I have heard that the current Apostles are told NOT to keep diaries, and they also have to turn over to the church upon their deaths any notes or writings. A good example of what the church is trying to avoid can be found in the Diaries of Wilford Woodruff. (1) Below are several entries. (Grammar/spelling/punctuation per original; somebody with worse writing than Bishop Bill!)
Feb 7th, 1852: Governor B. Youngs address Before the legislature assembly of the Territory of Utah upon slavery…….. The Lord said I will not kill Cane But will put a mark upon him and it is seen in the face of every Negro on the Earth And it is the decree of God that that mark shall remain upon the seed of Cane & the Curse remain untill all the seed of Abel should be redeemed…..And if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane the ownly way he Could get rid of it or have salvation would be to Come forward & have his head Cut off & spill his Blood upon the ground. It would also take [require] the life of his children
Oct 7th 1856: President Young was asked if it would not be well to send the the Presidents of the seventies out. He said no they would Preach the people to sleep and then to Hell. Now there is brother Levi Handcock. Why he will fiddle diddle di fiddle diddle do fiddle diddle dum and tweedle diddle ta. Now he might preach a month & ther would be no more spirit of God in it than their would be in a Cabbage Leaf.
March 21st, 1857: I bought an Indian boy of Brother Willis this morning about 6 years old. His Indian name was Saroquetes. We call him Nephi. He appears a smart active good boy. I paid $40 for him. I am in hopes to Educate him & prepare his mind that He may some day be useful in preaching to his tribe of the Piedes.
June 2 1857: The subject of Eunuchs came up & Joseph Young said that He would rather die than be made a Eunuch . Brigham Said the day would Come when thousands would be made Eunuchs in order for them to be saved in the kingdom of God.
Sept 29th, 1957: Elder John D. Lee also arrived from Harmony with an express and an awful tale of Blood. A company of Calafornia Emigrants of about 150 men and women & children many of them belonged to the mob in Massouri & Illinois they had many Cattle & horses with them. As they traveled along south they went damning Bringham Young Heder C. Kimball & the heads of the church saying that Joseph Smith ought to have been shot a long time before he was. They wanted to do all the evil they could so they poisioned Beef & gave it to the Indians & several of them dies. The Indians became inraged at their Conduct & they surrounded them on a prairie & the Emigrants formed a Bulwark on their waggons….but the Indians fought them 5 days untill they killed all their men about 60 in Number. They then rushed into the Carrall & Cut the throats of their women and children except some 8 or 10 that they brought and sold to the whites.
Aug 21, 1877: I Wilford Woodruff went to the temple of the Lord this morning and was Baptized for 100 persons who were dead including the signers of the Declaration of Independence all except John Handcock and William Floyd. I was Baptized for the following Eminent Men: Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, Micheal Faraday, William Makepeace Thackery, John Caldwell Cahoon, Henry Clary, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonapart , Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Scott, Frederick 2d King of Prussia, Americus Vespucius…..
March 3rd, 1894: I had a Dream in the night. I met with Benjamin Franklin. I thought He was on the Earth. I spent several hours with him and talked over our Endowments. He wanted some more work done for him than had been done which I promised him He should have. I thought then he died and while waiting for burial I awoke. I thought very strange my dream. I made up my mind to get 2d Anointing for Benjamin Franklin a& George Washington.
I wonder what diaries of the current Q15 would look like if they kept them. Would they be like the above, or read like a GC talk?
(1) Waiting For World’s End The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff, Edited by Susan Staker. Signature Books, 1993
Wheat & Tares 
Not quite current Q15, but see “Faith Rewarded: A Personal Account of Prophetic Promises to the East German Saints From the Journal of Thomas S. Monson”, Deseret Book, June 1996, for a sample of a GC-style Journal. I expect if the book is unedited journal entries, that they were heavily mentally edited before being written down. Even aside from cultural differences, it seems WW’s were not.
“Waiting for World’s End” was such an engrossing read. I highly recommend that book for anyone and everyone connected to Mormonism. Wilford Woodruff was such an interesting fellow. And as Bishop Bill’s post demonstrates, the book also gives a rather unvarnished portrait of Brigham Young. So grateful Susan Staker put that together. It did nothing to restore my testimony of early church leaders, but most certainly restored some of my affection for them as fellow human beings living dramatic lives.
Were we ever to get candid journals from contemporary general authorities, I suspect they would have the same healthy, albeit demystifying, effect. Not until recent months had I ever heard that the Q15 are forbidden from keeping diaries. Would love to know if this is a verified policy. Seems antithetical to the restored Church’s priority on record keeping. And like so many other rules, it is utterly unenforceable, unless you physically prevent apostles from accessing any and all writing implements.
IIRC-this idea that the Q12 aren’t to keep diaries dates back to the early 1900’s. I would imagine they may or may not keep diaries, like everyone else but are they for public consumption? Probably up the family or the person. I would feel betrayed if I kept a diary and it was published after my death. I can think of diaries that exist of Apostles that are open to the public. Harvard Heath just published Pres. McKay’s. You can get others at various Archives in Utah-i’m thinking of Orson F. Whitney, Joseph F. Smith, George Albert Smith, James E. Talmage etc.
Greg Prince’s book, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism is drawn from thousands of documents secretly copied by his personal secretary. She knew they would be suppressed and wanted the family to have access to them. On his death she handed to copies over to the family. The church sued to get them back and were just granted ownership of a small portion that had to do with particularly proprietary issues. The book chronicles everything from the divinely sublime to petty infighting to serious mistakes and programs within the Q15 and the administrative structures.
It was after his death that the ban on diaries began to be strictly pushed.
I highly recommend the book. It was meticulously prepared. Pres. McKay was the prophet of my childhood and I always had an affinity towards him. The book added to that while at the same time revealing some of the warts (often big, hairy warts) in the system.
An area authority friend of mine told me, if I recall correctly, that all church authorities need to give their existing journals / diaries to the church when they are called. If true, that‘s pretty control freakish. The OP and comments here support the view God‘s true church has a strong need to protect its image/narrative.
An area authority friend of mine told me, if I recall correctly, that all church authorities need to give their existing journals / diaries to the church when they are called. If true, that‘s pretty control freakish. The OP and comments here support the view God‘s true church has a strong need to protect its image/narrative.
Over at Times and Seasons and By Common Consent, they’re discussing how to comfort and relate to our Muslim brothers and sisters. Here, we’re discussing uncorroborated rumors of church policy and a 26-year-old publication.
Way to keep it timely and classy, guys.
You are welcome to add your classy comments there. You won’t be missed here.
I feel so privileged. Dsc did NOT comment at T&S or BCC, but felt compelled to comment here!
What’s the matter Bishop Bill? You take the time to criticize a man who’s been dead for 120 years, and you’re surprised or offended that someone might criticize you? Come on! For all the criticism aimed at church leaders for their tone deafness, you should at least be able to recognize it in yourself. Cast the beam out of thine own eye.
And when I can’t say something better than has already been said, I tend to not leave a comment. I silently say an amen and move on. In this case, I happen to be on my way to visit a mosque right now.
Thanks BB for an interesting post. I often imagine what has happened that hasn’t been written down.
Interesting too, that the diversity in topics / discussions between the many blogs is not positively supported by someone like DSC and yet he’s obviously happy to support cultural and religious diversity.
Let’s see, if I was inclined to worry about whether 120 year old journals have any relevance to events in the here and now, I might expand on that Elder John D Lee entry. Potential lines of inquiry to tease out lessons to learn:
– Why did Lee instigate a massacre?
– Did his culture contribute to his thought process?
– What responsibilities do our institutions have in getting truths out to prevent future evils?
Or I could just bellyache whenever people post stuff I don’t like.
Dave C, I think I’m not up on the latest historical work on Mountain Meadows. Did Lee instigate the massacre? or was it the stake president/militia leader Isaac Haight? Yes, there are lessons to learn for our day from historical records. I don’t see how a culture of unquestioning obedience to ecclesiastical authority and of an oath of vengeance and prior rhetoric from the prophet about blood atonement and defense against the U.S. could not have contributed to the thought processes of whoever instigated the massacre.
Dave C and JR, you’re previewing my upcoming series on the Massacre! I’ll be posting tomorrow, but my post the following week will probably answer your questions better! Certainly there were more people guilty than just Lee.
I haven’t read the Woodruff diaries, but most good treatments of the Utah period up to statehood, in particular the events surrounding the end of the practice of plural marriage in the late 1880s culminating in the Manifesto of 1890, have some discussion of Woodruff. He wasn’t the sharpest saw in the toolbox, but at least he figured out polygamy had to go and he killed it. I’ll give him that. And his dedication to journaling is a gift to modern historians. A second point in his favor. Historians of a later era will have a lot harder time figuring out what our current crop of LDS leaders was thinking when they did things.
It seems like there is less (a lot less) discussion or encouragement of keeping a daily journal in LDS discourse these days. It’s all about family history, with the emphasis on generating names for temple work and getting to temples to do the work, and redo it a few extra times. Journals aren’t part of the discussion anymore. Maybe this change in rhetoric flows from the discouragement of GA journals, maybe it’s just the standard practice of moving on to new programs and topics after a decade of highlighting them.
I’m pretty skeptical the Apostles are told not to write journals. I’d imagine secretaries and the like have notes as well. Although honestly I’m fine with keeping such things private and in the Church vault.
BTW – the selected Woodruff entries in Waiting for the World’s End are well worth reading. It’s a great book and gives a good insight on his thought.
“I have heard that the current Apostles are told NOT to keep diaries”
where?
JPV, Clark,
During a Mormon Stories interview with Greg Prince about Prince’s biography of Leonard Arrington, the subject of general authority diaries comes up at the 28:00 minute mark of the part 3 interview found at this link:
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/leonard-arrington/
At the link above, John Delhin states that in a previous interview with Ted Lyon, Lyon related that Jeffrey Holland told Lyon that “they” (Elder Holland and … presumably the other brethren?) had been instructed to no longer keep diaries. I haven’t gone through the Ted Lyon interviews to confirm, but that may be a place for you to start. I found some Ted Lyon interviews here:
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/mormon-stories-101-103-dr-ted-lyon-on-change-mission-in-latin-america-and-thoughtful-faith/
The Salt Lake Tribune has an archived January 2016 article that reports about the church’s control of general authority “work product” including journals:
“In the 1980s, assistant church historian Richard E. Turley explains, the Utah-based faith began requiring all Mormon general authorities to sign an agreement, pledging that any “work product” — including their “journals, speeches, photographs and other records of enduring value” — belongs to the church’s history department “for long-term preservation.””
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3386750&itype=CMSID
I’m not “fine” with the church’s policy to keep general authorities from letting family and biographers access their journals without going through the church first. In the case of of David O McKay and Leonard Arrington, Greg Prince said he would never have written their biographies without the diaries. In both cases, the church tried to keep the diaries from him, but were unable to. Both McKay and Arrington never intended for the church to control their diaries either. McKay’s secretary made copies of his diaries, while McKay was still living and Arrington left his papers and work with Utah State University – specifically keeping out of the Church control.
Greg Prince wrote both biographies at the encouragement of the McKay and Arrington families.
A follow-up to what I posted above. I started listening to the Ted Lyon presentation above. At about 26:20 in the second video he related this story about Elder Holland and diaries (I’ve eliminated several “and he said”s for clarity:
“Elder Holland came into my office one day for his Spanish lesson, in Chile, and saw that I was writing in my diary while I was waiting for him. He said ‘Oh Ted, you keep a diary’ and I said “Yeah”. He said ‘I don’t, I know I should but I don’t.’ I said “Why don’t you” and he said ‘Because I saw what happened to Ernest Wilkinson. Wilkinson kept diaries in such detail of all of his doings with the brethren; of course filtered through his very candid but biased eye. Then they were published and he’s embarrassed so many people.’ Then he said ‘I’m afraid whatever I say might be misconstrued years down the line. He said as it is I write an email … send an email to my kids …an hour later it’s on somebody’s blog or somebody’s web page. I thought it was just to my kids but somehow someone mentioned this to that person and it’s there and its part of that communication.’
So if this story is the one John Dehlin is referring to, the correct context is that Elder Holland doesn’t keep a diary because he chooses not to keep a diary.
In the absence of evidence, JPV and Clark are correct to question the notion that apostles are told not to keep journals.
Years ago, back in 2013 or 14, the first Hans Mattson interview on Mormon Stories said Elder Packer told the general authorities during their training the week before conference to burn their diaries, or something of the sort. Naturally, it has been a few years since I listened to it.