the greatest weapon the Lord has already provided against these evils.”47 More importantly, Lee and Smith viewed outside organizations as essentially futile in the war against Satan. In a 1966 talk that was clearly directed at Benson, Lee insisted: “you don’t teach people to avoid 46 47 Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 77-103. Harold B. Lee, Oct. 1972, Conference Reports, 64. 269 Communism by telling them all about Communism.”48 In his mind the nation and world would only improve as more people converted to the gospel and found refuge in Zion. Even as Benson acquiesced to his priesthood superiors by softening his rhetoric and suspending his public ties to the Birchers, the conservative ideas he and other right-wing Mormons had promulgated in the 1960s continued to win converts throughout the church. At the national level, meanwhile, even Goldwater’s humiliating defeat and Nixon’s forced resignation could not consign the conservative movement to the dustbin of history. In order to resonate with a wider audience, however, conservatism needed to be shorn of its more extreme, conspiratorial elements. If conservatives truly wished to move from the margins to the mainstream, they would need more charismatic, likeable conduits for their ideas than the gloomy Benson or the dour Goldwater. They needed leaders who could project optimism instead of despair, who saw America moving forward rather than plunging toward apostasy. The Troubling War: Mormon Responses to Vietnam No single issue in this period more fully exposed the divisions between Mormons on the right, in the center, on the left, and those championing a kind of apolitical Zion nationalism, than America’s War in Vietnam. In part, this was simply a reflection of the divisive and controversial nature of the war itself. If Americans in general argued amongst themselves over this conflict, it should hardly come as a 48 Harold B. Lee, Apr. 1966, Conference Reports, 67. 270 surprise to find that the Mormons did so as well. Moreover, individual Latter-day Saints frequently took up positions that were almost identical to those of other Americans who happened to align with them ideologically. To be sure, the antiwar movement that became such a prominent fixture on university campuses across the nation was barely visible at the church-owned BYU.49 Nor did many Latter-day Saints seek to escape the traumas of this tumultuous period by experimenting with LSD or joining a hippie commune. Despite these differences, however, Mormons generally shared with their fellow Americans the sense that there was something deeply troubling about America’s latest military venture. Even many who publicly supported the war could not help but see in it evidence that their beloved nation was moving in the wrong direction. The divisions in the Mormon community over Vietnam also stemmed from the relative absence of a clear position on the war from the church hierarchy. In contrast to either World War I or World War II, the Vietnam War mostly flew under the radar at the church’s biannual general conferences. On the rare occasions that church leaders did bring up Vietnam, they did so not to address the question of the war’s rightness or wrongness, but to encourage Mormons in the military to stay morally clean, or to share the gospel with their fellow soldiers, or other such ancillary topics. Not until 1969 did the First Presidency issue its first official statement on the war. Rather than signal any desire on the part of the First Presidency to wade into the contentious debate surrounding the conflict, the 49 Tracey Smith, “Agitators in the Land of Zion: The Anti-Vietnam War Movements at Brigham Young University, University of Utah, and Utah State University” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1995), 13-48. 271 statement seemed more intent on avoiding controversy while reiterating the church’s unalloyed confidence in America’s elected officials. The First Presidency subtly acknowledged the widespread criticism of the war by referring to the present conflict as “regrettable,” but they refused either to explicitly criticize the government’s original decision to intervene in Vietnam or call for an immediate withdrawal of American forces. On the other hand, the statement was utterly devoid of any bellicose calls to achieve peace through victory.50 Both the timing as well as the substance of the 1969 First Presidency statement encapsulated the hierarchy’s relatively muted and then indecisive stance on Vietnam. Even as the rising body count, the lack of candor from the American government, and reports of U.S. atrocities made the war more unpopular at home, Mormon leaders were hesitant to say anything in public that might be construed as either disloyal or in any way sympathetic to the controversial antiwar movement. At the same time, their growing doubts as to the wisdom and even morality of this conflict, coupled with their suspicions that the issues surrounding the war were, in the words of apostle Gordon B. Hinckley, “complex almost beyond comprehension,” discouraged most church leaders from publicly favoring the war.51 Sensing the disadvantages of adopting a strong position on either side, most general authorities preferred either to remain silent, or to seek refuge behind the church’s numerous pledges in the past to remain politically neutral. That the hierarchy never spoke as one united voice either for or against the war made it easier for the chief spokesmen 50 51 “First Presidency Statement,” Deseret News, May 24, 1969. Gordon B. Hinckley, Apr. 1968, Conference Reports, 24. As usual, Ezra Taft Benson was the lone exception to this rule. However, his reticence to endorse Vietnam at general conference is just one indication that he too had reservations regarding this conflict. 272 of the four major strands of Mormon political thought in this period—several of whom belonged to the hierarchy—to characterize their respective positions as that most authentically Mormon. On the surface, at least, the position of LDS conservatives seemed the most straightforward of all Mormon responses. Whatever their complaints about the internal apostasy from freedom taking place inside the nation, Mormons on the right were still generally convinced that America had a divine responsibility to promote freedom around the world. In a 1968 article for the church-owned Instructor, church member and Air Force Major Allen C. Rozsa defended American involvement partly in altruistic if somewhat paternalistic language. “I was in Vietnam to guarantee to the little rice farmer…that no foreign power would force upon him a government he did not want.” Yet Rozsa’s defense of the war was also rooted in national selfinterest. “I was there to fight Communism so that we, in our great country, hopefully would never have to fight such battles on our own soil.”52 In hindsight, the idea that North Vietnam and its Viet Cong ally constituted what BYU president Ernest Wilkinson called “an aggression which could eventually spread to our own shores,” is nothing short of hysterical.53 Yet much like the government officials who orchestrated American escalation after 1964, Mormon defenders of the war saw monolithic communism, not North Vietnam, as the primary enemy.54 Castro’s recent takeover of Cuba was seen as ample proof of communism’s potential to reach American soil. The association in the Mormon mind between communism and 52 Allen C. Rozsa, “Conflict With a Purpose,” The Instructor 103, no. 3 (March 1968): 101. Ernest L. Wilkinson, “The Vietnam War,” in Wilkinson, Ernestly Yours, 75. 54 Brian VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 8-11. 53 273 Satan’s premortal plan of compulsion only intensified this urgency to defeat communism in Vietnam before it spread. “I was there to continue the fight against Satan and his forces,” Rozsa concluded, “the fight which began before we came to this earth.”55 But if Mormons on the right were universally opposed, at least in principle, to the prospect of peaceful co-existence with the communist world, their writings on Vietnam sometimes exposed a contradictory impulse in both Mormon and American conservatism that stretched clear back to J. Reuben Clark’s diatribes against the League of Nations. Ironically, in the same book in which he called for a massive escalation of military power in Southeast Asia, Ezra Taft Benson frankly admitted that “we have no business being there in the first place.” In his footnote to this line, he quoted former President Benjamin Harrison who declared: “We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.”56 As Benson went on to explain in the same work, his ideal foreign policy was premised on the maxim that “The proper function of government must be limited to a defensive role.” In addition to tempting American leaders to overstep their constitutional authority, he warned, overseas ventures also frequently resulted in the formation of international alliances that risked eroding America’s precious sovereignty.57 In his landmark book on the emergence after World War II of a selfconscious, politically-driven movement of conservative intellectuals, historian George Nash argues that anticommunism coupled with the unprecedented 55 Rozsa, “Conflict With a Purpose,” 75. Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 185. 57 Ibid., 150-153. 56 274 exigencies of the Cold War persuaded the key theorists of the new American right to abandon the America-first nationalism that had been such a key pillar of conservative thought after World War I and during the 1930s, and to champion instead an interventionist foreign policy that even accepted the inevitability of a new American empire. That “Global anti-communism had triumphed over ‘isolationism’” among members of the conservative intelligentsia was less remarkable to Nash than the fact that this had occurred so swiftly and universally, without causing a “cataclysmic fissure.”58 Benson’s transparent uneasiness over American involvement in Vietnam suggests that even though they had lost favor among the majority of conservative intellectuals, isolationism and nationalism continued to appeal to at least a few Americans on the right, even resonating with such militant anticommunists as the controversial Mormon apostle. However, like other right-wing Americans in the 1960s who would have preferred a nationalist rather than an internationalist foreign policy, Benson’s instinctual isolationism ended up taking a backseat to his shock and frustration at his government’s inability to defeat such an obviously inferior enemy. For Birch founder Robert Welch, who, like Benson, was instinctively isolationist, the only plausible explanation for the present quagmire was that the Johnson administration actually had “no desire to win this war or to end it, but only to make it…a more overwhelming obsession in the minds of the American people.”59 “Why not let our men win in Vietnam? Why handcuff them?” Benson frustratingly asked. “Honest and competent military men have stated that we could win the war 58 59 Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, 186-194. “Welch Says U.S. Is Not Trying To Win or End War in Vietnam,” New York Times, Mar. 11, 1967. 275 in six weeks or less.”60 The only limitation he envisioned for the U.S. military was a strict rule against using nuclear weapons.61 Like Benson, BYU President Ernest Wilkinson publicly endorsed “everything short of atomic warfare to accomplish our ends.”62 Clearly, the unapologetic pacifism that J. Reuben Clark had once championed no longer resonated with right-wing Mormons during the Vietnam era, even if his well known isolationism remained latent. At the opposite pole stood a small but increasingly outspoken assortment of Latter-day Saint critics of the War in Vietnam. Like their brethren on the right, they were willing to test the boundaries of Mormon patriotism by explicitly casting judgment on the nation’s political and military establishment, although they did so for entirely different reasons, of course. Like many spokesmen for the New Left, moreover, some even came to the conclusion that the American military, in the words of Eugene England, “is the chief danger to American freedoms and moral values—and perhaps those of the world.”63 That being said, Mormon critics of Vietnam were not content merely to echo the rhetoric of the secular left. England’s warning that “The Constitution may already be hanging by a thread” is just one example of their preference for decidedly Mormon language in condemning their beloved nation for its actions in Southeast Asia.64 On a broader level, one of their most important aims was to demonstrate, especially in the absence of a definitive statement from the hierarchy, that their objections to the war represented the only 60 Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 339. Ibid., 185. 62 Wilkinson, Ernestly Yours, 80. 63 England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam.” 71. 64 Ibid., 85. 61 276 defensible position for Latter-day Saints in light of Mormon scripture, statements from past and current LDS leaders, and the need for America to remain a righteous republic in order to maintain God’s favor. Few resources were put to better use to promote their antiwar position than the strongly pacifist strain running through Mormonism’s founding text. In a 1971 essay urging Latter-day Saints not to condemn young men in the church who had become conscientious objectors, church member Robert Keeler reminded his readers of the groups and individuals in the Book of Mormon who “refused to participate in war, even at the peril of their own lives.” The most well known of these Book of Mormon conscientious objectors were the Anti-Lehi-Nephites, a group of converted Lamanites who, as an outward token of their desire to forsake their murderous past, had made a covenant with God to never again take up arms. Over one thousand of them were mowed down in battle before their enemies, who had become so stricken with guilt, “threw down their weapons” and refused to “take them up again.” Rather than mock these converted Lamanites for their naiveté or chastise them for their lack of patriotism, Keeler points out, later Book of Mormon prophets held them up “as an example of a righteous people.”65 For Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, meanwhile, the Book of Mormon constituted a clear repudiation of the far right’s perspective on Vietnam in particular and monolithic communism in general. Although he rarely made direct references to current events, the parallels Nibley drew between ancient Nephite and modern 65 Robert B. Keeler, “A Plea For Tolerance,” in Gordon C. Thomasson, comp., War, Conscription, Conscience and Mormonism (Santa Barbara: Mormon Heritage, 1971), 12-13. Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 559-560. 277 American society were obvious to perceptive Latter-day Saint readers in the late 1960s. As fellow scholar Louis Midgley noted in a favorable review of his 1967 work, Since Cumorah, Nibley had “removed the Book of Mormon from the arsenal of weapons available to the conservatively oriented right wing.”66 Nibley reminded his readers that the Nephites, much like modern Americans, also “lived in a polarized world,…Vastly outnumbered and usually surrounded by people whose way of life and whose ideology were totally alien to their own.” Yet one of the most important themes running through the Book of Mormon narrative, he argues, is that of “coexistence.” Book of Mormon prophets made it abundantly clear that however wicked and depraved the Lamanites were, they were not to be destroyed. God wanted the bloodthirsty Lamanites constantly “breathing down [the Nephites’] necks” in order to remind the latter of their constant dependence on God. Every time the Nephites embraced a military solution to permanently end the “Lamanite problem,” he points out, God withdrew his protection and their offensive campaigns backfired.67 What the Nephites consistently failed to understand was that the Lamanites “were not the Nephite problem,” he writes. “They were merely there to remind the Nephites of their real problem, which was to walk uprightly before the Lord.” Lamanite aggression only posed a threat to Nephite society when its people succumbed to wickedness.68 Mormons who defended Vietnam on scriptural grounds frequently cited the example of Captain Moroni, the righteous prophet-general who 66 Louis C. Midgley, “The Secular Relevance of the Gospel,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4, no. 4 (Winter 1969): 79. 67 Nibley, Since Cumorah, 375-376. 68 Ibid., 376-377. 278 led his people to victory over the Lamanites in order to defend, as he put it, “our God, our religion and freedom, and our peace, our wives and our children.”69 However, Book of Mormon readers tended to overlook the fact that “the heroic resistance of the Nephites,” Nibley argues, had only been necessary because their earlier sins and internal squabbling had left them vulnerable to Lamanite attack.70 Of course, Mormons on the right had no illusions that the United States was some pure and undefiled republic engaged in a simple war of good versus evil. But like Captain Moroni, they insisted, the United States had a moral obligation to end the war as quickly and decisively as possible. According to Nibley, however, Captain Moroni was actually the perfect model of righteous forbearance, for “time and again [he] resolutely refused to punish the Lamanites when he was in a position to do so.” In the Book of Mormon, Nibley insisted time and again, lasting peace is never achieved through violence. The Nephites’ cold war only thawed when they “were truly righteous.”71 The Book of Mormon may have provided ammunition to those Mormons who chose to criticize, whether directly or indirectly, America’s Cold War foreign policy, but what were they to make of the lack of outrage from church headquarters? For some church members on the left, the hierarchy’s refusal to publicly condemn the war or address other national problems was a source of deep frustration.72 69 Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 440. Luke Miller, “In This World but Not of It: Conflicting Vietnam War Perspectives Within the Mormon Hierarchy,” The Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 1 (January 2017): 161-162. 70 Nibley, Since Cumorah, 384. 71 Ibid., 377. 72 See H. Grant Ivins to Lowry and Florence Nelson, Jan. 23, 1974. The Lowry Nelson Papers, Box 6, Folder 2, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. Of church President 279 However, other Mormon liberals chose to view their leaders’ reticence as evidence of their respect for their people’s free agency. “L.D.S. teachings suggest that the Gospel resources for decisions about social and political issues will tend to be general rather than specific,” Eugene England argued in his 1967 polemic against Vietnam. As he correctly observed: “We do not find pronouncements by President McKay on the war in Vietnam that do our thinking and make our decisions for us.” England chose to view McKay’s silence not as an obstacle but as a challenge. “In order that we as free agents can learn to mature in the use of our ability to make judgments and decisions,” he reasoned while paraphrasing Joseph Smith, “the Lord teaches us correct principles…and lets us govern ourselves.”73 Of course, implicit in England’s rather advantageous interpretation of his leaders’ silence was the assumption that general gospel principles, if translated correctly, could arrive at no other conclusion than to vehemently oppose the War in Vietnam. While the efforts of antiwar Mormons to clothe their message in gospel garb may have made it more persuasive to some Latter-day Saints, their strategy also threatened to undercut the activist message they sought to promote. As Mormon critics of the war sometimes noted, there was a vast difference between what they called worldly peace and the true peace that could only come from God. After lamenting that too many Latter-day Saints had “accommodated [themselves] to the business of war,” for example, an unsigned editorial in Dialogue observed: “There is always a difference between the way of the Children of God and the way of the Harold B. Lee, Ivins complained: “Lee certainly was no ‘voice in the wilderness’ calling for an end to war, for social justice favoring the poor and the minority groups.” 73 England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam,” 73. 280 world…The peace the world gives is precarious and partial because…it is a ‘peace put in impossible things.’”74 But if this was indeed the case; that is, if even a permanent cease-fire could not bring true peace to the people of Vietnam, what was the point of searching for a diplomatic resolution? The editorial reminded the Saints of their scriptural responsibility to “renounce war and proclaim peace.”75 At the same time, it admitted that such pleas for peace would probably fall on deaf ears.76 Should Mormons renounce war in the hopes of actually making a difference in the real world, or did they merely have a moral responsibility to do so in order to maintain Zion’s integrity? The editorial never clearly answered this question. In seeking to align their antiwar message with the sometimes otherworldly message of the gospel, then, Mormon critics of the Vietnam War could sometimes sound just as fatalistic as such apolitical church leaders as Harold B. Lee or Mark E. Petersen, neither of whom saw any hope for a lasting peace on earth until the Second Coming of Christ.77 Such paradoxes in their rhetoric may provide at least one clue as to why the small number of vocal antiwar Saints failed to convert more church members to their cause. Carving out a middle path between the impatient advocates of escalation and the despondent prophets of peace were the church’s moderate voices. Of all the moderates in the LDS hierarchy, the one who most genuinely sympathized with the growing antiwar sentiment, although not the antiwar movement, was McKay’s first counselor, Hugh B. Brown. In private settings, at least, Brown did not hesitate to 74 “A Christian Peace,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1972): 5. Smith, Doctrine and Covenants, 191. 76 “A Christian Peace,” 5. 77 Miller, “In This World,” 164-166. 75 281 make his opposition to the war abundantly clear. In an unpublished interview with Eugene England, for example, he gave it as his opinion “that all of the General Authorities feel that the war is evil and we ought to be out of it…one of the things that convinces me so conclusively that the war is evil,” he continued, “is the fact that 40% of all our servicemen are addicted to drugs as direct result of their being in that war.”78 His primary focus on the wellbeing of American soldiers and failure to address the plight of the Vietnamese people reveals the limitations of Brown’s opposition. That being said, his general diagnosis of the wrongfulness of the conflict was unequivocal. Nevertheless, Brown thought it unwise to use the church as an antiwar platform. As Benson’s ongoing political activism was making frustratingly clear, no matter how many church members cheered when one of their leaders broached a controversial political issue, a substantial number on the other side were bound to feel alienated. As Brown later wrote in his memoirs: “For the church to take a position on a political issue is a dangerous thing because of the fact that we sustain the two-party system.”79 Given the especially polarizing nature of Vietnam, how could Brown publicize his private doubts without falling into the same error as Benson? Brown also saw the need to follow what he considered a more realistic course. The war may have been deeply immoral, he admitted to England, “but should the President of the Church go down to President Nixon and say, ‘Here, take 78 Hugh B. Brown to Eugene England, Interview, Undated. The Eugene England Papers, Box 136, Folder 13, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 79 Hugh B. Brown, An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, ed. Edwin B. Firmage (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988), 130. 282 those men out of Vietnam,’ he could, but he wouldn’t. And if he did, Nixon wouldn’t listen to him. You have to be sensible and practical.”80 If Brown’s moderation placed him closer to the antiwar camp of Eugene England and Hugh Nibley, the moderation of another LDS leader, apostle Gordon B. Hinckley, leaned more in the direction of Ezra Taft Benson. To be sure, Hinckley was always careful in his commentaries on the war never to give the appearance of an explicit endorsement. “This war, like others,” he stated in his April 1968 conference address, “is fraught with terrible evil and unspeakable tragedy. I minimize none of these.” At the same time, he perceived the possibility “of the Lord plucking some good from the evil designs of the adversary.” What Hinckley called “a sliver thread shining through the dark and bloody tapestry of conflict” was his hope that LDS servicemen would perform missionary work and thereby lay the foundation for the church’s eventual establishment in Vietnam.81 Missionary work in Korea, Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines had all proceeded in the wake of U.S. military expansion, he assured the Saints, resulting in “the sweet fruit of seed once planted in dark years of war.”82 At no point did Hinckley suggest that God had somehow inspired past administrations to intervene in Vietnam in order to pave the way for Zion’s future entry. Instead, he perceived the possibility of God turning one of Satan’s victories into a triumph for good. That being said, his seemingly neutral stance could not help but constitute an implicit defense of the American cause. For as he and his listeners 80 Hugh B. Brown to Eugene England, Interview, Undated, England Papers, Box 136, Folder 13. Gordon B. Hinckley, Apr. 1968, Conference Reports, 21. 82 Ibid., 24. 81 283 surely recognized, the church had no prospects in South Vietnam, at least in the short-term, if the United States failed in its mission to prevent a communist takeover. Of the most common responses to the Vietnam War found in the broader LDS community, the only one missing among members of the Mormon hierarchy was a strong antiwar voice. J. Reuben Clark had been the most outspoken pacifist in the hierarchy since his call to the First Presidency in 1933, but Clark passed away in 1961. Ironically, it was the church’s antiwar liberals who most aggressively sought to appropriate his legacy during the Vietnam conflict, especially by highlighting his fervent opposition to Universal Military Training.83 Despite enjoying such new outlets as Dialogue and such well-respected spokesmen as Hugh Nibley, however, the reach of the church’s antiwar left could still not compete with the influence of the hierarchy. Consequently, the pacifism that Clark had promoted in the 1940s and 1950s was far less visible in the Mormon community during the Vietnam War. Then in the late 1970s and early 1980s, responding to the arms race in general and to the Pentagon’s proposal to place nuclear-armed missiles beneath the deserts of Utah and Nevada in particular, Mormon leaders once again saw fit to resurrect the pacifist language that they had, for the most part, avoided pronouncing during this troubling war. 83 See Thomasson, War, Conscription, Conscience, and Mormonism, 3-4, and England, “The Tragedy of Vietnam,” 88. 284 Civil Rights in Zion and America In 1967 church member John L. Lund published a short book entitled, The Church and the Negro. Although he primarily intended the book for his fellow Latterday Saints, Lund also wished to impart the following message to anyone outside of Zion, white or black, who might stumble upon his work: Whatever accusations they may have heard, he wrote, “Nothing could be further from the truth” than to assert that the “Mormon Church…discriminates against the Negroes in the community.” Like any religious organization, he acknowledged, the Mormon Church contained its share of members who “are guilty of unrighteous discrimination.” According to Lund, however, not only were such racist Mormons in clear violation of their church’s teachings, but more importantly, he implied, their discriminatory outlook toward black people could not possibly have originated in Zion, where it was clearly taught that “no man has the right to treat his neighbor—regardless of race, color, or creed—with any less respect than he would treat Jesus Christ Himself.”84 In what some of his readers may have regarded as a hypocritical turn, Lund then spent the remainder of his book justifying the Mormon Church’s long-standing policy toward its own black members—namely the restriction against AfricanAmerican men being ordained to the church’s lay priesthood, and the rule forbidding African-American men and women from entering Mormon temples to participate in the church’s highest ordinances.85 As Lund recognized, the persistence 84 John Lewis Lund, The Church and the Negro: A Discussion of Mormons, Negroes, and the Priesthood, 4th ed. (John Lewis Lund, 1969), 1-4. 85 On the murky origins of the priesthood and temple bans, see Stephen G. Taggart, Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1970); Lester E. Bush, Jr., “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon 285 of these internal policies at a time when African-Americans throughout the nation were struggling to jettison their status as second-class citizens had prompted many Americans, including some within Zion, to cast the Mormon Church as one of the “dragons of prejudice and discrimination” that the Civil Rights Movement needed to slay.86 From Lund’s perspective, however, those who saw Mormonism as yet another foe of equality had failed to grasp that equality came in many forms. As for political equality, he argued, no differences should exist between whites and blacks. “Mormons are firm in their belief that the Negro is entitled to every right guaranteed by our Constitution,” he wrote. At the same time, he continued, even though God loved all of his children equally, he had not seen fit to bestow upon the members of all racial groups the same role in building up his kingdom.87 The inability or perhaps unwillingness of the church’s critics to appreciate the vast difference between civic inequality, on the one hand, and the God-given racial order that currently prevailed in Zion, on the other, had resulted in the innocent Latter-day Saints being targeted by a movement whose “cause is just,” Lund wrote, but whose “methods…are occasionally questionable.”88 Mormon attitudes toward the Civil Rights Movement frequently followed the same right-center-left trajectory that encompassed the Mormon community’s response to the Vietnam War. In that sense, at least, Mormon reactions to the fight for racial justice were not terribly unique. That being said, Lund’s short work is just Thought 8, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 11-68; Newell G. Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 3-108; and Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 106-214. 86 Lund, The Church and the Negro, 1. 87 Ibid., 4-6. 88 Ibid., 1. 286 one example of how difficult it was for Latter-day Saints to divorce their outlook toward the Civil Rights Movement from their awareness of Mormon race policy. For the policy’s most outspoken critics, both inside and outside of Zion, there was little question that the priesthood and temple bans, along with the racist justifications the Saints had historically offered in their defense, had inculcated a widespread belief in black inferiority throughout the Mormon community. On the other side of the debate, meanwhile, church apologists like Lund increasingly denied any spillover from the ecclesiastical into the public realm, even insisting that the church’s race policy had no impact whatsoever on individual Mormon attitudes toward blacks or the movement for racial justice. The critics were right to recognize a causal relationship between Mormon race policy and individual Mormon views of the Civil Rights Movement. However, this relationship was not nearly as straightforward as they often claimed. In contrast to what the church’s most outspoken critics and defenders believed, the priesthood and temple bans and myriad justifications given in their defense did not result in one monolithic Mormon perspective on civil rights. Instead, Mormon race policy helped contribute to multiple perspectives and public stances ranging from intense fear of the movement for racial equality, to a greater incentive to show the nation that, notwithstanding their church’s peculiar internal regulations, the Saints’ views on race and civil rights were actually quite progressive for their time. For some church members, this even took the form of publicly calling on the LDS hierarchy to end the priesthood and temple bans. 287 One of the earliest and most controversial Mormon responses to the budding Civil Rights Movement came just three months after the Supreme Court unanimously overturned state-imposed racial segregation in public schools in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, when apostle Mark E. Petersen addressed a group of religion professors at Brigham Young University. Presaging Lund and other future defenders of Mormon race policy, Petersen denied the charge of Mormon prejudice against blacks. He also professed his desire for them to receive “the highest kind of education” and to “have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world.” He was quick to add, however, that they should strictly “enjoy these things among themselves.”89 Petersen did not oppose racial integration because he feared the prospect of blacks “sitting down in a café where white people eat” or attending “the same theater as the white people.” After quoting excerpts from a newspaper interview with the black civil rights leader, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who predicted that the stigma in the U.S. surrounding interracial marriage would soon disappear, Petersen accused civil rights activists of pursuing what he considered a far more radical agenda than simply overthrowing state-imposed segregation. “It appears that the negro seeks absorption with the white race,” he warned. “He will not be satisfied until he achieves it by intermarriage. That is his objective and we must face it.”90 Petersen was one of many white Americans in the 1950s whose suspicion of civil rights and negative reaction to the Brown decision derived from a deeply 89 Mark E. Petersen, “Race Problems—As They Affect the Church.” At the Convention of Teachers of Religion on the College Level, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, Aug. 27, 1954, 20. LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, UT. 90 Ibid., 6. 288 rooted fear in America of interracial sex. As historian Richard Kluger shows in his massive study of Brown v. Board, southern state governments in the decades before the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling had consistently asserted that integrating white and black school children would lead inexorably toward race suicide. Like Petersen, southern segregationists accused civil rights activists of seeking to reduce the white race through intermarriage.91 In the same interview from which Petersen had quoted, Powell Jr. called the prospect of miscegenation “the great bugaboo used to scare” people into opposing the movement for racial equality.92 As Petersen made abundantly clear, however, Mormon leaders at this time had a unique reason for opposing interracial marriage. “If I were to marry a negro woman and have children by her,” he reasoned, “my children would all be cursed as to the priesthood.”93 Under long-standing church regulations, any member with even a hint of black ancestry was not entitled to hold the priesthood, and only priesthood holders could serve in leadership positions in the church. As long as Mormon race policy remained unchanged, therefore, church leaders like Petersen had legitimate reasons to admonish their people against interracial marriage, even if the likelihood that such marriages would become commonplace among the Saints any time soon was far-fetched to say the least. Petersen also predicted that by fomenting widespread racial miscegenation throughout the nation, the Civil Rights Movement could seriously endanger the church’s mission, declared since the days of Joseph Smith, to bring the gospel to all the world. “There are 50 million negroes in 91 Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 98, 158, 195, 266. 92 Petersen, “Race Problems,” 3. 93 Ibid., 20. 289 the United States,” Petersen cautioned in this vein. “If they were to achieve complete absorption with the white race, think what that would do…Who could hold [the priesthood], in all America? Think what that would do to the work of the Church!”94 At no point did Petersen suggest that the retention of the priesthood ban might actually constitute a far greater impediment to church growth than the prospect of fifty million blacks intermarrying wholesale with the white race. Given the fact of racial discrimination within Zion, not to mention such a public attack on the Civil Rights Movement from one of the church’s preeminent leaders, it was only a matter of time before the dominant religion was held responsible for Utah’s reputation among African-Americans as a noninclusive state. In a 1963 report on civil rights in Utah, Adam M. Duncan, chairman of the Utah Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a Latterday Saint, sought to uncover the reasons why “The Negro in Utah almost without exception, when questioned, will repeat the old charge that he is worse off here than anywhere outside of the Deep South.” Duncan regretfully acknowledged the Utah Legislature’s unwillingness to thus far enact any meaningful civil rights legislation. Yet neither did the state restrict blacks from voting, accessing integrated public transportation, or attending schools with white children, he pointed out. From a purely legislative standpoint, he argued, “The Negro in Utah is treated about the same…as he is in neighboring states.”95 94 Ibid., 20. Adam M. Duncan, “Civil Rights in Utah: A Concept of Race and an Attitude.” An address by Adam M. Duncan, Chairman, Utah Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, delivered to the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters at Utah State University at Logan, Utah, Nov. 9, 1963, 1. Copy in the Nelson Papers, Box 18, Folder 7. 95 290 Duncan then broached another theory which “has become fashionable of late,” he observed, that the resentment of Utah’s black residents resulted from the LDS Church’s policy of denying them access to the priesthood. Duncan did not find this convincing, however, since “Most Negroes couldn’t care less about who can or cannot hold the Priesthood and only a few hundred Church members are Negroes.”96 Rather than hold the priesthood policy directly responsible, Duncan instead made the more elaborate case that the numerous justifications the Mormons had historically given to both defend and make sense of the ban actually deserved most of the blame for impeding racial progress in the Beehive State. Historically, these justifications had ranged from the idea that black people came from the lineage of Cain, whose murder of his brother, Abel, made his descendants ineligible to hold the priesthood, to the more recent rationale that spirits born into black bodies had done something in their pre-earth life to warrant their inferior status in Zion.97 Whether these and other rationalizations of Mormon race policy actually derived from an accurate reading of LDS scripture was hardly relevant, Duncan implied, since their overall effect had been to encourage the assumption, whether spoken or unspoken, that the black body was a divine curse. This in turn had given rise to a climate not of overt racial oppression like that seen in the Deep South, Duncan observed, but to something “more subtle.” “The average Mormon in Utah is, in practice at least, as kind and sympathetic toward the Negro as any non-Mormon, and perhaps, by and large, more so. But the Mormon, because of the concept of race described hereinabove, finds it immeasurably more difficult to accept the Negro as 96 97 Ibid., 2. Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 150, 154, 156. Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks, 171. 291 an equal.”98 In Duncan’s mind, then, there was no question that internal church policies had crossed over into the public realm and shaped broader attitudes regarding blacks and civil rights, although he perceived this spillover originating from the explanations for the policy rather than from the policy itself. The growing belief that the church was perhaps the main culprit behind the lack of civil rights progress in Utah eventually prompted civil rights organizations to take their fight directly to the Mormon hierarchy. In an effort to persuade church leaders to make a public statement on behalf of civil rights, the Utah NAACP decided in the fall of 1963 to hold a public demonstration at Salt Lake’s Temple Square during one or more sessions of the upcoming October general conference. After learning of the NAACP’s plan, the controversial church member and University of Utah philosophy professor Sterling McMurrin contacted Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency in an effort to arrange some kind of deal. As McMurrin later recalled, the NAACP professed no desire at this point to interfere with the church’s internal policies. Instead, the planners assumed that the church, if effectively pressured, could use its political clout to ensure the passage of civil rights legislation by the state assembly.99 It was yet another reminder that for many Utahns, the involvement of the Mormon Church in politics was only objectionable when it aided someone else’s cause. Brown quickly received the go-ahead from David O. McKay to make a statement in favor of civil rights at the beginning of his conference talk. He called it 98 Duncan, “Civil Rights in Utah,” 6-7. Sterling M. McMurrin, “A Note on the 1963 Civil Rights Statement,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 60-63. Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 69-70. 99 292 “a moral evil for any person or group of persons to deny any human being the right to gainful employment, to full educational opportunity, and to every privilege of citizenship,” and called “upon all men, everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civic equality for all of God’s children.”100 As McMurrin later noted, so pleased were the leaders of the local NAACP that they agreed to cancel their demonstration.101 However, the fact that this statement, like most Mormon leaders during the 1960s, never actually endorsed the Civil Rights Movement—its leadership, ideology, and strategy of nonviolent resistance—may have lent additional justification to those leaders and members who, despite their professed support for civil rights in the abstract, continued to decry the movement as a dangerous threat to both Zion and the United States. Within the Mormon community, the most prominent critic of the Civil Rights Movement was Ezra Taft Benson. Unlike Mark E. Peterson, Benson did not oppose the movement out of fear that it would encourage interracial sex and thereby disqualify more of God’s children from holding the priesthood. Instead, he viewed the fight for racial justice in the same way that he viewed most political developments: as simply one more facet in the ongoing battle between free agency and communist enslavement. Benson was not alone in suspecting the Civil Rights Movement of camouflaging a secret communist agenda. Since 1962, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been investigating the movement and specifically its chief spokesman, Martin Luther King Jr., in an effort to uncover any possible links to the American Communist Party. Even after President Lyndon Johnson had succeeded in 100 101 Hugh B. Brown, Oct. 1963, Conference Reports, 91. McMurrin, “A Note on the 1963 Civil Rights Statement,” 63. 293 1965 in convincing Hoover to go after the KKK, the feared head of the FBI remained convinced, despite a complete lack of evidence, that King and other leading civil rights activists had communist ties.102 In the fall of 1967, at a time when white support for the Civil Rights Movement had plummeted because of urban riots and the rise of black nationalism, Benson told his fellow Latter-day Saints during a session of general conference that communists had invented the movement as part of their conspiracy to destroy the Constitution and convert America into a totalitarian state. One possibility, he speculated, was that communists would use the cry of racial justice as a pretext “for revolution in America just as agrarian reform was used by the Communists to take over China and Cuba.” Benson warned the Saints that after fomenting hatred between whites and blacks, civil rights cadres might launch a full-scale guerrilla operation involving “sabotage of water supplies, power grids, main railroad and highway arteries, communication centers, and government buildings.” With this scenario threatening to contradict his long-standing thesis that communism could only succeed in America through creeping socialism, however, Benson suddenly abandoned this train of thought and assured his listeners that “If Communism comes to America, it will probably not happen quite like that.” The more likely possibility, he speculated, was that communists in the media and in government would cite the poor race relations in America as an excuse for increasing state power. “Thus the essential economic and political structure of Communism can be built entirely ‘legally’ and in apparent response to the wishes of 102 David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 84-85, 97-98. 294 the people,” he concluded. It is perhaps telling that by 1967 not even Benson wished to be accused of opposing civil rights in principle, or worse, of holding racist views. “There is nothing wrong with civil rights,” he told the Saints, nor should we “place the blame upon the Negroes…The planning, direction, and leadership come from the Communists, and most of those are white men.” By depicting black civil rights activists as little more than dupes in the hands of white communists, however, Benson effectively refused to accept the reality of autonomous black mobilization.103 If the Utah NAACP in 1963 had elected to prioritize the church’s public support for civil rights legislation at the expense of protesting Mormon race policy, by the late 1960s the successes of the Civil Rights Movement had emboldened more groups and individuals, including some within Zion, to directly target the priesthood and temple bans. One of the most well known challenges came from within. In the summer of 1967, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall wrote an open letter to Dialogue in which he pled with the leaders of his church to finally abandon what he considered a barbaric relic of the nineteenth century. Udall sought to downplay the uniqueness of his letter by warning his readers that with “The whole future of the human race…now keyed to equality,” Mormonism’s negro policy would only garner more and more attention, most of it negative. Since most Americans were now committed to the ideal of universal racial equality, he argued, church leaders could no longer deflect attention away from the policy with “the rationalization that we support the Constitution, believe that all men are brothers, and favor equal rights for all citizens.” Lest Udall give the impression that he was 103 Ezra Taft Benson, Oct. 1967, Conference Reports, 34-39. 295 simply caving in to outside pressure, his letter made it clear that conforming to national trends was not an admirable reason for changing church policy. Nor did his case for lifting the priesthood ban rest on a sustained effort to point out all the glaring contradictions between the current racial order in Zion and the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement, or, like Duncan’s earlier speech, hinge on the theory that traditional Mormon justifications for the ban had engendered a climate of subtle racial oppression, although he undoubtedly agreed that they did. Instead, Udall contended that the policy betrayed Mormonism’s own deep commitment to the universal brotherhood of man, and hence, that “the very character of Mormonism is being distorted and crippled by adherence to a belief and practice that denies the oneness of mankind.” Udall thus implied that even if the Civil Rights Movement did not currently exist, Mormonism’s own internal doctrines and values still provided sufficient grounds, not to mention the urgency, to overturn the priesthood policy.104 While this may have been true, it is difficult to imagine Udall and other critics speaking out in a context that was not supportive of racial equality. Whether it came from insiders like Udall or, especially after 1968, from outside entities like the NAACP or university athletic teams that refused to compete with BYU, the mounting pressure on the church to end its priesthood ban prompted members and leaders alike to reiterate their unwavering support for civil rights 104 Stewart L. Udall, “Letters to the Editors,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 2, no. 2 (Summer 1967): 5-7. 296 while denying the charge of Mormon prejudice toward blacks.105 Contrary to the hopes of those applying pressure, however, their efforts did not lead to an immediate change in church policy. It is even possible that internal and external pressure only strengthened the resolve of church leaders to preserve an unpopular policy as a demonstration of their unwillingness to cave in to worldly demands at the expense of ignoring their God. Mormon apologists increasingly took up the line that this was strictly an internal matter that had nothing to do with the nationwide struggle for black rights. All the while, they frequently pointed to its leaders’ public support for civil rights as evidence that the church was not a racist organization and that its critics should mind their own business. Resentment against outside and inside pressure often came from Latter-day Saints who were far from enthusiastic defenders of the policy, but who nevertheless viewed public pressure as the wrong way to bring about change. Besides the church’s small number of black members, no one in the Mormon community in the 1960s had more reason to oppose the priesthood ban than Republican statesman George Romney. Not only was Romney the three-term governor of Michigan, a state with a substantial black population, but by 1964 he had established himself as the leading advocate of civil rights in the GOP. Indeed, Romney had refused to support Barry Goldwater—his own party’s candidate for president in 1964—primarily because the Arizona senator had voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.106 In 1967 105 On the protests and boycotts against BYU athletics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, see J.B. Haws, The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 47-71. 106 Ibid., 1-2, 42. 297 Romney announced his own candidacy for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.107 As historian J.B. Haws observes: “The irony that a Mormon candidate was the party’s highest-profile pro-civil rights candidate complicates any simple appraisal of the media’s treatment in the 1960s of the LDS Church and race relationships.”108 Somewhat paradoxically, even as Romney’s well known support for civil rights threatened his chances in the Deep South, his well known membership in the Mormon Church threatened to undercut his support among African-Americans and white progressives. Among the many articles that took note of Romney’s potential “negro problem” was a 1963 piece in Time Magazine. Four years before Romney launched his candidacy, the article predicted that “Doubts about the Saints’ stand on Negroes are widespread enough to challenge the presidential chances of Michigan’s Mormon Governor George Romney, although Romney is a strong advocate of Negro civil rights.”109 As Time therefore insinuated, Romney’s membership in a church that denied blacks the opportunity to become priests could potentially overshadow his brave support for civil rights in the eyes of many voters. Nevertheless, at no point did Romney pressure LDS leaders to overturn the policy. Instead, he was more sensitive to the possibility that his campaigns might bring Mormon race policy even further into the spotlight and thereby risk embarrassing the church. Before running for Michigan governor in 1961, for example, Romney met with David O. McKay partly to ensure that the First 107 Ibid., 12. Ibid., 42. 109 “Mormons: The Negro Question,” Time: The Weekly News Magazine, Oct. 18, 1963, 83. 108 298 Presidency had no objections to his upcoming gubernatorial campaign, even though, as McKay noted in his diary, “it is going to focus public attention upon this particular part of the Church’s point of view.”110 Later on, Romney criticized Stewart Udall for his open letter to Dialogue, insisting that Udall’s “method of accomplishing the religious object he seeks cannot serve any useful religious purpose.”111 Given Romney’s political ambitions and his genuine commitment to racial equality, one cannot help but assume that while he may have disagreed with Udall’s approach, he was every bit as hopeful that Mormon race policy would soon go the way of the Dodo. Outsiders and insiders who treated the gains of the Civil Rights Movement as some sort of mandate upon the Mormon Church to alter its internal policies encountered a more vocal critic in the person of Utah State sociologist Armand Mauss. In contrast to Romney, Mauss did not hesitate to publicly cast doubts on the foundations of Mormon race policy. In a 1967 article for Dialogue that partly sought to debunk the traditional justifications for withholding the priesthood from blacks, Mauss observed that “If one finds the Church’s policy on Negroes discomfiting,…the ‘explanations’ for it offered by well-meaning commentators (on all sides) are often even worse.”112 No less than Romney and a growing number of church members, Mauss would have surely welcomed an end to the priesthood ban. As he concluded in his article, the most common justifications for it “are unsupported in the 110 David O. McKay Diaries, Dec. 5, 1961. Copy in the Prince Papers, Box 50, Folder 1. “Udall Tells Mormons: Fix Negro Issue,” Deseret News, May 18, 1967. 112 Armand L. Mauss, “Mormonism and the Negro: Faith, Folklore, and Civil Rights,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 2, no. 4 (Winter 1967): 20. 111 299 scriptures of the Church and should therefore be regarded as speculation, or even folklore.”113 Like Romney, however, Mauss accused Stewart Udall of overlooking the essential Mormon doctrine of prophetic revelation. “Even if Udall is right that the Church’s Negro policy has ‘…no real sanction in essential Mormon thought,’” Mauss wrote, “he has apparently forgotten that the principle of continuous revelation through the prophets is essential in Mormon thought.”114 In other words, the policy may indeed rest on flimsy foundations, but only the prophets have the authority to make it go away.115 His final message to the church’s detractors, whether inside or outside of Zion, was to “get off our backs! The Mormon leadership has publicly condemned racism. There is no evidence of a carry-over of the Mormon doctrine on the Negro into secular life; in fact, there is evidence to the contrary.”116 As Mauss’s frustrations indicate, the mounting pressure on the church to abandon its negro policy often had the effect of engendering resentment against the Civil Rights Movement among Latter-day Saints who were otherwise supportive of civil rights in the abstract, and who, in many cases, found the priesthood and temple bans either confusing or downright appalling. Meanwhile, Mauss warned critics like Udall that their public efforts to bring the LDS hierarchy in line with the rest of America were more likely to backfire than to succeed.117 113 Ibid., 28. Ibid., 29. 115 Ibid., 39. 116 Ibid., 38. 117 Ibid., 39. 114 300 Mauss’s warnings proved prescient at the close of 1969, when the First Presidency released an official statement reaffirming their support for both civil rights and the priesthood policy.118 At the insistence of Hugh B. Brown, it opened by reiterating his 1963 pro-civil rights statement declaring that “the Negro…should have his full Constitutional privileges as a member of society,” and that “Each citizen must have equal opportunities and protection under the law with reference to civil rights.” Dispelling any illusions that black members would shortly receive the priesthood or access to temple worship, however, the rest of the statement offered a new defense of the current policy while respectfully asking the church’s detractors to treat this not as a civil rights issue, but as one of religious freedom. Representing a mild form of progress, it made no allusions to the black body as a divine curse as earlier church statements had. It simply concluded that while the church’s reasons for denying blacks the priesthood “are known to God,” they are not “fully known to man.” Repeating an error that church leaders had consistently made since the turn 118 In addition to pleading with the church’s detractors to mind their own business, the 1969 statement also intended to squelch the rumors that the ban was on the verge of being lifted. Such rumors had not grown out of thin air. With McKay incapacitated by poor health, his first counselor Hugh B. Brown had succeeded in convincing several fellow church leaders that a new revelation was not necessary to end the policy. Brown had also intimated to at least one media outlet, and perhaps to others, that the ban’s days were numbered. However, Brown’s plan hit a roadblock in the person of Harold B. Lee, the energetic and influential president of the Quorum of the Twelve. Lee not only refused to go along with Brown’s proposal to lift the ban; the former also took the initiative to draft what soon became the First Presidency statement, despite the fact that Lee himself did not belong to the First Presidency. He and his allies in the Quorum of the Twelve then placed tremendous pressure on Brown to sign the document. The latter eventually did so, although he insisted that Lee add a section reiterating the church’s support for civil rights. The statement thus gave the appearance of a united church hierarchy and glossed over the fact that at least one of its members held the same view of Mormon race policy as Stewart Udall and other Latter-day Saints calling for change. However, the fact that the ailing McKay was in too poor of health to sign the document may have lessened its authority in the eyes of many church members. On the internal and external forces that prompted the release of the 1969 First Presidency statement, see Prince and Wright, David O. McKay, 100-103; Brown, An Abundant Life, 142-143; and Mathew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, eds., The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 2015), 79-81. 301 of the century, the First Presidency once again incorrectly traced the birth of the policy back to Joseph Smith. They then declared in unambiguous language that while “it would be a simple thing to act according to popular will,” only a direct revelation from God to his living prophet could end the practice.119 If Brown’s 1963 civil rights statement had been issued to stave off the threat of NAACP activists, church leaders now hoped to use their public support for civil rights to shore up Mormon race policy. Since they were fully on board with civil rights, the new statement implied, church leaders expected to be left alone when it came to internal church matters. Besides, the statement went on, this was not even a civil rights issue. Non-Mormon blacks who did not accept the church’s claim to hold God’s priesthood, it read, “should have no concern with any aspect of our theology on priesthood so long as that theology does not deny any man his Constitutional privileges.”120 The 1969 statement thus marked the ultimate attempt to insulate Mormon race policy from the ongoing effects of the Civil Rights Movement, even as it cited the church’s support for civil rights as a major justification for such insulation. Not everyone in the church found this a convincing dichotomy. Senator Frank Moss agreed with fellow Latter-day Saint Karen Waldburger that “we Mormons are a bit smug in saying to the Negro that the matter is all within the church and they should not feel offended in any way since they are not members of the church.” Moss sympathized with blacks who, despite rejecting the validity of Mormonism’s truth 119 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Office of the First Presidency, Dec. 15, 1969. The Priesthood Bulletin 6, no. 1 (Feb. 1970): 1-5. 120 Ibid., 2-3. 302 claims, were nevertheless angry that any organization would reduce them to second-class status on the basis of their race alone.121 In a letter to Mormon sociologist Lowry Nelson, former BYU professor Grant Ivins lambasted the claim that civil rights and Mormon race policy were unrelated matters. For Ivins, it was hardly coincidental that a state legislature composed largely of men who had grown up in a church that practiced ecclesiastical segregation had also been so reticent to enact civil rights legislation.122 Although he agreed with Ivins on the inevitable carryover from the religious to the civic realm, Nelson actually regarded this as “incidental” when compared to the “infinitely more important” fact that within Zion, a supposedly holy nation that from its inception was supposed to serve as a light upon a hill, “the Negro is a second-class citizen.” In the case of civil rights, Nelson lamented, it was actually Zion that needed to follow the United States, not the other way around.123 Among other insights, the history of Mormon political thought in the 1960s and early 1970s reveals that even as the Saints continued down the pathway of Americanization, their collective political thought and rhetoric still showed the marks of Mormon distinctiveness. The continued rise of right-wing Mormonism in this period may have coincided with and derived guidance from the broader conservative movement as it embarked on its ambitious campaign to seize control of the Republican Party. Yet in addition to appropriating much of the language of non-Mormon conservatism, right-wing church members also chose to express their 121 Frank E. Moss to Karen Waldburger, Apr. 27, 1970. The Frank E. Moss Papers, Box 328, Folder 23, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 122 H. Grant Ivins to Lowry Nelson, Apr. 12, 1968. Nelson Papers, Box 6, Folder 2. 123 Lowry Nelson to H. Grant Ivins, Apr. 16, 1968. Nelson Papers, Box 6, Folder 2. 303 ideas in a decidedly Mormon vernacular that emphasized such traditional gospel pillars as the inspired Constitution, free agency, and the ever-present threat of American declension. Leaning on their own understanding of Mormonism, meanwhile, critics of the far right insisted that free agency and freedom were not synonymous, and that a wide variety of threats, not merely the unchecked power of the state, endangered the freedoms they all so dearly loved. From a superficial glance, the various Mormon responses to Vietnam seemed only to echo the debates between the right, the center, and the left that were being heard daily throughout the nation. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes apparent just how difficult it was for the Mormon people and their leaders to consider this troubling conflict apart from such questions as the Book of Mormon’s position on armed conflict, or the impact of the war on the church’s efforts to expand into Southeast Asia. Whatever the claims of Mormon apologists that their church’s internal race policies had no bearing on its members’ perceptions of the Civil Rights Movement, moreover, there is little question that the persistence of the former had a tremendous impact upon the latter, although rarely in a straightforward or uniform way. And finally, Mormons were far from the only Americans in these years whose trepidation over political and ideological polarization, racial conflict, and overseas military quagmires made them seriously question whether their nation could long maintain its greatness. However, the fact that Mormons on both sides of the ideological divide were now resurrecting the language of Joseph Smith’s supposed prophecy that the Constitution would some day “hang by a thread” is yet another 304 reminder of the Latter-day Saint propensity to view political and social questions through their unique religious worldview. CHAPTER 7 THEODEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF REAGAN In May 1998 Marlin Jensen of the LDS Church’s First Quorum of the Seventy granted an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune that Mormon Democrat and head of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics Ted Wilson later called “an earthshaker.” The impetus for Jensen’s interview was the growing concern among members of the church hierarchy over Utah’s status as a one-party state. “The Democratic Party has in the last 20 years waned to the point where it really is almost not a factor in our political life,” Jensen regretfully admitted. As he recognized, the vast majority of Utah Mormons since the late 1970s had either flocked to or remained faithful to the GOP. During the same period, Utah’s nonMormon minority had increasingly made their way into the Democratic fold, thus resurrecting under new affiliations the troubling political divisions along religious lines that had plagued Utah territory in the late nineteenth century. According to Jensen, no facet of the GOP’s ongoing hegemony within the Beehive State was more worrisome to LDS leaders than the existence of a “church party and a non-church party. That would be the last thing that we would want to have happen.”1 1 Dan Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 3, 1998. 306 As Jensen acknowledged, the emergence of a “church party and a non-church party” had given credence to several troubling stereotypes within the Mormon community. Foremost among these was the idea, first expressed implicitly in the 1930s and then explicitly in the early 1970s by apostle Ezra Taft Benson, that it was nearly impossible to be a good Latter-day Saint and a liberal Democrat.2 “There have been some awfully good men and women who have been both and are both today,” Jensen, who happened to be a Democrat himself, told the Tribune. “So I think it would be a very healthy thing for the church—particularly the Utah church—if that notion could be obliterated.”3 Jensen’s fear was not simply that this quasiofficial idea might tempt some Latter-day Saints to condemn their fellow church members for their political views. What really troubled him was that it displayed what he viewed as a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of political parties in a democracy. At several points in his interview, Jensen implied that many in the church had a tendency to equate parties with either truth or falsehood, rather than view them as broad coalitions of people who frequently disagreed. To expect gospel purity from political parties carried tremendous risks, he warned. Foremost among these was the temptation to repudiate a party “because it has a philosophy or two that may not square with Mormonism.” But to abandon one party in favor of another on such a wholesale basis risked lessening church members’ political influence at the national level, especially if the party with which most Mormons aligned was suddenly relegated to 2 For Benson’s most explicit statement of this kind, see “Support for Candidate Possible Some Day, LDS Apostle Says,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 22, 1974. 3 Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church.” 307 minority status. Jensen’s underlying message was that Latter-day Saints could do far more good for the country, and in turn have far more good done to them, if they were willing to stretch their righteous influence into both political camps.4 Thus, rather than hearken back to the days of Zion nationalism when political unity was prized and diversity decried, Jensen instead appropriated the language and ideas of the division movement of the 1890s, when Mormon leaders had first emphasized the pragmatic benefits of having their people evenly divide between the two parties. Ironically, the partisan disparity within Utah that Jensen and other LDS leaders now sought to correct had emerged to a large degree as an unintended consequence of actions that the church itself had earlier taken. Beginning in the late 1960s, Mormon leaders became deeply troubled over the rise of what they viewed as an excessively individualistic, selfish, and hedonistic culture, one that indulged in pornography while foregoing marriage and children, condoned the killing of the innocent unborn, and, by eroding the God-given differences between men and women, risked destroying the family. With an end to protecting not only God’s kingdom, but Zion’s American sanctuary, as well, church leaders increasingly saw it as their religious and civic duty to strongly condemn, and in some cases to mobilize their people to fight against, such ominous developments as the legalization of abortion, the growing tolerance for homosexual relations, and most frightening to the LDS leadership, the campaign to inscribe sexual equality into the U.S. Constitution. This increased use of the prophetic pulpit to promote greater civic engagement, combined with the Mormon people’s willingness to follow their 4 Ibid. 308 prophets’ counsel as it applied to both spiritual and temporal matters, gave rise to a new era of Mormon theodemocracy. Even as they encouraged their members to join forces with other upstanding citizens in combating the moral degradation threatening to sink their beloved nation, Mormon leaders consistently denied any wish to further a partisan agenda.5 While there is no reason to doubt the hierarchy’s sincerity, it just so happened that Ronald Reagan and the conservative wing of the GOP were simultaneously adopting many of the same positions the church had already championed, from opposition to abortion and gay rights to efforts to block ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, convincing many Latter-day Saints that one party clearly exceeded the other in embodying Mormonism’s core values.6 As Elbert Peck of Sunstone magazine astutely observed in the 1998 Tribune article, “It really was the church leaders’ position on abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment [in the 1970s] that was the death of the Utah Democratic Party, because it became a litmus test.”7 Mormon leaders had no intention of upending the relative political balance within the Beehive State that their predecessors had fought so hard to achieve. Yet as Jensen’s interview with the Tribune unwittingly revealed, the hierarchy’s decision to tenuously align with the Religious Right in the so-called “culture wars” of the 1970s 5 Spencer W. Kimball, Apr. 1974, Conference Reports, 5. Spencer W. Kimball, Oct. 1976, Conference Reports, 9. 6 The fact that several popular Mormon politicians at this time, notably Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Jake Garn, also represented the GOP’s conservative wing only helped to solidify the bridge connecting Mormons to Reagan. See Rogers, “Utah’s Right Turn.” 7 Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church.” 309 and 1980s, coupled with the changing outlooks of the political parties themselves, ended up producing precisely this result.8 Like theodemocracy in the nineteenth century, theodemocracy in the age of Reagan sometimes led to misunderstandings and contention within Zion, prompting some disgruntled church members, like the Godbeites of old, to leave the Mormon fold. Latter-day Saints who deviated from the official church line warned their fellow members of the dangers of mixing religion and politics while reminding them that the prophets had never claimed infallibility. At the same time, they often found sanction for their alternative viewpoints in the writings of earlier church leaders, men and women, in LDS scripture, history, and even in the statements of the very same living prophets with whom they now disagreed. It was yet another reminder that, even while most Latter-day Saints in this period shared the same basic assessment of the culture wars as their leaders, Mormonism itself remained amenable to a wide variety of interpretations. Defending the American Family: Abortion, Homosexuality, and the ERA Toward the end of his closing remarks at the LDS Church’s General Relief Society Meeting on September 23, 1995, Mormon President Gordon B. Hinckley read an official proclamation “relative to the family” authored by the First Presidency and 8 On the roots and emergence of the Religious Right, see Lahr, Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares; Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt; and Williams, God’s Own Party. On where Mormons fit in this coalition, see O. Kendall White Jr., “A Review and Commentary on the Prospects of a Mormon New Christian Right Coalition,” Review of Religious Research 28, no. 2 (Dec. 1986): 180-188; and Neil J. Young, “We Gather Together: Catholics, Mormons, Southern Baptists and the Question of Interfaith Politics” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2008). On the “culture wars” that began to divide Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, see James Davison Hunter, The Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). 310 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.9 When the official report of the Relief Society Meeting was released the following November in the Ensign, this portion of Hinckley’s address was also presented as a separate document entitled, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.”10 Its overarching message was that the family, as the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve had defined it, constituted an essential component of God’s eternal plan of happiness for his children. Providing a doctrinal basis for this reminder of the family’s centrality was the unique Mormon belief, mostly summarized in the proclamation’s second and third paragraphs, that all men and women were spirit sons and daughters of the same Heavenly Father and thus members of the same eternal family. Among the timely inferences that the hierarchy deduced from this fundamental Mormon premise was that “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”11 The proclamation then shifted to God’s commandment to his children to marry, have children of their own, and rear them in a loving and righteous home. Husbands and wives were “equal partners” but with distinct roles, with the former expected to provide and protect and the latter to nurture. The proclamation was replete with both promises and warnings. Families who followed prophetic counsel would remain united beyond the grave. On the other hand, it read, “the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations 9 Gordon B. Hinckley, “Stand Strong Against the Wiles of the World,” Sep. 23, 1995. Published in the Ensign 11, no. 25 (Nov. 1995): 100. 10 “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ensign 11, no. 25 (Nov. 1995): 102. 11 Ibid., 102. 311 the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” The final paragraph therefore admonished citizens and governments to “promote those measures” that would “strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”12 While the doctrinal underpinnings of the proclamation went clear back to the earliest formulations of Mormon cosmology in the 1830s and 1840s, many of the specific trends and developments to which it alluded, sometimes explicitly but mostly implicitly, had first garnered the attention of the Mormon hierarchy in the late 1960s and 1970s. Church leaders in this period grew especially alarmed over what they perceived as three interrelated threats to the family: abortion, homosexuality, and the campaign on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment. Although it did not specifically mention any of these past or present threats, the proclamation’s firm reminder that “God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force,” its twice-repeated definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman,” and its teaching that men and women were of equal value yet inherently different, along with several other passages, were all contiguous with language Mormon leaders began to employ in the 1970s as part of their campaign to defend the American family.13 The first polarizing cultural issue in the early 1970s to provoke a strong reaction from the Mormon hierarchy was abortion. As early as 1857, Mormon leaders had periodically denounced what early apostle Heber C. Kimball once 12 Ibid., 102. Ibid., 102. For an excellent analysis of the Proclamation on the Family, see Colleen McDannell, Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 153-171. 13 312 referred to as the Gentile practice of “depopulating their own species.”14 Not surprisingly, Mormon denunciations of abortion grew more frequent in the years immediately before and especially after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1973 for states to restrict access to the procedure during the first trimester.15 In the two decades before Roe v. Wade, the nascent pro-life movement chose to frame the battle over abortion as a human rights issue. As historian Daniel Williams has recently shown, pro-life activists in the 1950s and 1960s relied far less on parochial religious laws or biblical exegesis than they did on the rights-oriented language of New Deal liberalism, the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, the antiVietnam War Movement, and even, ironically, the Feminist Movement. Rather than emphasize the links between abortion and sexual sin, he argues, the earliest pro-life crusaders, many of whom self-identified as liberal Democrats, viewed their cause as one of extending basic human rights to all people, including the unborn. According to Williams, it was not until after 1973 that the abortion battle began to take on its current form, with religious conservatives in the Republican Party who view the procedure as a clear violation of God’s law standing on one side, and secular liberals in the Democratic Party who defend it on the basis of individual rights and resistance to patriarchal government standing on the other.16 In several key respects, the antiabortion discourse of the LDS hierarchy in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade anticipated the future of the pro-life movement far 14 Quoted in James Glenn Hunter, “A Religious Rhetoric of Abortion: LDS Views of Over One Hundred Years” (master’s thesis: The University of Wyoming, 1991), 49. 15 Kermit L. Hall, ed., The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 263. 16 Daniel K. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1-38, 205-242. 313 more than it resembled its past. Mormon leaders certainly regarded abortion, as an official First Presidency statement released shortly after Roe v. Wade put it, as “one of the most revolting and sinful practices of this day.”17 But while their rhetoric did not completely overlook what they saw as the tragic fate of the aborted fetus, church leaders who denounced this practice were more likely to lament the broader moral decay to which increased rates of abortion pointed. In addition to seeing it as frightening evidence of rampant sexual immorality, they also viewed abortion as perhaps the most worrisome manifestation of modern man’s reluctance to take personal responsibility for their own actions.18 Responding to the argument that “a woman is free to choose what she does with her own body,” Mormon apostle Russell M. Nelson countered that “once an action has been taken, we are never free from its consequences. Those considering abortion have already exercised certain choices.”19 In a later address at BYU, apostle Dallin H. Oaks endorsed the argument of an unnamed church member who insisted that in rare instances when pregnancy resulted from either rape or incest, “the woman has the moral as well as the legal right to an abortion because the condition of pregnancy is the result of someone else’s irresponsibility, not hers.”20 Once again, the doctrine of free agency loomed large. For Nelson and Oaks, the fate of the fetus 17 “News of the Church,” Ensign 3, no. 3 (March 1973): 64. Spencer W. Kimball, Oct. 1974, Conference Reports, 8. Spencer W. Kimball, Apr. 1975, Conference Reports, 8. James E. Faust, Apr. 1975, Conference Reports, 42. Spencer W. Kimball, Oct. 1976, Conference Reports, 6. 19 Russell M. Nelson, Apr. 1985, Conference Reports, 14. 20 In addition to rape and incest, Oaks pointed out, the church also permitted abortion in cases where the mother’s life or health was in danger, or if the fetus would not survive past birth. Dallin H. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” Ensign 31, no. 1 (Jan. 2001): 14-15. 18 314 was inseparable from the question of who bore the primary responsibility for its existence. In general, Mormon antiabortion discourse was more concerned with lamenting the social trends that made this procedure acceptable and pleading with the Saints to avoid it at all costs than with pinpointing the exact moment when the fetus qualified as a person, or as Mormons often put it, as a soul. To be sure, a loose consensus existed among Mormon spokesmen that life began at the moment of conception. However, the Mormon doctrine of pre-earth spirits added a complicated layer to this seemingly straightforward proposition. Mormons may have agreed that life began at conception—a proposition they preferred to hinge on science rather than scripture, yet there was no consensus or official doctrine as to precisely when mankind’s pre-existent spirit fused with an already living fetus to become what Mormon scripture calls “the soul of man.”21 Perhaps worried that some church members might cite this ambiguity in the hopes of minimizing the seriousness of an early abortion, pro-life Mormons sought to downplay the importance of knowing exactly when the fusion of body and spirit takes place. “As much as we would like to know” when “the spirit takes up residence and becomes a soul,” a Mormon medical doctor concluded, this lack of certainty did not change the obvious fact that God intended the unborn body to serve as “an earthly tabernacle for one of His spirit 21 James E. Faust, Apr. 1975, Conference Reports, 41. Russell M. Nelson, Apr. 1985, Conference Reports, 15. Smith, Doctrine and Covenants, 88:15. 315 children.”22 Despite many unanswered questions, the LDS hierarchy never doubted that abortion, while not quite on the same level as murder, was a sin “like unto it.”23 The First Presidency’s decision to reiterate their opposition to abortion in the immediate wake of Roe v. Wade left no doubt what they thought of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Nevertheless, the statement itself was mostly apolitical. Rather than seek to push them toward antiabortion activism, it seemed more intent on reminding the Saints that despite recent changes to the laws of the land, abortion remained just as contrary to the laws of God. Nor did the statement endorse any political or legal strategies for counteracting the decision.24 Nearly a year after Roe, a church spokesman named David L. McKay appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee in support of a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion.25 As time passed and the likelihood of a constitutional ban grew dimmer, however, church leaders became more reticent to publicly endorse any specific plan for overturning Roe. With each state facing different challenges and questions over this issue, an official statement from 1991 reasoned, “it is impractical for the Church to take a position on specific legislative proposals on this important subject.” Lest they construe this as an invitation to ignore their civic duties, the Saints were immediately admonished to “let their 22 Phillip C. Hoopes, “Suffer the Little Children”: A Latter-day Saint Physician Views Abortion (Phillip C. Hoopes, 1979), 20. 23 “News of the Church,” Ensign 3, no. 3 (March 1973): 64. 24 Ibid., 64. 25 “LDS Official Delivers Anti-Abortion Appeal,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 8, 1974. 316 voices be heard in appropriate and legal ways that will evidence their belief in the sacredness of life.”26 Eight years later apostle Oaks warned BYU students not to accept the lie that while abortion clearly violates God’s law, it is not the role of the state to impinge on individual agency by dictating morality. Oaks challenged those Latter-day Saints who say “we are anti-abortion in our personal life but pro-choice in public policy” to consider “which other grievous sins should be decriminalized or smiled upon by the law due to this theory that persons should not be hampered in their choices.”27 Hence, even as they largely left it to their people to decide how best to confront this problem, leaders like Oaks insinuated that one could not truly oppose abortion without simultaneously opposing the laws and judicial decisions that made it legal. Most Latter-day Saints after 1973 agreed with their prophets’ repeated pronouncements that abortion constituted an abhorrent and tragic national sin. Where genuine disagreement and variety of opinion existed was in response to two interrelated questions: What was the underlying cause of America’s rampant abortion culture? And what was the most gospel-centric way of dealing with this problem? One set of answers came from the perspective of pro-life Mormon feminism. In a 1992 article in Mormon Women’s Forum, Brigham Young University philosophy professor Camille S. Williams contended that by elevating abortion rights to the top of its agenda, mainstream feminism had ironically resurrected the old-fashioned idea that modern women, like their mothers, had to choose between career and 26 27 “Church Issues Statement on Abortion,” Ensign 21, no. 3 (March 1991): 78. Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” 15. 317 family, between education and children, since they could not possibly enjoy both. The sad irony, she lamented, was that feminists of all people should have the greatest confidence in a woman’s right and ability to enjoy both. Instead, she complained, the modern women’s movement had perpetuated, although certainly not invented, the lie that pregnancy and motherhood necessitated the abandonment of a woman’s educational and career goals. According to Williams, the pro-choice camp had convinced too many women that they could not “cope with the strains of pregnancy except under ideal conditions.” As long as abortion remained readily available and the women’s movement lauded it as a safe and convenient panacea, she feared, women would remain trapped in a patriarchal mindset that severely narrowed their options and eroded their self-confidence.28 While she clearly loathed both the legalization of abortion under Roe as well as the women’s movement’s misguided decision to embrace it as their central cause, Williams seemed to imply that both phenomena were actually the results rather than the cause of modern society’s shocking lack of reverence not only for motherhood, but for life itself. One illustration was the widespread tendency to “view childbearing at worst as a liability, or at best as a hobby to be pursued on individual time,” rather than as a blessing to the entire community. Since “Giving birth and caring for children is a public service as much as is serving in the national guard,” she insisted, communities, churches, and governments had a sacred responsibility to alleviate the burdens of motherhood. If they failed to do so, she warned, “then we are all accomplices in building a society that has little regard for 28 Camille S. Williams, “The Limits of Abortion,” Mormon Women’s Forum 3, no. 1 (Feb. 1992): 1-6. 318 women and children,” the kind of society, she wrote, that “pits the interests of women against those of their own children.” While Williams’ article did not rely heavily on overt religious language, underlying it all was a communitarian vision of child-rearing and family life that strongly reflected Mormonism’s Zion heritage.29 Her perspective also resembled and so may have taken some inspiration, whether consciously or not, from the pre-1973 pro-life movement. As Daniel Williams shows, pro-choice activists before Roe v. Wade often based their support for legalizing abortion on the grounds that it would prevent over-population and save certain classes of mothers and babies from a lifetime of poverty. Rather than admonish such women to take responsibility for their own actions, pro-lifers responded to this pro-choice argument by emphasizing the responsibility of governments and communities to care for pregnant women and young mothers regardless of the circumstances of their pregnancy. Even if unintentionally, Camille Williams had presented a kind of updated version of this earlier pro-life position that “impoverished women” should not have to “choose between abortion and poverty” by insisting that women should not have to choose between abortion and either quitting their jobs or dropping out of school.30 As apostle Oaks regretfully acknowledged in his 1999 address at BYU, the long-standing consensus among the Saints that abortion violated God’s law had yet to translate into a consensus that it should likewise contravene the laws of the land. Indeed, it was around this question of the state’s role that much of the debate in the Mormon community over abortion revolved. As Oaks also recognized, the 29 30 Ibid., 1-6. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn, 7. 319 uneasiness with which some Latter-day Saints viewed efforts to criminalize abortion often stemmed from their own personal interpretations of the doctrine of free agency.31 Exemplifying this tendency was another article in Mormon Women’s Forum in which LDS attorney Michelle Wynn likened efforts to outlaw abortion to Satan’s premortal plan of compulsion. Wynn agreed that in the post-Roe era, “some women will make choices that they may live to regret.” But was not the freedom to choose for one’s self and then reap the sometimes painful consequences at the very basis of God’s plan, she rhetorically asked. The idea that state power should protect people from the consequences of their own actions sounded to Wynn suspiciously similar to Satan’s suggestion that “coercion and force would eliminate the grief and difficulty of making the wrong moral choice.” The lack of certainty from either science or from the gospel as to when the fetus actually became a person solidified Wynn’s conviction that no one was in a better position to decide the fate of her unborn child than the pregnant woman herself.32 While he shared some of Wynn’s concerns about the dangers of enlisting state power to impinge on individual agency, Eugene England’s reticence to endorse the pro-life movement rested far more on his assessment of where the Mormon Church currently stood in relation to America’s pluralistic society. In an essay entitled, “'A Stop to the Shedding of Blood': Why I Oppose Abortion, Capital Punishment, and War,” England expressed no qualms with the political activism of 31 Oaks, “Weightier Matters,” 14. Michelle Wynn, “Claiming Our Right to Make Our Own Moral Choices,” Mormon Women’s Forum 3, no. 1 (Feb. 1992): 7-8. 32 320 pro-life church members who, so long as they did so peacefully and within the constraints of the law, sought to achieve “whatever legal restrictions they feel best express their own beliefs.” At a certain point, he nevertheless argued, pro-life Mormons had to concede that in a pluralistic society where few people shared their religious worldview, the best they could hope for was compromise. With its trimester framework allowing states to regulate abortion during the second trimester and even proscribe it during the third, he argued, Roe actually represented “a reasonable compromise” based on a consensus view of when “personhood begins.” Of course, pro-life Mormons knew they were far from alone in this struggle. Why not simply ally with other religious conservatives to form a much larger piece of America’s pluralistic pie? For England the danger of joining forces with the Religious Right was that it risked putting the Saints in the same boat with evangelical leaders who, even as they took advantage of their dedication and organizational prowess, regularly denounced Mormons as members of a nonChristian cult. As England rhetorically asked, what if the same Religious Right which we help to empower eventually turns against us, much like their Protestant forebears who persecuted the Saints over polygamy? Leaning on the writings of non-Mormon scholar Daniel Bell, England concluded that religious minorities such as the Latter-day Saints “should be among the most active in promoting a system where all are free,” even people whose “beliefs and actions are deeply repugnant.” Instead of joining forces with the untrustworthy Religious Right in their crusade to remake the nation in their own image, Mormons should desire a truly pluralistic 321 system in which, as James Madison had predicted, no one group has enough power to impose its moral vision on any other. In this kind of pluralistic, and by extension, libertarian environment, England hoped, Mormons would be less tempted to harness the powers of the state to forcibly expunge national sins like abortion, but would instead rely on the power of the gospel to change people’s hearts and minds.33 Whatever ambiguities existed in Mormonism as to when the fetus became a living soul, the fact that another living thing, however defined, was bound up in this debate meant that the case for compromise and moral suasion would probably never satisfy everyone. In a private review of England’s essay, a fellow Latter-day Saint criticized him for committing the same error as so many antebellum Americans who, even as they condemned the sin of slavery, refused to impose their sense of right and wrong upon others. In this reviewer’s mind, the parallels between pro-choice and proslavery rhetoric were chillingly similar. Just as the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act had defined slaves as the property of their masters, she charged, Roe v. Wade “treats a fetus as a woman’s property.” Even abolitionists accepted the lie that slaves were only potential, not fully formed, humans, she went on, much like so many self-proclaimed enemies of abortion today who are afraid to call a fetus what it actually is.34 As historian Mary Ziegler shows, Eugene England’s private critic was far from alone in framing abortion as a new form of slavery. In fact, this pro-life strategy often took the form of conflating Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott. Pro-life activists argued that 33 34 England Papers, Box 189, Folder 7. Ibid. 322 both of these Supreme Court decisions “denied the personhood of vulnerable minorities,” Ziegler writes, the first on the basis of race, and the second on the basis of “’residence…[in] the womb.’” Conflating Roe v. Wade and Dred Scott was advantageous for two reasons: It suggested that if the Supreme Court could have erred so badly in the past in cases surrounding slavery and race, then it could easily do so again in cases surrounding abortion. It also convinced many defenders of the fetus that moral suasion devoid of state power would prove just as impotent in the fight against abortion as it had earlier been in the fight against slavery.35 “So whaddya think,” England’s reviewer sarcastically asked in this vein. “Should we wish the government hadn’t interfered in slavery—such an ambiguous issue of personal choice?”36 In the mind of at least one outspoken Latter-day Saint in the pro-life camp, the Mormon people and even their leaders to some degree were partly to blame for the continued legal slaughter of millions of unborn babies. In a 1981 article entitled “A Deafening Silence in the Church,” Mormon professor Richard Sherlock maintained that despite a few unanswered questions, “The only way in which the Church’s position on abortion makes any sense is on the assumption that the fetus is a human being.” Sherlock was of course aware that Mormon leaders had neither made an official statement on when the spirit enters the womb nor designated abortion as murder. Nevertheless, he argued, the church’s countless condemnations of this practice together constituted an implicit recognition of the fetus’s humanity, or 35 Mary Ziegler, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 45. 36 England Papers, Box 189, Folder 7. 323 something like a de facto doctrine that abortion did indeed count as murder. Given this generally accepted, de facto doctrine, he argued, the Mormon Church and its people had no other choice but to support the movement for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Although he stopped short of issuing any overt criticisms of Mormon leaders, Sherlock was clearly frustrated that the church had not done more to confront this evil. Most Mormons had no doubt that abortion was wrong, he complained, but “many…are still perplexed by the political questions surrounding the issue.” He lamented that while millions of innocent babies are killed every year, “most Mormons do nothing.”37 To illustrate that the church and its people could do far more to further the pro-life cause, Sherlock pointed to the Mormons’ heretofore successful campaign to help block ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While he shared his leaders’ fear and loathing of the ERA, Sherlock openly wondered whether “our priorities are twisted.” How could the ERA possibly be worse than the ongoing genocide against the unborn, he asked.38 What Sherlock failed to appreciate was that abortion and the ERA represented two entirely different challenges. After Roe there was very little that an organization like the LDS Church could do to change abortion laws at the national level. Sherlock urged Mormons to support a constitutional ban, which the church had done in 1974 when it sent David L. McKay to testify before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.39 But after years of pro-life activism, Congress had not even come 37 Richard Sherlock, “A Deafening Silence in the Church,” Sunstone 6, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1981): 17-19. Ibid., 19. 39 “LDS Official Delivers Anti-Abortion Appeal.” 38 324 close to passing such an amendment.40 By contrast, Congress did pass an Equal Rights Amendment and thereafter send it to the states for final approval. While the Mormons had been entirely powerless to block the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe, the democratic nature of ratification gave the church the opportunity to help decide the ERA’s fate. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution simply decreed that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” and that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” After several failed attempts stretching back to 1923 to push it through Congress, the ERA was finally approved in the spring of 1972. By the end of that year twenty-two states had already ratified the amendment followed by eight more the following year. Thus with over four years still remaining before the congressional deadline, the approval of only eight more state legislatures was needed to enshrine the amendment in the Constitution.41 The ERA immediately won devoted converts within Zion, many of whom would remain faithful to the cause long after their church leaders had mobilized to defeat it. Among the most outspoken of these pro-ERA Latter-day Saints was former 40 On the prolife campaign for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, see Williams, Defenders of the Unborn, 212-230. 41 For comprehensive accounts of the nationwide battle over the ERA, see Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986); Donald G. Mathews and Jane S. De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Gilbert Y. Steiner, Constitutional Inequality: The Political Fortunes of the Equal Rights Amendment (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1985). When Congress passed the amendment, it designated March 22, 1979 as the date by which thirty-eight states needed to ratify in order to secure the ERA’s place in the Constitution. In 1978 Congress passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed, a controversial bill extending the deadline for ratification to June 30, 1982. 325 Utah legislator and mother of fifteen, Beatrice Peterson Marchant.42 In numerous letters to newspapers, politicians, and Mormon leaders over the course of the 1970s and early 1980s, Marchant framed the ERA not as a radical break with the past, as many of its detractors claimed, but as a continuation of both the American tradition of equality, and more importantly, the Mormons’ historic commitment to strengthening the home and succoring the less fortunate. Just as Mormon suffragists had once promised that giving women the vote would strengthen the home and the family, Marchant predicted that by granting women greater access to the public realm, the ERA would thereby place them in a better position to improve the domestic sphere. One specific example she often gave was what she saw as the abject state of university and high school home economic programs. With their male-dominated boards, she complained, today’s schools focused only on job training and completely overlooked the fact that “homemaking requires as much attention, and intelligence and training as any other job.” By ensuring them greater access to school boards, she promised, the ERA would allow women to restore home economic programs and in turn train a new and better qualified generation of homemakers.43 She also envisioned the ERA assisting the Mormon Relief Society in its mission to care for abandoned women, widows, and dependent children. While many Utah women including herself were blessed with kind and supportive husbands, she acknowledged, too many “must be both father and mother to their 42 “The Autobiography of Beatrice Marchant.” The Beatrice Peterson Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 5, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah. 43 Beatrice Marchant, “Equal Rights Needed for Sake of Family,” Salt Lake Tribune Common Carrier, Mar. 10, 1974. Copy in the Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 3. 326 families,” an ugly reality compounded by “social rules and regulations restricting women to menial jobs and low pay.” The ERA “does not mean that women must go to work and put their children in nurseries,” she insisted in a letter to her daughters. “Women can still be women, and men will still be men.” By guaranteeing them better jobs, equal pay, and the same social security benefits men received, she promised her daughters, the ERA would elevate women who were not as fortunate as they were.44 By focusing primarily on the links between the ERA and the family, Marchant’s writings ironically foreshadowed her church leaders’ eventual entry into this debate. The difference was that while Marchant envisioned the ERA strengthening the family, the LDS hierarchy came to believe that it risked destroying it. During the first two years of the ratification process, however, no one formally affiliated with the Mormon Church made any public statements, either for or against, the proposed amendment. At the national level, meanwhile, organized opposition to the ERA quickly emerged. The most effective anti-ERA group in the country was Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP-ERA, or “Stop Taking Our Privileges.” As their name indicated, Schlafly and her supporters opposed the ERA out of fear that it would eliminate the legal protections American women had long enjoyed in recognition of their essential role as propagators of the next generation. Of all the accusations Schlafly and her allies leveled at the ERA, none received more currency 44 Beatrice Marchant, “Letter to Daughters for Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment,” Dec. 27, 1973. Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 2. 327 than the charge that it would subject women to the military draft.45 Due in large measure to the widespread dissemination of these fears, the ERA’s first appearance before the Utah legislature ended in failure, suffering a 51-20 defeat in January 1973. Reflecting Schlafly’s influence, one legislator who helped defeat the amendment called it “unconscionable that we as a body should go on record for any proposition that would place our wives and daughters on the draft lottery lists.”46 Despite their frustrations over what Marchant called the “scare campaign” responsible for its 1973 defeat, Utah’s ERA supporters were optimistic that a future state assembly would prove more progressive.47 Lifting their confidence was a 1974 poll conducted by the Deseret News showing that 65 percent of Utahns, including 63 percent of Mormons, favored the amendment.48 To be sure, in December of that same year the church’s Relief Society president, Barbara Smith, had stoked the ire of the pro-ERA camp by publicly criticizing the amendment in language strongly reminiscent of Phyllis Schlafly. Yet as church spokesmen quickly informed the press, Smith’s comments did not represent the hierarchy’s official position on the matter.49 Unfortunately for Marchant and her allies, their initial hopes that the LDS hierarchy would remain on the sidelines were crushed when an anti-ERA editorial appeared in the Church News section of the Deseret News on January 11, 1975, two 45 Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 212-218. 46 “Utah House Defeats Equal Rights 20-51,” Deseret News, Jan. 25, 1973. 47 Beatrice Marchant, “Utah Women Are Lucky, But ERA Still Sought,” Deseret News, Jan. 15, 1974. 48 “Most Favor Full Rights for Women,” Deseret News, Nov. 15, 1974. 49 “Relief Society President Assails ERA,” Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 14, 1974. 328 days before the state legislature was set to convene.50 Although not signed by the First Presidency, the editorial’s appearance in the Church News implied that it had the sanction of President Spencer W. Kimball and his two counselors, a widespread assumption that was later privately confirmed to Marchant.51 Rather than provide any specific moral, legal, or political objections to the amendment, the editorial simply called the ERA the wrong way to improve the lives of women. It then concluded by reminding its readers that “men and women are different, made so by a Divine Creator. Each has his or her role. One is incomplete without the other.”52 A month later the Utah legislature rejected the ERA for a second and final time, by roughly the same margin as in 1973.53 50 “Equal Rights Amendment,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Jan. 11, 1975. Without access to the records of private First Presidency meetings, it is impossible to know for sure why the hierarchy waited almost three years to publicly oppose the ERA. According to D. Michael Quinn, the primary reason for the church’s initial silence was President Harold B. Lee’s fear of offending Mormon women. However, even after Lee’s death and Spencer W. Kimball’s accession to the office of church president, a full year would transpire before the publication of the Church News editorial. Kimball’s biographer and son, Edward L. Kimball, speculates that church leaders may have hesitated because they initially assumed the ERA would be ratified and did not want to back a losing horse. Both historians therefore assume that the church’s initial hesitation was tactical rather than ideological. Given the fact that the ERA was widely seen as an outgrowth of the feminist movement, which many church leaders had openly assailed, this is probably a safe assumption. At the same time, church leaders also probably grew more alarmed as they came into contact with the anti-ERA arguments of Phyllis Schlafly and her allies. See Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, 376; and Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride, 267. 51 Francis M. Gibbons to Beatrice Peterson Marchant, Jan. 24, 1975. Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 5. 52 “Equal Rights Amendment,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Jan. 11, 1975. 53 “Utah House Rejects ERA by 54-21 Vote,” Deseret News, Feb. 19, 1975. Most histories of the Mormon Church’s campaign against the ERA blame the Church News editorial for the ERA’s failure to pass the Utah Legislature in 1975. However, the fact that it was defeated in 1973 before any Mormon leader had publicly addressed the issue should give some pause to this assumption. On the Mormon Church and the ERA, see Martha Sonntag Bradley, Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005); Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, 373-402; D. Michael Quinn, “The LDS Church’s Campaign Against the Equal Rights Amendment,” The Journal of Mormon History 20, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 85-155; Haws, The Mormon Image, 86-98; McDannell, Sister Saints, 100-116; Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride, 267-280; Neil J. Young, “The ERA is a Moral Issue: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment,” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (Sep. 2007): 623-644; and O. Kendall White Jr., “Mormonism and the Equal Rights Amendment,” Journal of Church and State 31, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 249-267. 329 As it evolved over the course of the next seven years, the Mormon Church’s stance on the ERA hinged on the following premise: Regardless of the noble intentions of many of its supporters and sponsors, the ERA risked converting the federal government, namely Congress and especially the Supreme Court, into an enemy of the American family. In their official pronouncements on the ERA, Mormon leaders were always quick to recognize “men and women as equally important before the Lord.”54 But equality of importance did not imply sameness, they were eager to point out. As apostle Boyd K. Packer insisted in a 1977 address in neighboring Idaho: “A man…needs to feel protective, and yes, dominant, if you will, in leading his family. A woman needs to feel protected, in the bearing of children and in the nurturing of them.”55 For Mormon leaders these God-given differences were essential for the preservation of the family, and since family units constituted the bedrock of any successful nation, they further taught, governments interested in their own preservation had a responsibility to encourage the development of these ingrained masculine and feminine instincts. By at least 1975, and probably earlier, the Mormon hierarchy had come to believe that the ERA would eventually make it impossible for Congress or the courts to either require men to fulfill their masculine duties, or to protect women from influences that could, over time, “stifle many God-given feminine instincts.”56 For example, the LDS leadership foresaw the day when changes to the law would exempt men from their responsibility to financially provide for their families, thus 54 “LDS Leaders Oppose ERA,” Deseret News, Oct. 22, 1976. Boyd K. Packer, “The Equal Rights Amendment,” Delivered in Pocatello, Idaho, Jan. 8, 1977. Full text in the Marchant Papers, Box 3, Folder 3. 56 “LDS Leaders Oppose ERA,” Deseret News, Oct. 22, 1976. 55 330 eroding their masculinity. Since the ERA would presumably eliminate privileges based on sexual difference, church leaders also warned that pregnant women in the work force would almost certainly lose their right to maternity leave.57 But the most frightening scenario they imagined was of a world in which America’s daughters, sisters, and future mothers were forced to serve in combat. If the prospect of compulsory military training for young men had stirred the hierarchy to action in 1945, the possibility that young women might soon have to take up arms sent chills down the spine of the current leadership. If the ERA ever forced Congress to draft women, a church statement from 1980 predicted, they would almost certainly be forced to live alongside their male counterparts in mixed barracks, thereby heightening the danger of sexual predation.58 Like other enemies of the ERA, Mormon leaders rarely weighed its potential impact in isolation from other troubling developments unfolding in the 1970s. Foremost among these was the growing tolerance for homosexual relations. Perceiving a clear link between these two threats, the First Presidency warned in 1978 that ratification of the ERA might lead to “an increase in the practice of homosexual and lesbian activities, and other concepts which could alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women.”59 Two years later when the church published its lengthiest diatribe against the ERA in the Ensign, the link between the ERA and homosexuality had jumped from encouraging gay relationships to possibly 57 The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: A Moral Issue (Salt Lake City: Ensign Magazine, 1980), 11-12. 58 Ibid., 10. On the church’s opposition to compulsory military training after World War II, see Chapter 4. 59 “Church Leaders Reaffirm ERA Stand,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Aug. 26, 1978. 331 legalizing gay marriage, since, according to the statement, a man wishing to marry another man could simply argue that under the ERA, he possessed the same right to do so as any woman.60 Coupled with its potential to erode the God-given differences between men and women, the ERA’s implications for homosexuality further convinced Mormon leaders that, if ratified, it would lead to “a unisex society.”61 The church’s 1980 booklet on the ERA promised members that they would not face ecclesiastical discipline simply for supporting the amendment, even if they did so publicly.62 But as pro-ERA Mormons knew all too well, this did not mean their leaders welcomed an open debate on the topic or that they were willing to modify their position if presented with a more persuasive argument. Exemplifying this attitude was a 1979 article in the Ensign by Kimball’s first counselor, N. Eldon Tanner, that concluded with the unambiguous line: “When the prophet speaks the debate is over.”63 Reflecting the Mormon hierarchy’s increased emphasis in these years on prophetic authority, some church members accused their fellow Latter-day Saints who favored the amendment of being in open rebellion against God’s prophet. Marchant discovered this firsthand when her own granddaughter chastised her in a letter for continuing to support the ERA even after the church had condemned it. After praising her grandmother for her “inner strength” and ”faith and example,” Becky Nielsen expressed “hurt and disappointment to read that you do not support and sustain our Prophet and his counselors.”64 As a 1979 article in Rocky Mountain 60 The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, 9. “Church Leaders Reaffirm ERA Stand.” 62 The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, 17. 63 N. Eldon Tanner, “The Debate is Over,” Ensign 9, no. 8 (August 1979): 3. 64 Becky Nielsen to Beatrice Peterson Marchant, Nov. 22, 1976. Marchant Papers, Box 3, Folder 2. 61 332 Magazine noted, “Opposing the prophet is a serious transgression in Mormon culture—one that has caused many pangs of conscience. As one woman put it, ‘it’s like being thrown out of Eden.’”65 Pro-ERA Mormons sometimes pointed out that in contrast to their church’s recent announcement on blacks and the priesthood, its public opposition to the ERA had never been framed as a revelation. If the hierarchy’s stance on the ERA had not come by revelation, church member Joan B. Thomas insisted in a personal letter to Kimball, “then one would surmise that free thought and agency remain operable for believing Mormons.” To imply as Tanner had that Kimball expressed God’s will “at all times and in every action and statement, whether announced as direct revelation from God or not,” Thomas further argued, came perilously close to decreeing a doctrine of prophetic infallibility, which Mormons supposedly rejected.66 As part of her 1979 letter to Kimball, Thomas included a lengthy and rather illuminating response to the church’s anti-ERA position. While it addressed most of the objections church leaders had made up until that point, Thomas’s paper was specifically devoted to tearing down what she called “the pedestal/protectionist myth.” Thomas did not deny that women needed certain protections, and indeed, this very much undergirded her support for the ERA. The question was who or what would provide these protections. Her specific target was the idea that government should simply stand aside and trust chivalrous men to protect and provide for delicate, nurturing women. But “if such were the case,” she argued, “we would not 65 66 1. Janice Peck, “Schizophrenia in Zion,” Rocky Mountain Magazine (September 1979): 13. Joan B. Thomas to Spencer W. Kimball, Sept. 27, 1979. Copy in the Marchant Papers, Box 6, Folder 333 be reading and hearing each day the numerous reports of incest, abuse, rapes, batterings and killings of girls and women. If such were the case there would be no abandoned women and children.” In fairness to her church leaders, Thomas’s caricature of the “pedestal/protectionist myth” did not accurately represent their position. Indeed, it was partly out of fear that not all husbands and fathers would voluntarily act in a chivalrous manner that the hierarchy opposed the ERA, believing as they did that its passage might exempt men from fulfilling their masculine duties. Even so, in Thomas’s mind the solution was not to force husbands to behave chivalrously while keeping their wives in a dependent state, but rather, to elevate wives to the same level as their husbands in the eyes of the law.67 Ironically, Thomas’s hope that the ERA would one day smash the “pedestal/protectionist myth” reveals the extent to which she remained locked in a paternalist mindset, even if the paternalism to which she subscribed differed markedly from that of her church leaders. For the LDS hierarchy, husbands and fathers bore the primary responsibility for providing for their wives and children. State and national laws were in turn responsible for ensuring men’s fulfillment of these masculine roles. Evincing far less trust in the nation’s husbands and fathers, even when compelled by law, Thomas and other ERA proponents instead advocated sweeping constitutional changes that would hopefully undermine the traditional idea of the chivalrous male and the dependent female. Yet in order for these revolutionary changes to take place, advocates for sexual equality would ultimately have to place their trust in what was then a male-dominated Supreme Court. 67 Joan B. Thomas, “Mormon Church Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.” Copy in the Marchant Papers, Box 6, Folder 1. 334 Thomas may have ridiculed the idea that wives should depend on their husbands for protection, but in designating the judicial branch as the new guarantor of women’s security, she had simply substituted one infallible source of chivalry with another. For the most part, pro-ERA Mormons managed to avoid direct conflict with the church hierarchy. The most famous exception was the case of Virginia housewife Sonia Johnson. Her well publicized battles with the church over the ERA reveal, among other things, just how extensive the church’s campaign had become by the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not content simply to work for the amendment’s defeat in their home state, church leaders after 1975 made the controversial decision to harness their organizational skills and the dedication of their members around the country to help block ratification in states where the ERA was still up for grabs. For Johnson it was precisely this mobilization of Latter-day Saints in states where they represented a tiny minority of the electorate that proved especially irritating. Since it is difficult to imagine her reacting with equal ferocity if the hierarchy had come out in favor of the amendment, the church’s exact stance was far from insignificant. That being said, Johnson focused far less on the church’s specific reasons for opposing the amendment and far more on its behind-the-scenes efforts to determine the outcome of perhaps the most contentious political debate in the country, thus eroding “in most members’ minds,” she wrote immediately after her excommunication, “the crucial distinctions between church and state that our Constitution guarantees.” Johnson also accused church leaders of violating the spirit of the Constitution they claimed to revere by assuming that small groups of Latterday Saints could, by virtue of their superior organization, funds, and zealousness, 335 thwart the will of a state’s democratic majority. To make matters worse, Johnson perceived the vast majority of her fellow Mormons acting out of blind obedience, “sadly misinformed by church leaders, relinquishing their God-given right and responsibility to educate themselves without fear of prejudicial treatment in the present or in the eternities.”68 Her fiery rhetoric and confrontational tactics eventually convinced Johnson’s local leaders that she was not simply pro-ERA, but antichurch, culminating in her well publicized trial and excommunication in December 1979.69 Arguments over the merits of the ERA, as well as the appropriateness of the church’s actions, would persist in the LDS community long after the amendment’s defeat in 1982. While both sides deserve credit for making legitimate and thoughtprovoking points, all too often the dialogue between Mormon supporters and Mormon critics devolved into a bitter fight that left behind many scars. Both sides were often guilty of characterizing their own position as infallible. For the ERA’s opponents, this arrogance usually stemmed from having the prophets on their side, a fact that frequently tempted them to call their pro-ERA co-religionists to repentance. On the other side, pro-ERA Mormons too often equated support for women’s rights with support for the ERA, as if the former necessarily had to give way to the latter. Both groups also displayed an unfortunate tendency to ascribe the other side’s motives to some radical ideological agenda. For anti-ERA Mormons, this often 68 Sonia Johnson, “Even Institutions Reap What They Sow.” Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 1. Sonia Johnson, From Housewife to Heretic: One Woman’s Spiritual Awakening and Her Excommunication from the Mormon Church (Albuquerque: Wildfire Books, 1989), 321-343. 69 336 took the form of condemning the amendment not for what it said or purported to stand for, but because of the groups with which, at least in the public mind, it was often linked. “Have you asked yourself who is pushing for the E.R.A. to be ratified?” an unnamed Mormon woman asked Beatrice Marchant in 1978. “I am very much opposed to giving Lesbians the right to teach their way of life to our children in the schools,” she continued. “I am very much opposed to allowing Gloria Steinam and her proponents to overthrow our government and indeed our way of life.”70 Meanwhile pro-ERA Latter-day Saints sometimes refused to treat the hierarchy’s concerns as genuine, preferring instead to blame the John Birch Society and other far right groups for supposedly brainwashing their church leaders.71 Neither side showed much willingness to entertain the possibility that contrasting perspectives on the ERA may have derived not from any radical political ideology, but rather, from differing understandings of a shared Mormon faith. In some respects, the debate over the ERA brought to mind James Henry Moyle’s complaints about the bitter partisanship that emerged when the Saints first divided along national party lines in the 1890s. As Moyle had caustically observed nearly one hundred years earlier, Mormons had a tendency to view political parties as either wholly true or wholly false, as if one came from God and the other Satan.72 The debate also foreshadowed Marlin Jensen’s later concerns as expressed in his 1998 interview with the Salt Lake Tribune. Echoing Moyle, Jensen would likewise 70 A Concerned Citizen to Beatrice Peterson Marchant, Apr. 26, 1978. Marchant Papers, Box 4, Folder 1. 71 See Beatrice Peterson Marchant to Nadine Hansen, Mar. 11, 1980, Marchant Papers, Box 6, Folder 3; and “Mormon Mother Challenges Her Church on E.R.A.,” Marchant Papers, Box 6, Folder 4. 72 Moyle, Mormon Democrat, 152-153. 337 take note of his fellow Mormons’ habit of demanding purity from an arena in which compromise was essential.73 Sonia Johnson had made a similar point about the difference between religion and politics in a newspaper editorial she penned shortly after her excommunication. “In politics there must be compromise, deal-making; in religion there can be no compromise, and the ends must never justify the means.”74 For Johnson, the inherent inability of churches to compromise on matters they regarded as sacred was just one reason why they must remain entirely apolitical. What she failed to admit was that she and many other pro-ERA activists had proven no more willing to compromise, and were no less convinced of the absolute righteousness of their cause, than those who viewed the prophets as infallible. “The Most Republican State in the Union” Like their predecessors in the church hierarchy who had periodically dared to enter the muddy waters of American politics, Mormon leaders in the 1970s and 1980s who spoke out against abortion and homosexuality while mobilizing their members to help defeat the ERA frequently defended their actions by insisting that these were primarily moral, and only secondarily political, issues. According to the Ensign, this fact not only justified but actually required the church to become involved, since “it is the responsibility of churches to provide and safeguard a moral framework in which their members can exercise their beliefs.” More importantly, the statement went on, such engagement was absolutely essential for the long-term preservation of the republic, since “fundamental to the philosophy of the 73 74 Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church.” Sonia Johnson, “Even Institutions Reap What They Sow.” Marchant Papers, Box 2, Folder 1. 338 Constitution is the understanding that a democratic society cannot function without moral restraint and individual discipline, values traditionally promoted by religion in general.”75 Giving credence to the hierarchy’s continued assertions of partisan neutrality was the fact that when Mormon leaders first spoke out publicly against abortion, gay rights, and the ERA, not one of these issues yet constituted a significant wedge between the two major parties. As historian J. Brooks Flippen points out, on the eve of the 1976 elections “groups advocating one side or the other” on these three issues, including Schlafly’s STOP-ERA, “directed their lobbying at both parties.” Both parties were still ambivalent on abortion rights, neither one was yet prepared to fully take up the cause of gay rights, and as late as 1976, both parties’ establishment wings, if not their grassroots components, supported the ERA.76 But over the next four years and beyond, the Republican and Democratic Parties increasingly staked out much clearer positions on these issues as each one moved, respectively, in a more socially conservative and socially liberal direction. One result of these intraparty transformations over which the LDS Church had little to no influence was Utah’s full-fledged embrace of the Reagan Revolution. When the 1980 elections arrived, no state gave a higher percentage of its overall vote to the Republican candidate than Utah, later prompting political scientist Ron Hrebener to dub Utah “the most Republican state in the union.”77 75 The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, 15-16. J. Brooks Flippen, Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2011), 64-70. 77 Hrebenar, “Most Republican State in the Union,” 103. 76 339 The two parties’ increasingly divergent positions between 1976, the year the First Presidency released its first official, signed statement against the ERA, and 1980, the year Reagan captured the White House, were reflected in the subtle yet watershed alterations made to their respective national platforms. In 1976 their platform boasted that Republicans had been the first party in America, all the way back in 1940, to endorse the ERA. Believing that it still constituted “the embodiment” of the principle of equal rights for women, the party remained committed to “its swift ratification.”78 On the divisive issue of abortion, the platform was far more ambiguous. Thanks in large measure to the dedication of Phyllis Schlafly and her allies, the party’s pro-life wing managed to insert a brief plank in support of “the efforts of those” fighting for a constitutional amendment to protect “the right to life for unborn children.”79 However, the platform seemed more intent on highlighting the multiplicity of views on abortion that existed within the party while recognizing the “complex questions” and understandable passions it engendered.80 In a general way, meanwhile, the Democrats’ 1976 platform mirrored that of their Republican rivals by likewise endorsing the ERA and taking an ambiguous stance on abortion. Far from offering a glowing endorsement of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, the platform merely stated its opposition to efforts to overturn Roe via a constitutional amendment. Nowhere, however, did it explicitly repudiate other possible means of overturning the Court’s decision.81 78 Donald Bruce Johnson, comp., National Party Platforms, Volume II: 1960-1976, rev. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 976. 79 Flippen, Jimmy Carter, 87. 80 Johnson, National Party Platforms, 976. 81 Ibid., 925-926. 340 Four years later both parties had staked out much clearer positions, especially on abortion. Whereas their platform in 1976 had merely voiced support for those within the party fighting for a constitutional ban, Republicans now framed the fight for a constitutional amendment as the official position of their party. The 1980 Republican national platform also marked the beginning of the GOP’s historic, and for many party members tragic, retreat from the ERA.82 By contrast, not only did Democrats reaffirm their support for the ERA in crystal clear language, but they also threatened to withhold funds from Democratic candidates who opposed the amendment and boycott states that refused to ratify. Like their opponents, moreover, Democrats had also overcome much of their earlier ambivalence on abortion, stating clearly their support for Roe v. Wade and their unequivocal opposition to a constitutional ban.83 Thus between 1976 and 1980, perhaps the most critical period in the Mormon Church’s immersion into the culture wars, one political party had moved in a stridently pro-life direction while abandoning its earlier support for the ERA, and the other major party had reaffirmed and even amplified its earlier support for the ERA while solidifying its standing as the nation’s pro-choice party. At the same time that the two parties’ platforms were undergoing these important alterations, Republican candidates were proving far more attractive to LDS voters than their Democratic rivals. As early as the Republican primaries of 82 Donald Bruce Johnson, comp., National Party Platforms of 1980, Supplement to National Party Platforms, 1840-1976 (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1982), 181-183. Republicans did not explicitly condemn the ERA in their 1980 platform, but in contrast to their most recent platforms, they now refused to endorse it. Flippen, Jimmy Carter, 278. 83 Ibid., 47, 60-62. 341 1976, which he ultimately lost, Ronald Reagan’s immense popularity in the Beehive State was undeniable. Far sooner than the campaign’s leading frontrunners, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the Reagan camp recognized the still largely untapped potential of the budding Religious Right. So while Ford and Carter both waffled on the issue of abortion, for example, Reagan apologized early in his campaign for signing a liberal abortion bill as governor of California and pledged his support for a constitutional ban.84 Reagan eventually conceded the nomination to the incumbent Ford, but not before winning the support of all twenty of Utah’s delegates to the upcoming Republican National Convention.85 Soon thereafter Reagan officially endorsed the upstart senatorial candidate Orrin Hatch in his bid to unseat the seasoned Democratic veteran, Frank Moss.86 Although Hatch and Moss were both church members, the former was far more aggressive in his efforts to depict himself as the champion of Mormon values while associating Moss with secular liberalism.87 Hatch echoed his church leaders, for example, by denouncing pornography as well as violent and indecent material on television. In contrast Moss mostly refused to make moral issues an important part of his campaign, although he did accuse Hatch of taking money from the beer magnate Joseph Coors.88 Both candidates proclaimed their personal opposition to abortion, and indeed, Moss even broke from his party by voicing his support for a 84 Flippen, Jimmy Carter, 73-74. As Jay Logan Rogers notes, Utah Republicans did not hold a presidential primary in 1976. However, polling indicated that “a majority of GOP voters in the state favored Reagan” over Ford. Rogers, “Utah’s Right Turn,” 25. 86 Ibid., 25-26. 87 Ibid., 27-46. 88 Ibid., 36, 39. 85 342 right-to-life amendment. However, his membership in a party that was then moving in a pro-choice direction made him guilty by association in the eyes of many Utahns.89 Finally, Moss’s well known support for the ERA (he had helped get it through the Senate in 1972) was beginning to collide with the church hierarchy’s budding public opposition. In fact, the First Presidency released its first signed statement against the ERA just a week and a half before the 1976 elections.90 Hatch’s strategy of conflating Moss with the more liberal ideas taking root in his party, even those with which he disagreed, would likely not have resulted in the Mormon Democrat’s defeat had the LDS hierarchy not already been so outspoken in denouncing feminism, abortion, and the ERA. If Reagan was on track to become “Utah’s favorite president since it obtained statehood,” then Jimmy Carter, who had never enjoyed much support in the Beehive State to begin with, saw his reputation among Utahns sink even lower during his presidency.91 A born-again Christian, Carter personally viewed such practices as abortion and homosexuality as sinful. However, his adherence to an older Baptist tradition of church-state separation convinced him that it was not the government’s place to legislate morality, a fact that disillusioned many conservative evangelicals who, according to J. Brooks Flippen, initially “thought him one of their own.”92 Among several acts Carter committed during his presidency that alienated the Religious Right, including anti-ERA Mormons, was his decision in October 1978 to 89 Ibid., 34-35, 37. “LDS Leaders Oppose ERA,” Deseret News, Oct. 22, 1976. 91 Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 166. 92 Flippen, Jimmy Carter, 21. 90 343 sign a controversial bill extending the deadline for the ERA’s ratification from 1979 to 1982.93 Carter then managed to enrage the small number of pro-ERA Mormons when, the following month, he accepted the First Presidency’s invitation to speak at the Salt Lake Tabernacle in honor of National Family Week. In a personal letter to the president, church member and ERA supporter Marjorie Childs reasoned that given their militant opposition to the ERA, for Carter to meet with LDS leaders is “’rubbing salt in the wounds’ of us Democrats.” According to Childs, Carter should “either not come [to Utah] at all or come and make two appearances,” one with the LDS Church and the other with the Equal Rights Coalition of Utah.94 At the very least, some of his advisors suggested, the president should use his speech to reaffirm his support for the ERA. But as Flippen notes, Carter was often loath during his presidency to adopt any kind of coherent political strategy designed to win over religious voters. To the disappointment of Utah’s ERA supporters, Carter did not even mention, let alone endorse, the proposed amendment during his tabernacle address.95 At the national level, Reagan’s victory over Carter in the 1980 presidential election actually came by a rather slim margin. But in Utah and Idaho, the two most Mormon states in the country, Reagan won by a landslide.96 Moreover, the GOP’s success in Utah went far beyond the presidential race. As late as 1976, Democrats 93 Wilentz, The Age of Reagan, 88. Marjorie Childs to Jimmy Carter, Nov. 14, 1978. Copy in the Marchant Papers, Box 4, Folder 5. 95 Flippen, Jimmy Carter, 187-188 96 Whereas Reagan won just 50.7 percent of the national vote in 1980, he captured 72.8 percent of the votes cast in Utah, the only state to award him over 70 percent. In neighboring Idaho, the state that gave Reagan his second greatest margin of victory, he won 66.4 percent of the vote. Hrebenar, “Most Republican State in the Union,” 103-104. 94 344 had actually outnumbered Republicans three to one in Utah’s Congressional Delegation. Now, for the first time since the early 1950s, Republicans monopolized Utah’s two Senate and two House seats. Although Democratic Governor Scott Matheson managed to win reelection in 1980, he once again found himself in the unenviable position of having to work with large Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature.97 Far exceeding its brief shift to the right in the 1950s, Utah’s newest alignment with the GOP would endure for the remainder of the century and beyond. Democratic presidential candidates were not competitive in the Beehive State in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, in fact, Utahns gave more votes to independent candidate Ross Perot than to future president Bill Clinton, who came in third in the state. With Orrin Hatch winning reelection every six years and with former senator Wallace Bennett’s son, Robert, succeeding Jake Garn in 1993, both of Utah’s Senate seats would remain safely in Republican hands. In 1985 Republicans captured the Utah governorship for the first time in twenty years and proceeded to hold it for the rest of the century, all while maintaining their unthreatened control over the state legislature.98 So marginalized had they become by the end of the century that in the 1998 congressional elections, in what the Salt Lake Tribune identified as “a first in Utah history,” Utah Democrats did not even bother fielding a candidate to challenge the incumbent Republican representative, Chris Cannon.”99 97 Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia, 165-166. Ibid., 165-167. 99 Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church.” 98 345 As one-party rule reemerged in the Beehive State, the LDS Church once again found itself, as it did every time the state underwent a significant political or cultural shift, as the proverbial elephant in the room. While Mormon leaders continued to profess their political neutrality, the vast majority of their American members, especially in Utah, now voted Republican, and their Democratic members were quickly becoming a rare and occasionally maligned breed. “It is no longer merely a joke that a good Mormon cannot be a Democrat,” Eugene England complained in 1995, “and Mormon Democrats are constantly on the defensive, seeming to feel a need to apologize for even being Democrats, whatever their particular views.”100 What responsibility, if any, did the church have to correct this partisan disparity? Marlin Jensen reminded church members in his interview with the Tribune that this was not the first time Utah politics had been so dangerously unbalanced. Fortunately the Mormon hierarchy in the 1890s had acted to extinguish the poisonous partisan rivalry between the Mormon majority and the Gentile minority, he pointed out. “Thus, wonder of wonders,” Mormon political scientist J.D. Williams observed in the Tribune article, “theocracy was the mother of democracy in the territory of Utah.”101 Williams failed to mention how difficult the transition from theocracy to democracy back in the 1890s had been. As Eugene England pointed out a century later, the church’s earlier intervention on behalf of Republicans had been a bitter pill for Mormon Democrats, convincing many that they were second-class citizens in 100 101 England, Making Peace, 95. Harrie, “GOP Dominance Troubles Church.” 346 Zion.102 For a more recent example of what could go wrong when the hierarchy elected to exercise its considerable political clout, Mormon Democrats needed to look no further than to the effects of the church’s campaign against the ERA and its public opposition to abortion. Regardless of how nonpartisan church leaders’ intentions may have been, their decision to join forces with other segments of the Religious Right in combating feminism, abortion, and gay rights had clearly benefited the party that, not coincidentally, now dominated Utah’s political landscape. Not surprisingly, many Mormons on the left grew increasingly suspicious of any church involvement in politics. At the same time, other Latter-day Saints who likewise found the newest chapter of the Mormon-Republican pact deeply troubling nevertheless believed that the prophets had a moral responsibility to continue speaking out. Hence, even among the small number of Mormons who were most uncomfortable with the latest iteration of one-party rule in Zion, the precise role that church leaders should henceforth play in political controversies continued to generate considerable debate. One outspoken critic of his church’s involvement in the political arena, regardless of which party, interest group, or legislation such involvement might benefit, was University of Utah political scientist J.D. Williams. In a 1981 article in Sunstone, he frankly admitted to agreeing with many of the political positions the church had historically taken, from denouncing communism in 1936 to supporting civil rights in 1963, among several others. Given the never-ending list of tragedies confronting the modern world, he also acknowledged the inevitable flak any church 102 England, Making Peace, 94-95. 347 would face by going the apolitical route. “One can readily see where the easier part of the argument on the church in politics lies,” he wrote. “It lies with those who contend that the church which stands silent in the face of moral outrage is a church that has lost its soul.” Nevertheless, by at least 1981 Williams was convinced that the mingling of religion and politics did far more harm than good, both to churches as well as to nations, thus making a complete separation of the two the only consistent position one could take. Part of his argument was that even though church leaders were entitled to inspiration and even revelation regarding spiritual matters, they rarely possessed the requisite level of expertise that would otherwise entitle them to make authoritative pronouncements regarding complicated political matters. In his view the historical record contained far too many examples of embarrassing and even shameful positions Mormon leaders had taken, ranging from their refusal to condemn slavery back in the 1830s, to their costly decision of late to oppose the ERA. Given what he saw as “a singular lack of inspiration in the political pronouncements of the Church,” Williams saw no other solution for the Saints than to follow the democratic creed of thinking and acting for themselves. Ironically, his argument that church leaders’ lack of expertise disqualified them to address complex political questions undermined in part his emphasis on democratic selfreliance by suggesting that political and intellectual elites were alone capable of recognizing wise policies. He also sidestepped the question of whether or not earlier church leaders who did have direct experience in politics and government—namely 348 Reed Smoot, J. Rueben Clark, and Ezra Taft Benson—were thereby exempt from this prohibition. Although he never put it in quite these terms, Williams’ article constituted a kind of indirect attack on the very idea of theodemocracy. The perfect balance of theos and demos that Joseph Smith had once envisioned was impossible to achieve, Williams implied several times, because the theocratic element would eventually overtake its democratic counterpart, especially in heavily religious communities such as modern-day Utah where the statements of church leaders were afforded so much weight. As numerous examples from recent LDS history made frighteningly clear, he argued, church involvement in politics had the sinister effect of replacing critical thinking with blind obedience, an especially dangerous outcome in a nation where sovereignty resided in the people. “Democracy simply cannot survive in theocratic soil,” Williams concluded, because “’revealed will’ replaces independent thought…[and] slowly but inevitably, the church comes to dominate the state.” Even if unintentionally, Williams’ article thus pointed to some of the potential vulnerabilities of the demos in theodemocracy. If the debate was over the moment the prophet spoke, as President Tanner had unequivocally stated, and if the prophet’s counsel demanded obedience whether it applied to the spiritual or to the temporal realm, what recourse did demos really have? Was theodemocracy little more than a euphemism for theocracy?103 Taking the opposite position was University of Utah law professor Edwin Brown Firmage, who strongly believed that “the Church must speak out on moral 103 J.D. Williams, “In a Democracy, Church Interference in Politics is Dangerous,” Sunstone 6, no. 4 (July-August 1981): 36, 40-44. 349 and upon spiritual issues.” While Williams feared the possibility of theos smashing demos, Firmage scoffed at the notion that in this increasingly secular age, ecclesiastical tyranny actually posed a serious threat to state power. For Firmage the real danger lay in the possibility of “the barren secular wilderness of the state” steadily encroaching upon “the garden of the church.” When he warned of state encroachments upon religion, Firmage had something more subtle in mind than obvious cases of government persecution of churches and believers. Secular governments also endanger churches, he argued, by encouraging or even simply by tolerating the kinds of sinful cultures in which religions have a difficult time thriving. Firmage’s solution was not to advocate converting the secular state into a theocracy, but rather, allowing churches the greatest possible freedom “to be actively engaged in defending moral and spiritual principles.” LDS leaders had frequently defended their own incursions into the political realm on similar grounds, contending as they did in 1980 that “it is the responsibility of churches to provide and safeguard a moral framework in which their members can exercise their beliefs.”104 After all, churches were not isolated islands unaffected by changes to their surrounding environments. If left unchecked, Firmage warned, national sin threatened not only the spiritual but also the temporary destiny of God’s kingdom. The most obvious form this presently took, he believed, was the ongoing arms race and ever-present possibility of nuclear annihilation. “Has the Church nothing to say about war since some see it simply as the extension of the political process among 104 The Church and the Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, 15-16. 350 nations?” he asked. To expect church leaders to remain silent regarding such existential threats because their statements might have political repercussions was to belittle their own desire for self-preservation, he implied. It also risked converting the gospel, he wrote, into a “pharisaical spirituality devoid of brotherhood and applied Christianity, curiously illiberal.” Finally, he contended in language reminiscent of Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and other nineteenth-century champions of theodemocracy, trying to squeeze God Almighty into some narrow, arbitrary human category of what might be considered spiritual at any given time was a clear affront to the maker of the universe for whom “all things are spiritual.”105 For Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, the suggestion that God’s prophets should or even could remain detached from the sordid world of politics was terribly naïve. Since the days of Moses and the Apostle Paul, he insisted, God’s chosen messengers had been charged with preaching his word to all classes of people, ranging from kings to peasants. According to Nibley, the prophets had never been averse to using earthen vessels, including politics, both to disseminate God’s word and to help build up God’s church. For Nibley this pragmatic awareness of the usefulness of earthen vessels helped to explain, among other things, why modern church leaders placed such a high premium on civic engagement. “It is very much a political drama, this restoration of the gospel,” he wrote.106 105 Edwin Brown Firmage, “A Church Cannot Stand Silent in the Midst of Moral Decay,” Sunstone 6, no. 4 (July-August 1981): 37-39. 106 Hugh W. Nibley, “In the Party but Not of the Party,” June 3, 1976. In Hugh W. Nibley, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley: Vol. 13, eds., Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks (Deseret Book Company: Salt Lake City, 1994), 113. 351 But even though God’s servants had always been “up to their neck in politics,” Nibley continued, they were also “maddeningly aloof from political commitment to any party or faction,” a distinction that unintentionally yet perfectly captured Joseph Smith’s heretical relationship to the political parties of his day. In other words, Nibley wrote, there was a crucial difference between viewing a party as a means to an end and conflating “one’s own political…ideas with the gospel.” The message of the prophets might occasionally synchronize with one or another party’s platform, he acknowledged, yet it was imperative for God’s people to continuously forge their own path. “The gospel goes its own way: it may never commit itself wholly to one faction or another,” he wrote. “Once it does, endowing that faction or party with religious sanction and moral supremacy, infinite mischief is done.”107 Firmage reiterated Nibley’s concerns, even going so far as to warn his church leaders never to follow “the particular political propensities of a man or a political party…as if it were God’s will.” To do so, he declared, would constitute a serious violation of God’s commandment never to take his name in vain.108 Nibley’s formula for being what he called “in the party but not of the party” raises several pressing questions: Had Mormon leaders in the 1970s and 1980s succeeded in carving out their own independent political path? Were their political positions grounded in the deepest principles of Mormonism and only unintentionally and even superficially similar to one or another party’s platform? Moreover, even if the hierarchy’s repeated professions of partisan neutrality were entirely sincere, was it even possible in the politically charged atmosphere of the 107 108 Ibid., 113, 120. Firmage, “A Church Cannot Stand Silent,” 38-39. 352 culture wars for Mormon leaders to convince insiders and outsiders alike that the Mormon Church was not simply an arm of the Republican Party? On the other hand, did the external partisan commitments and ideological persuasions of certain LDS leaders contribute to a kind of tunnel-vision perspective that helps to explain why the hierarchy concentrated so heavily on some moral threats, namely abortion and especially the ERA, while ignoring so many others? The clearest indication that the LDS hierarchy in the age of Reagan could indeed pursue an independent political path, one that only incidentally, and sometimes never, aligned with either party, was the First Presidency’s statement against the MX missile system released on May 5, 1981.109 The MX missile referred to the Pentagon’s ambitious plan to construct a massive underground missile launch site beneath the Utah and Nevada deserts. To prevent the Soviets from knowing exactly where they were at any precise moment in time, hundreds of underground missiles, each one armed with multiple nuclear warheads, would be placed on mobile tracks so as to continuously shuttle them from one hidden location to another. The Pentagon lauded the MX missile as the perfect deterrent against a possible Soviet first strike. But a growing number of critics throughout the Intermountain West, including politicians, environmentalists, leaders of various Christian denominations, and Native Americans, attacked the program as an 109 “Statement of the First Presidency on Basing of the MX Missile,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Week Ending May 9, 1981. 353 unnecessary waste of money that would damage the local ecology while placing the region firmly in the crosshairs of Soviet aggression.110 The fact that the American public was first apprised of the Pentagon’s plan in September 1979 means that it took the First Presidency almost two years to decide both what they thought of the MX, and whether they considered it appropriate to issue their own public response. Anti-MX activists who dedicated much of their efforts during this stretch to converting the LDS hierarchy to their side, especially those within the Mormon fold who were most familiar with the views of the current leadership, had good reason to believe that their arguments would resonate with church President Spencer W. Kimball.111 Not since J. Rueben Clark, a man Kimball had deeply admired, had there been such a passionate advocate for peace and vocal critic of militarism in the First Presidency.112 Alongside his consistent warnings of America’s internal moral decay in the form of pornography, abortion, infidelity, homosexuality, and radical feminism, Kimball also attacked the nation for what he saw as its rejection of the gospel of peace and reliance instead on “gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications.” In the June 1976 issue of the Ensign celebrating America’s bicentennial, Kimball warned his fellow countrymen, in no way exempting the citizens of Zion, that their appetite for war risked jeopardizing America’s divine mission. “We are a warlike people,” he forcefully wrote, “easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord…When 110 Mathew Glass, Citizens Against the MX: Public Languages in the Nuclear Age (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1993). 111 On the efforts of anti-MX activists to bring the LDS Church over to their side, see Jacob W. Olmstead, “Educating the Mormon Hierarchy: The Grassroots Opposition to the MX in Utah,” in Cannon and Embry, Utah in the Twentieth Century, 146-161. 112 Quinn, Elder Statesman, 105. 354 threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching.”113 Jeremiads deploring the ongoing nuclear arms race were subsequently issued in the First Presidency’s Christmas 1980 and Easter 1981 messages, although neither one specifically mentioned the MX.114 When they released their official statement against the MX the following month, the members of the First Presidency partly framed the proposed missile system as simply one more ugly manifestation of a phenomenon they had been decrying for years. But what made the MX especially offensive in their eyes was its potential proximity to Zion. “Our fathers came to this western area to establish a base from which to carry the gospel of peace to the peoples of the earth,” it declared. “It is ironic, and a denial of the very essence of that gospel, that in this same general area there should be constructed a mammoth weapons system potentially capable of destroying much of civilization.”115 Critics of the statement sought to assure the Mormon leadership, in the words of conservative columnist William F. Buckley, that “the logic of the MX” was to “overtax the capabilities of the Soviet Union” so as to achieve victory in the Cold War without actually firing a shot.116 But in a passage that echoed the church’s earlier opposition to UMT, the First Presidency again 113 Spencer W. Kimball, “The False Gods We Worship,” Ensign 6, no. 6 (June 1976): 6. “Christmas Message from the First Presidency,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Week Ending Dec. 20, 1980. “Easter Message—A Plea for Peace,” Church News section of the Deseret News, Week Ending Apr. 18, 1981. 115 “Statement of the First Presidency on Basing of the MX Missile.” 116 William F. Buckley Jr., “The Strange Declaration of the Mormons,” National Review 33, June 26, 1981, 740-741. 114 355 asserted that “men have seldom created armaments that eventually were not put to use.”117 Beyond simply opposing the MX for specific demographic, environmental, or economic reasons, then, the First Presidency had taken the more radical step of emphatically rejecting one of the key pillars of Reaganism—the idea that amassing more destructive weapons than one’s enemy was the key to a lasting peace.118 Even in the short-term, however, the church’s public opposition to the MX missile did almost nothing to lessen the appeal of Reagan-style conservatism among American church members. For some observers, in fact, grassroots opposition to the MX was actually consistent with rather than contrary to Reaganism because it affirmed the principle of states’ rights.119 More important was the fact that Reagan and the Pentagon eventually canceled the program.120 On a wider note, the case of the MX missile further substantiates the fact that Reagan’s popularity among the Mormons rose from multiple factors, ranging from his support for religious conservatives in the culture wars to his almost mystical embrace of American exceptionalism.121 When Latter-day Saints first divided along national party lines in 1891, nothing worried Mormon leaders so much as the prospect of their people universally snubbing Republicans and going wholesale into the Democratic Party. Just over a century later, Marlin Jensen called for a new era of political pluralism 117 “Statement of the First Presidency on Basing of the MX Missile.” Wilentz, The Age of Reagan, 138. 119 Hrebenar, ““Most Republican State in the Union,” 103-104. 120 According to Jacob Olmstead, Reagan was furious when he first learned of the church’s opposition to the MX because he had already decided to nix the program and now feared that his decision would be construed as evidence of having caved in to Mormon pressure. Olmstead, “Diabolical Disneyland,” 95-96. 121 Wilentz, The Age of Reagan, 129, 134-137. 118 356 among Utah Mormons in the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune. Notwithstanding his appeals, however, Utah remains a viable Republican stronghold. Without the rise of a new kind of theodemocracy in the 1970s, with church leaders admonishing their members toward greater civic engagement with an end to protecting Zion and its American sanctuary from dangerous new threats, American Mormons’ overwhelming conversion to the political right may not have taken place. At the same time, their opposition to the MX missile proved that far from being a tool of the GOP, the LDS hierarchy remained independent of either party and sought to pursue its own path grounded in the deepest principles of Mormonism, just as Hugh Nibley and Edwin B. Firmage had hoped. Nearly four decades later, it remains to be seen how this increasingly global faith will deal with political controversies—domestic and foreign—moving forward, and what impact that may have on state, national, and even global politics in the twenty-first century. CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION: THE NATION OF PROMISE IN A GLOBAL ZION In the early months of 1996, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached an important milestone. For the first time since the establishment of their church in Fayette, New York on April 6, 1830, the majority of Latter-day Saints now lived in nations other than the United States.1 From the earliest days of their movement, Mormons had boldly prophesied of their faith’s global future. In his personal history written in 1838, Joseph Smith recalled that when the angel Moroni informed him on the night of September 21, 1823 that “God had a work for me to do,” the heavenly messenger also told the obscure eighteen-year-old that “my name should be had for good and evil among all nations kindreds and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.”2 After announcing the coming of “a marvelous work…among the children of men,” one of Smith’s earliest revelations likened the world to a “field…already to harvest.”3 With their foundational commitment to follow Jesus’ admonition to “Go ye into all the world” (Mark 16:15), it was perhaps second nature for Mormons in 1996 to conclude, as 1 Arrington and Bitton, The Mormon Experience, 16. Jay M. Todd, “More Members Now Outside U.S. Than in U.S.,” Ensign (March 1996). 2 Davidson, Whittaker, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Histories, Vol. 1: 1832-1844, 222. 3 Mackay, Dirkmaat, Underwood, Woodford, and Hartley, Documents, Vol. 1: July 1828-June 1831, 913. 358 Ensign editor Jay M. Todd did, that “the Church is divinely destined to become ever more international.”4 Yet for most of its history, Mormonism’s global aspirations had existed alongside of, and indeed, were often secondary to, its slightly more dominant nationalist impulses. Under Zion nationalism, converts from overseas were expected to leave their respective Fatherlands and immigrate to “the land of promise” to help build up God’s kingdom.5 The end of Zion nationalism brought an end to the commandment to physically gather to Zion, making it possible and necessary to begin building up the LDS Church in different nations.6 Yet as we have seen, universalism was not the immediate successor to Zion nationalism. The majority of twentieth-century Mormons in both the pulpit and the pew were American-born. Even when they were chastising their nation, most of them readily accepted George Q. Cannon’s designation of the United States as “the head of all the nations of the earth.”7 In the decades following World War II, unprecedented church growth outside of the U.S. began to collide with the most unfortunate byproduct of Zion’s tumultuous upbringing in “the nation of promise.” As historian Paul Reeve has shown, the priesthood and temple bans that came to form the final impediment to Mormon universalism had their origins in earlier Mormon efforts to disprove charges of racial inferiority and climb to the top of America’s racial, and by 4 St. Mark 16:15 (King James Version). Todd, “More Members Now Outside U.S.” Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1993), 24. 6 Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 198. 7 George Q. Cannon, Oct. 1899, Conference Reports, 48-49. 5 359 extension, social hierarchy. When Americanization required them to abandon polygamy and theocracy, the only change the Saints had to make to their race policy, Reeve implies, was to further solidify it.8 All the while, however, the Mormon people did not forget their original charge to bring the gospel to “all the world” (Mark 16:15).9 In 1978, due in large measure to the church’s rapid growth in nations with racially-mixed populations where a strict adherence to its so-called “Negro policy” was, in Reeve’s words, “a standard impossible to police,” President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation ending the priesthood and temple bans.10 As the demographic milestone of 1996 soon proved, Mormonism’s global aspirations could now become reality. *** This dissertation has argued that Mormon political thought and discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries grew out of the Latter-day Saints’ commitment to, first, build up Zion in the Promised Land, and then, beginning at the turn of the century, to build up Zion and the United States, the former having been shorn of its nationalist, theodemocratic ambitions, and the latter having been absolved of its earlier transgressions and given a new lease on life. Regardless of their differences, the myriad strands of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mormon political discourse were all rooted in the fact that up until 1996, the majority of 8 Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 106-214, 208-210. St. Mark 16:15 (King James Version). 10 Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 210. Smith, Doctrine and Covenants, Official Declaration—2. 9 360 Latter-day Saints lived in “the land of promise” and were citizens of “the nation of promise.” For most of the nineteenth century, the Saints valorized the land more than the nation because the first provided the sacred venue on which to gather lost Israel and build Zion. Their earliest outlook toward the land and nation of their birth was consistent with the Book of Mormon, which, Richard Bushman observes, “sacralized the land but condemned the [American] people.”11 However, Book of Mormon prophecies of Gentiles assisting in the gathering of Israel left open the possibility that the Saints might soon call upon the United States for help.12 After their nation had failed them, early Mormons came to the conclusion that what Abraham Lincoln would famously call “the last best hope of earth” was in fact rather hopeless.13 Even so, their brief attempt to build Zion within and with the help of the United States had laid a foundation for future reconciliation. As their isolation came to an end and as pressure from the federal government became impossible to withstand, the Saints grew more willing to entertain the possibility that, as John Taylor prophesied, “Our destinies are interwoven with the destinies of the United States.”14 By the time reconciliation had been achieved, Mormon political thought had been thoroughly Americanized. Once the Smoot hearings had drawn to a close in 1907, LDS leaders could not deny that on the floor of the U.S. Senate in words that were broadcast in newspapers throughout the nation, they had spent the previous four years describing their people as fiercely individualistic rather than 11 Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 104. Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 33-45, 68-74, 618-627. 13 Quoted in Foner, The Fiery Trial, 237. 14 Millennial Star, Vol. 49, 29-30. 12 361 communitarian, independent-minded rather than obedient. Mormon officials had also gone to great lengths to assure the public that they would henceforth respect the metaphorical, ever-shifting wall separating the church from the state. Theodemocracy as it existed in the nineteenth century was no longer. Progressive Era Mormons had also embraced their own quasiofficial doctrine of American exceptionalism, one that combined their earlier belief in the nation’s inspired founding and divine Constitution with a new faith in its people’s virtues. Hoping to further purify their republic without threatening the status quo, Latterday Saints in this period generally supported such moderate progressive causes as women’s suffrage and prohibition, although in each case, political concerns temporarily dampened some Saints’ enthusiasm. They also tended to attack more radical movements on the left, namely labor unionism, populism, and especially socialism, mostly on the grounds that they threatened individual free agency. A loose consensus in favor of moderate progressivism seemed to be taking hold in the LDS community. However, the 1912 general conference exchange between Charles Penrose of the Twelve and B.H. Roberts of the Seventy exposed the beginnings of a fault line in Mormonism between conservatives like Penrose who feared the effects of democratic reform on the nation’s inspired Constitution, and progressives like Roberts who trusted the people to periodically improve an already inspired yet imperfect document. Foreign policy became yet another area of disagreement. The contentious League of Nations controversy foreshadowed future debates among Latter-day Saints who, despite their shared belief in American exceptionalism, would sharply differ over how the United States should pursue its global mission. 362 If the decline of anti-Mormon persecution during the Progressive Era had revealed at least one of the advantages of reconciling with the United States, then the events of the 1930s illustrated, at least from the hierarchy’s standpoint, the dangers of allowing their people to grow too close to their nation. With two conservative Republicans and one alienated Democrat making up the First Presidency by 1934, the LDS hierarchy began to cast the New Deal as an existential threat to their nation, and by implication, to the Kingdom of God. In an effort to lift their people out of poverty while insulating them from the degrading effects of government dependency, Mormon leaders in 1936 launched an ambitious welfare operation that challenged Latter-day Saints to emulate their pioneer forebears. While most of them welcomed the new welfare plan, however, few Mormons were as critical of the New Deal as their church leaders. Nevertheless, the hierarchy’s gloomy outlook during the 1930s stood as sobering evidence that reconciliation with the United States and the general optimism of the Progressive Era had not eradicated, and would likely never eradicate, the premillennial pessimism and isolationist proclivities of nineteenth-century Mormonism. During World War II and the opening decade and a half of the Cold War, Mormon political and religious discourse grew closer than ever to American political and religious discourse. No less than their fellow countrymen, Latter-day Saints in the 1940s and 1950s reveled in their nation’s rise to the status of global superpower. At the same time, Mormon leaders and public figures in this period resembled and drew inspiration from the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, theologians, and statesmen when they warned the American people, Mormon and 363 non-Mormon alike, of the potentially suicidal dangers of unchecked pride. In the words of scholar Jason W. Stevens, these were years “when Americans became versed in the lesson that they were not only favored by God but also under his judgment.”15 Within Mormonism, this tension was embodied most acutely in the person of Ezra Taft Benson. While no other LDS leader pontificated more frequently or with greater passion regarding America’s mission to assist the Kingdom of God, no other LDS leader was more fearful that the American people, even at the height of their economic and military power, might quickly go the way of the Nephites. For Benson and an increasingly outspoken coalition of Mormon conservatives, the greatest threats to the republic, which, in their minds, ipso facto made them the greatest threats to Zion, were homegrown liberalism and socialism. Their growing insistence that Latter-day Saints had a religious obligation to support conservatism and oppose liberalism provoked a small backlash among church members across the political spectrum. Their concern was not only that Benson and his allies were demonizing Latter-day Saints who did not share their political zeal. They also intimated that Benson’s hyper-Americanism risked making Zion far too dependent on its American sanctuary, just as J. Rueben Clark had earlier feared. By the 1960s, with the United States more divided than at any time since the Civil War, the most concerned Latter-day Saints on the right, and even some on the left, began to openly wonder whether the nation’s inspired Constitution was now hanging by a thread, as Joseph Smith had supposedly prophesied, and if so, what the 15 Stevens, God-Fearing and Free, 2-3. 364 Mormons must do to help turn their nation around. Benson and his allies continued to plead with the Saints to help stop liberalism before it morphed into communism. Meanwhile their growing body of critics accused right-wing Mormons of focusing so narrowly on government as to overlook the dozens of other threats to human freedom, including racism, poverty, and ignorance. Mormon moderates tried to assure both sides that the nation was still in a good place, but even they could not hide their concerns over the crisis in Vietnam nor mask their uncertainty over how the church should respond, both internally and externally, to the increasingly mainstream demands of the Civil Rights Movement. Whatever the claims of Mormon apologists, church members’ attitudes toward the Civil Rights Movement were often inseparable from their awareness of Mormon race policy. Many leaders and members worried that changes to the nation would force changes upon the church, rather than allow them to unfold according to God’s timetable. Other Mormons hoped the nationwide movement for racial justice would incentivize the church to expunge the final vestiges of its older parochialism and finally catch up to its original, universal ideals. By 1969 the hierarchy had elected to dig in and go its own way, citing its public support for civil rights as evidence that the church’s retention of the priesthood and temple bans was grounded not in racism, but in obedience to God’s sometimes mysterious will. During the final quarter of the century, the majority of American Mormons either stayed within or moved into the political right, where they largely remain to this day. Considering their outspoken preference for political balance among their people, especially in Mormon-heavy Utah, it was ironic that Mormon leaders helped 365 engender this new political imbalance by attacking, at the same time as the Republican Party, the perceived excesses of America’s liberal culture. In yet another historical irony, the Saints’ chief theological rivals—conservative evangelicals— deserved much of the credit for making the GOP even more attractive to Mormon voters who now sought a strong ally in the culture wars. After all, Protestant activists had been at the forefront of earlier efforts to break up nineteenth-century Mormonism’s political unity on the grounds that it was un-American and theocratic. A century later, by contrast, a new generation of American Protestants would play a key role in restoring political homogeneity to Zion. In all of these periods over the course of the century, the major expressions of Latter-day Saint political discourse derived from two underlying, interrelated questions: What ideas and policies would most benefit the Kingdom of God? And, what ideas and policies would most benefit the United States? As John Taylor had accurately predicted, modern Mormons came to see the destiny of their church and the destiny of their nation as interwoven. After all, if God blessed the United States with peace, prosperity, and of primary importance to the Latter-day Saints, religious freedom, then Zion would naturally reap the benefits. But if their republic faltered, the Mormons realized, then Zion too might suffer. Since modern Mormons in both the pulpit and the pew immediately disagreed over what was actually good and bad for their country, the underlying assumption that Zion and the United States now depended on one another, like other shared premises in the Mormon community, did not result in a consensus. However, it did establish a new foundation from which modern Mormon political discourse, in all of its variety, would spring. Hence, if 366 Mormon political thought ever undergoes another paradigm shift comparable to the one it experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, the most likely cause will not be the actions or influence of a specific party or political leader, but rather, Mormonism’s ascension to the status of a truly global, rather than merely American, faith. *** With Zion now moving in a decidedly global direction, is Mormon political thought—specifically the political thought of American Mormons—on the verge of such a paradigm shift? Will internationalization prompt LDS leaders to minimize the hitherto central role of the United States in the unfolding of God’s plan? Or will Mormonism’s unique perspective on American exceptionalism remain the key determinant shaping the political outlook of Latter-day Saints for many years to come? Looking ahead, will change or will continuity define the future of Mormon political thought? Will it remain essentially nationalist in scope, or will Zion’s new global presence engender a truly global political outlook? The early years of the twenty-first century suggest that for many American Mormons, the expansion of their church overseas in no way precludes their continued belief in America’s inspired origins and divine destiny, not to mention their ongoing conviction that Latter-day Saints have a special mission to maintain and further American greatness. Presently, the most well known Mormon exponent of American exceptionalism is former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican 367 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. As a pragmatic politician who has long sought to deflect charges of mixing religion and politics, Romney has mostly avoided making specific allusions to his Mormon faith in his books and speeches. He has also been quick to deny any accusation that as a Mormon politician, he sees himself fulfilling Joseph Smith’s purported prophecy that Latter-day Saints will one day step forward and save the nation’s inspired, albeit threatened, Constitution.16 But while Romney has been careful not to rest his “case for American greatness” on explicitly Mormon foundations, his own form of American nationalism, with its tendency to both elevate the United States above all other nations as well as to sound the trumpet in the face of any signs of internal decay, strongly mirrors the nationalism of twentieth-century Mormonism. In the years leading up to his 2012 presidential run, Romney repeatedly affirmed his unwavering belief in what he called, without any hesitation, “American exceptionalism.”17 By contrast, he complained, then President Barack Obama considered it ignorant and arrogant for Americans to assume their nation’s superiority over any other. “Obama is far too gifted a politician to say in plain words that America is merely one nation among many,” he wrote. “But his rhetoric offers clues into his thinking.” Romney deduced from such rhetoric that what Obama really wanted was a world in which all nations were on the same level, with no clear leader for any one to follow.18 But if America went into decline and abdicated its 16 Blythe, “Vernacular Mormonism,” 1-4. Thomas Burr, “Romney Candidacy Has Resurrected Last Days Prophecy of Mormon Saving the Constitution,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 4, 2007. 17 Mitt Romney, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 33. 18 Ibid., 28-29. 368 traditional role as global superpower, he warned, then nations with inferior values would immediately fill the vacuum of power. For Romney, then, America needs to remain strong not only to secure its own freedom and prosperity, but for the good of the entire world.19 Like earlier Mormon conservatives who took their cue from the Book of Mormon, Romney perceives the greatest threats to the republic coming from within. His interpretation of recent American history even includes its own, updated version of the apostasy narrative. Following the presidencies of Reagan and Bush, both of whom bravely stood up to Soviet aggression and helped win the Cold War, he wrote, Americans “believed that peace and prosperity were here to stay.” But then came the decadence of the 1990s. “Births to teenage mothers rose to their highest levels in decades, teenage drug use climbed, and pornography became the Internet’s biggest business,” he lamented. Echoing Ezra Taft Benson’s earlier Jeremiads, Romney’s greatest fear for America is that its people will succumb to complacency.20 Yet he remains optimistic. For Romney, there is no good reason why America’s role as “head of all the nations of the earth” should ever change. The popular works of LDS author Timothy Ballard provide further evidence of the continued propensity of many twenty-first-century American Latter-day Saints to regard the United States as God’s favored nation. The central argument running through most of Ballard’s books is that just as God once formed a covenant with ancient Israel, in modern times he has formed a covenant with his new Israel— 19 20 Ibid., 10-12. Ibid., 9. 369 the United States of America.21 “Had ancient Israel been faithful until the end,” he writes, “their national covenant might have remained intact until the present.”22 But Israel’s apostasy from truth and subsequent rejection of Christ forced God to find a new covenant people. Many centuries later, he believes, God found his ideal candidates among the modern-day, colonial inhabitants of the Promised Land. After delivering them from British tyranny, God inspired a select few to codify what Ballard calls “the American covenant” in the pages of two sacred texts: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.23 Several decades later, he continues, when anti-Mormon persecution and the cancerous sin of slavery threatened the new American covenant, God inspired Abraham Lincoln to preserve America’s chosen status. In fact, Ballard goes so far as to argue that Lincoln procured and read a copy of the Book of Mormon during the darkest days of his presidency, inspiring him to free the slaves and adopt a more conciliatory policy toward the spurned Latter-day Saints.24 Like Romney, Ballard sees trouble on the horizon, yet he continues to regard America as God’s covenant nation, one charged not only with housing the restored church, but with taking 21 For different iterations of this argument, see Timothy Ballard, The American Covenant: One Nation Under God, Discovery Through Revolution (New York: Timothy Ballard, 2011); Timothy Ballard, The Lincoln Hypothesis: A Modern-Day Abolitionist Investigates the Possible Connection Between Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and Abraham Lincoln (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2014); and Timothy Ballard, The Washington Hypothesis: A Modern-Day Investigator Explores the Possible Connection Between the American Covenant, Latter-day Temples, and George Washington (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016). 22 Ballard, American Covenant, 4. 23 Ibid., 1-77. 24 Ballard, The Lincoln Hypothesis, 106-124, 179-186. 370 God’s gift of free agency to all nations.25 In the writings of both Romney and Ballard, then, one can discern the makings of a kind of Mormon neoconservatism. Believing as they did that Israel remained God’s chosen people, nineteenthcentury Mormons would have found strange Ballard’s insistence that the original covenant with Israel had somehow been transferred to the United States. The Book of Mormon may have promised “whatsoever nation [that] shall possess” the Promised Land rewards for serving Jesus Christ, but in the minds of early Latter-day Saints, the book’s publication signaled that the gathering of scattered Israel and the establishment of Zion could now begin.26 At its best, they believed, the United States was an inspired Gentile nation that could serve as an important ally to modern Israel.27 Not surprisingly, Ballard’s writings have far more in common with twentieth-century Mormon political discourse, specifically that of its right-wing variants. That being said, what makes his works even more striking than those of such earlier Mormon exponents of American exceptionalism as Ezra Taft Benson, Cleon Skousen, and Richard Vetterli is the fact that Ballard is publishing them not in the 1950s and 1960s, but at a time when Mormonism is more international than ever before. Though it seldom reached the heights found in Ballard’s writings, veneration for the Constitution, the founding fathers, and Lincoln was commonplace in general conference talks throughout most of the twentieth century. Then in the closing years of the twentieth and opening years of the twenty-first centuries, with Mormon 25 Ibid., 5. Ballard, American Covenant, 5-12. Skousen, The Book of Mormon, 677. 27 See Chapter 1. 26 371 leaders adapting to an increasingly global audience, the hierarchy’s earlier tradition of posthumously Mormonizing American icons fell into abeyance. When addressing the entire church, today’s Mormon leaders are far less likely than their predecessors to admonish church members to help preserve the Constitution, or to make any allusions whatsoever to American exceptionalism. And yet, the Mormon hierarchy’s growing realization that theirs is no longer just an American church has neither lessened their concern for the nation’s temporal and moral wellbeing, nor curtailed their frequently controversial political activism. In less than two decades since the new century began, Mormon leaders have mobilized their members in California to support Proposition 8, publicly backed the so-called “Utah Compact” calling for sensible and humane immigration reform, helped craft the so-called “Utah Compromise” aimed at ensuring civil rights for gay and lesbian Utahns without infringing on religious freedom, and most recently, come out strongly against Utah’s medical marijuana initiative.28 While some observers may be tempted to reduce the hierarchy’s latest political actions to little more than a parochial desire to shape the environment in Utah (come what may to the rest of the nation), Mormon spokesmen have in fact been quick to hail both the Utah Compact and Utah Compromise in particular as models for other states to emulate.29 The future of their church may very well lie outside the United 28 Neil J. Young, “Mormons and Same-Sex Marriage: From ERA to Prop 8,” in Mason and Turner, Out of Obscurity, 144-172. “Church Supports Principles of Utah Compact on Immigration,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Newsroom, Nov. 11, 2010. Dennis Romboy, “LDS Church, LGBT Advocates Back Anti-Discrimination, Religious Rights Bill,” Deseret News, Mar. 4, 2015. “Utah Medical Marijuana Initiative,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Newsroom, May 11, 2018. 29 “The Utah Compact,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2010. “Utah Passes Antidiscrimination Bill Backed by Mormon Leaders,” New York Times, Mar. 12, 2015. 372 States, but for now, Mormon leaders show no indication that they will give up on the restoration’s birthplace any time soon.30 But if Zion’s budding globalization has yet to diminish the importance of the United States in the eyes of American Mormons, it does seem to have influenced how many of them, including those in the hierarchy, currently view some of the most pressing national and international political issues of the day. Mormon reactions to the campaign and early presidency of Donald J. Trump are a case in point. Leading up to the 2016 election, several media outlets took note of what journalist McKay Coppins first dubbed “Donald Trump’s Mormon problem.”31 Some even wondered whether their dislike of Trump marked the beginning of the end of American Mormons’ overwhelming support, going all the way back to Reagan, for the GOP.32 To be sure, Trump’s failure during the campaign to generate the same level of support among Mormon voters as past Republican nominees often had more to do with the messenger than with the message. As Coppins argued, Trump’s dismal performance in the primaries in the so-called “Book of Mormon belt…might seem intuitive. Mormonism is a faith that holds up chastity as a virtue and condemns pornography as a soul-rotting vice; Mr. Trump is an unabashed adulterer who has 30 John G. Turner, “Mormonism’s Global Future,” Wall Street Journal, Apr. 19, 2018. McKay Coppins, “Donald Trump’s Mormon Problem,” New York Times, June 13, 2016. Tara Golshen, “Donald Trump’s Mormon Problem, Explained,” Vox, Oct. 12, 2016. Mary Campbell, “Donald Trump’s Mormon PR Problem,” The Hill, Oct. 20, 2016. David Campbell, “How Trump’s ‘Mormon Problem’ Could Mean He Loses Utah to Evan McMullin,” The Conversation, Nov. 3, 2016. 32 Alan Rappeport, “Mormons’ Distaste for Donald Trump Puts Utah Up for Grabs,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 2016. 31 373 posed for playboy covers.”33 When the editors of the church-owned Deseret News openly called on Trump to suspend his campaign one month prior to the election, they did so not in the aftermath of one of his controversial policy proposals, but rather, the day immediately following the release of the Access Hollywood tape. The editors’ concern was what the leaked audio revealed about Trump’s lack of character, warning their readers, in the words of Proverbs, that “when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” The editorial made no mention of Trump’s controversial positions toward Muslims or immigrants. Instead, the editors justified their rare departure from partisan neutrality (it was the first time since J. Reuben Clark’s anti-New Deal editorial in 1936 that the Deseret News had entered “the troubled waters of presidential endorsement”) on the grounds that “What oozes from this audio is evil.” Not only does it expose Trump’s complete lack of regard for marital fidelity, they warned, but it also “belies a willingness to use and discard other human beings at will. That characteristic is the essence of a despot.”34 But while far from apparent in the Deseret News editorial, Trump’s message has also contributed to his “Mormon problem.” On the surface, his controversial brand of American nationalism sounds vaguely Mormon. With its obvious implication that America had once been great, but has recently fallen into decline, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, one pilfered from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, even comes with its own apostasy narrative. But even though Trump’s dire warnings of imminent national implosion may have the potential to resonate with large pockets of American Mormons, many of them simply cannot 33 34 Coppins, “Trump’s Mormon Problem.” “In Our Opinion: Donald Trump Should Resign His Candidacy,” Deseret News, Oct. 8, 2016. 374 stomach the specific solutions he has advocated, and even more so, his tendency to blame America’s recent demise on convenient scapegoats.35 Without violating its long-standing pledge to refrain from partisan politics, the LDS Church itself has chosen to tactfully respond to a few of Trump’s proposals and policies, both before and since the election. Only a day after he recommended temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the country in the immediate wake of the San Bernardino Massacre, the church issued a statement reaffirming its support for religious freedom and pluralism.36 Like many of the church’s earlier political statements, this one sought to make an obvious political point without explicitly identifying the context in which it was issued. Accordingly, the statement said nothing about Trump or his proposed Muslim ban. After a pithy reminder of the church’s partisan neutrality, the statement concluded with two quotes from Mormon founder Joseph Smith illustrating his broad support for religious liberty, along with his conviction that abridging the religious freedom of one group would 35 To be sure, Donald Trump’s “Mormon problem” did not prevent him from being the ninth consecutive Republican presidential nominee to win the state of Utah. However, his 45 percent of the overall state vote came far short of matching Mitt Romney’s 73 percent in 2012 or John McCain’s 62 percent in 2008. In their postelection study of Mormon voting patterns in 2016, political scientists Benjamin Knoll and Jana Riess concluded that “Mormons were more likely than other religious groups to go against their party’s choice.” This was especially true of younger, more religiously-active Latter-day Saints, they argued. For example, they showed that Mormon Republicans in Utah who were college-educated, attended church weekly, and were under 40, were 50 percent more likely to vote for third-party candidate and fellow Latter-day Saint, Evan McMullin. By contrast, older Mormon Republicans with lower levels of religiosity were more likely to vote for Trump. These results suggest that Donald Trump did indeed have a “Mormon problem.” It remains to be seen, of course, whether Trump’s “Mormon problem” eventually becomes the GOP’s “Mormon problem.” See Benjamin Knoll and Jana Riess, “Mormon Voting Patterns in the 2016 Election: A Comprehensive Analysis,” July 25, 2018. Religion in Public, https://religioninpublic.blog/2018/07/25/mormon-voting-patterns-in-the2016-election-a-comprehensive-analysis (accessed Jan. 7, 2019). 36 Tad Walch, “LDS Church Releases Statement on Religious Freedom as Donald Trump’s Muslim Controversy Swirls,” Deseret News, Dec. 8, 2015. 375 eventually threaten others.37 However devoid of context, the timing of its release left no doubt as to the statement’s objective. To the disappointment of Trump’s fiercest Mormon critics, their church had little to say about the Trump administration during the first year of his presidency. In an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post the day after Trump’s first travel ban went into effect, Mormon historian Benjamin E. Park lamented his church leaders’ reticence to attack a policy that, in his mind, so clearly echoed the federal government’s bigoted anti-Mormon campaign of the late nineteenth century. Given their own history as religious refugees who had once been singled out as a dangerous threat to American democracy, he argued, “Mormon officials should be leading the opposition to these actions.” “Anything less,” he concluded, “would prove our commitment to religious liberty shallow.”38 Interestingly, later that day the church issued a short statement expressing concern for “all of God’s children across the earth,” especially refugees, followed by a plea to “all people and governments” to seek “the best solutions to meet human needs and relieve suffering.”39 Three months later Park criticized the church’s response as “slow - and eventually tepid.” Merely expressing concern for refugees, he complained, did not amount to “a direct condemnation” of the president or his policies.40 37 “Church Points to Joseph Smith’s Statements on Religious Freedom, Pluralism,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Newsroom, Dec. 8, 2015. 38 Benjamin E. Park, “Where is the Mormon Church on Trump? History Demands their Leadership,” Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2017. 39 “Church Expresses Concern for Those Fleeing Violence, War and Religious Persecution,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Newsroom, Jan. 28, 2017. 40 Benjamin E. Park, “Why it’s Time for the Mormon Church to Revisit its Diverse Past,” The Conversation, Apr. 18, 2017. 376 Twelve days after the succession of Russell M. Nelson to the office of church president on January 14, 2018, the LDS hierarchy hinted that it might take a more proactive political approach moving forward when it issued a far more specific statement regarding the so-called “Dreamers.” While respecting the right of every nation to “enforce its laws and secure its borders,” the church nevertheless expressed hope that “in whatever solution emerges, there is provision for strengthening families and keeping them together.” Accordingly, the statement concluded by calling on the government to allow the Dreamers to remain in the country.41 The following June, the church issued its first ever formal criticism of a Trump administration policy when it condemned as “aggressive and insensitive” the forced separation of immigrant families along the U.S.-Mexico border.42 In addition to reflecting the hierarchy’s long-standing opposition to any immigration policy that threatens the sanctity of the family, their public positions on DACA and the taking of immigrant children from their parents also demonstrate the impact of the church’s continued growth overseas, especially in Latin America. Their statement on DACA explicitly acknowledged this fact. With the church “established in 188 nations around the globe,” its opening lines read, “Issues of immigration and legal status are of concern for many of our members.”43 This was not the first time the hierarchy had openly acknowledged a connection between Zion’s budding globalization and their evolving stance on immigration. Back in 2010, for example, “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Statement,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints: Newsroom, Jan. 26, 2018. 42 “Church Statement on Separation of Families at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Newsroom, June 18, 2018. 43 “(DACA) Statement,” Newsroom, Jan. 26, 2018. 41 377 the church had publicly attributed much of its support for the Utah Compact to the fact that as an international organization “dealing with many complex issues around the globe,” the church “promotes broad, foundational principles that have worldwide application.”44 Collectively, their recent statements on immigration reveal that, even as Mormon leaders remain committed to working for a righteous America, the worldwide expansion of their church has necessarily imbued them with a more global political outlook, one that considers not only what is good for America, but what is also good for the millions of Latter-day Saints living in an increasingly transnational Zion. *** In the years immediately following their exodus to the Great Basin, many Latter-day Saints concluded that America’s role of facilitating the establishment of God’s earthly kingdom had come to an end. As Orson Pratt explained in 1855, America’s recent mission “was like John the Baptist’s mission, merely to prepare the way.” Like the Baptist, he went on, the United States must now descend to make room for Zion, like Christ, to ascend.45 Roughly four decades later, with their physical isolation now a relic of the past and knowing full well the United States was not going anywhere any time soon, the Mormons proved willing to embrace a new paradigm that saw their fortunes and destiny intertwined with those of their countrymen. If God smiled upon America, they now concluded, then modern Israel 44 45 “Utah Compact on Immigration,” Newsroom, Nov. 11, 2010. Orson Pratt, July 8, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:72-73. 378 would enjoy the freedom and prosperity that were essential for the Saints’ individual and collective progression. Moving forward, they would welcome the responsibility to ensure America’s worthiness to inhabit the Promised Land. For the remainder of the century, Mormons of differing ideological and political persuasions would argue over how best to ensure such worthiness. What role the United States of America henceforth plays in the global future of what Leo Tolstoy once called “the American religion” is now a matter of conjecture.46 The LDS Church’s rapid growth overseas over the past several decades has still not changed the fact that Mormonism remains a predominantly American faith. As historian Benjamin Park recently recognized with some frustration, the idea of American exceptionalism remains strong in “much of Mormon culture,” potentially threatening the rise of a truly global, inclusive Zion.47 But if the majority of Mormon leaders fifty years from now are not Americans but Brazilians or Filipinos, not Utahns but Chileans or Mexicans, then the underlying foundations of twentieth-century Mormon political thought may already have disappeared. If Zion’s global aspirations ever attain such lofty heights, then even the majority of American Mormons might some day conclude, in the spirit of Orson Pratt, that “the nation of promise” has at last fulfilled its divine role. 46 Leland A. Fetzer, “Tolstoy and Mormonism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 6, no. 1 (Spring 1971): 27. 47 Park, “Why it’s Time for the Mormon Church to Revisit its Diverse Past.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Adams, John. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Edited by L.H. Butterfield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961. Andersen, H. Verlan. Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen. Provo: Press Publishing Company, 1967. Andrus, Hyrum L. Liberalism, Conservatism, Mormonism, 2nd ed. Salt Lake City: Hawkes Publications, 1972. Ballard, Timothy. The American Covenant: One Nation Under God, Discovery Through Revolution. New York: Timothy Ballard, 2011. ———. 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