One of the things I found amazing about Dr Matthew Harris’ book, “2nd Class Saints” was the amazing amount of access he had to journals. Not only did he have access to the Spencer W Kimball journals, but he got access to Joseph Fielding Smith and Marion Hanks as well. The most amazing story was finding out what happened in the Salt Lake Temple when the revelation was announced to the Quorum of 70.
Curt Bench introduced Matt to Rich Hanks, the son of Marion Hanks, who gave Matt access to his father’s private papers. Included in those papers the the account of Elder Hanks account of the private meeting. Many general authories wondered why the meeting was called, with some wondering if it was about the “Negro,” using a term that’s now considered offensive. Some General Authorities speculated about the Second Coming and current problems in the church. Elder Hanks had been known not to back down from senior leaders, including Elder Packer. Hanks remarked that Packer was uncommonly friendly on that day in June.
Priesthood ban lift, race, and gender. (19:15)
Hanks writes in his diary that President Kimball had a revelation and lifted the ban on blacks holding the priesthood. Following the announcement, Elder Hanks said that Franklin D Richards asked, “What about the women?” It is hard to know from the diary entry if this was a serious or sarcastic remark from Richards. Matt speculates it was sarcastic, because it wasn’t answered.
Gender equality in the Church. (24:12)
Matt discusses the priesthood ban for women in the Church, noting there are some similarities to the ban on black men.
President Kimball was asked about gender equality after lifting the black priesthood ban, and he replied basically, “Nah, we’re not going to do that.”
In 1984, the RLDS Church (now Community of Christ) ordained women, leading to changes in dynamics and relationships within the church.
Franklin Richards’ comment about women in leadership roles. (29:15)
Matt and GT discuss Elder Hanks’ comment about women in leadership positions.
Matt interprets Franklin Richards’ comment as a disruptive moment in the meeting, while Hanks includes it in his writing.
Paul Dunn witnesses President Kimball’s gesture to Eldon Tanner and shares the news with Heber Wolsey, causing a stir around the world.
Why Brown Let Go from First Presidency
Hugh Brown self-identified as a liberal and expressed his political views in interviews with his grandson Ed Firmage, who taught at the University of Utah. Brown believed the Church’s stance on civil rights was not compatible with the gospel, according to his interviews. In Sept of 1969, Brown convinced President McKay that a revelation was not necessary, mostly due to the fact that he knew the apostles wouldn’t agree to it. Brown and McKay’s sons convince McKay that he could ordain a black man unilaterally. Monroe Fleming, a loyal Latter Day Saint, was targeted for ordination to the priesthood despite the ban. Lee learns about the meeting from Alvin Dyer as Lee was released from the hospital for an illness. Lee put a stop to the ordination.
Around this time, Stanford University announced they would no longer play BYU in any sporting competitions. Upset about this, Brown called the Stanford University president and told him that the Church would soon lift the ban so Stanford should not cancel the athletic contests. This was leaked to a Stanford University newspaper. When Harold Lee found out, he exclaimed that Brown should not be leaking this information. Lee then had a statement drafted stating the ban was doctrine, and had the apostles and First Presidency sign the statement. It was not signed by President McKay, who was seriously ill.
In a final act of defiance, Brown leaked another report to a California newspaper, published on Christmas Day in 1969. Lee exploded, and forced publication of the statement that the reasons for the ban were known to God and that it was a doctrine of the Church. As a condition for his signature on the statement, Brown demanded a statement on civil rights, and Lee reluctantly agreed. Brown wept when signing the statement due to its reaffirmation of the church’s stance on race.
Hugh Brown’s feelings after being dropped from the First Presidency
Matt discusses Hugh Brown’s removal from the First Presidency due to his stance on racial equality. When McKay died in January of 1970, Lee was dropped from the First Presidency. 93 year-old Joseph Fielding Smith became prophet, and installed Harold B Lee to replace Brown in the First Presidency. Brown is depressed and struggles with depression. Brown tried to respond to the news with a positive attitude, saying he will “relieve myself from many irksome duties” and go where the Lord needs him. Brown expresses bitterness in an interview, with his daughter urging him to let go of his emotions. Brown responded curtly, saying he didn’t care that the interview was being recorded.
Brown’s daughter, Mary Woodward, pays a courtesy call to the church presidency soon after Smith was installed as the new Church president. She meets with President Smith and new counselors. While N Eldon Tanner was quite warm to Mary, Smith was quite cold and indifferent. When President Kimball became president of the Church, Hugh Brown extracted a promise from Kimball to lift the ban. Kimball responded that it would take time to life the ban and would require consensus. Brown died Dec 2, 1975, some 2 1/2 years before the ban was lifted. Ed Firmage receives calls from Gordon Hinckley, James Faust, and Eldon Tanner after the ban on black Latter-day Saints is lifted, with each man expressing validation and support for the Brown family.
It was such an amazing conversation. I’m amazed how much information Matt uncovered for this book. I expect it will be discusses for decades to come. What are your thoughts about Brown’s actions?
Wheat & Tares 
The Football Revelation.Sent from my iPhone
While I completely sympathize w Brown, I recognize this story as an excellent example of the conundrum: do we ‘sustain the Prophet’ or do we ‘Do What Is Right’ ? I would have been prouder of Brown if he had more strongly chosen the latter course. But that is not what 200 years of Prophetic Teaching has inculcated in us – at least when the choice has to be made.
Thanks, Rick B., for the great history lesson. President McKay wanted to ordain Monroe Fleming and effectively end the ban in 1969. Did the Q15 sustain him? In particular, did the next two men in line to become president sustain him? President McKay turned 96 years old in 1968, and his heir was Joseph Fielding Smith, 93, and the next in line was Harold B Lee, 70. Smith and Lee opposed removing the ban. Next in seniority was Spencer W Kimball, 74, who would have supported ending the ban but was not in good health and was not expected to outlive Lee. Behind Kimball, in order, were Ezra Taft Benson, Mark E Petersen, and Delbert L Stapley. I have never read Benson’s pre-1978 views on the ban, but Petersen and Stapley are said to have opposed ending it. I think that, at age 96 in 1968, an elderly and ailing McKay could look among the Q15 and realize that his team would not sustain him, and he had no choice but to desist. Monroe Fleming did receive the priesthood in 1978. When we talk about sustaining the prophet, who was it that didn’t sustain President McKay in 1969? I think that the ban could have been rescinded years earlier, but the Lord allows men to run this church, and there was no unanimity before 1978.
What is the moral of the story? The Lord has given the church to men to administer (see the parable at D&C 88:51-61). Men are fallible. Was McKay wrong for not pushing ahead with the ordination in 1969? He lacked the support of his brethren. Was Kimball wrong for taking 4 1/2 years to rescind the ban after he became president? It took him some time to build his support. Was President John Taylor wrong when he said that you would know that a future president of the church was in apostasy when that president ended polygamy? Yes, I think so. I think that he was then speaking as a man and not as a prophet. How did people whose main focus was following the prophet react when Wilford Woodruff issued the manifesto? It wasn’t that the Lord had changed His mind on the subject. Nor did the Lord change His mind in 1978. We might err if we think that the president of the church speaks ex cathedra every time he speaks in general conference. He gives good advice, and his words merit our attention, but he only speaks as a prophet when he speaks as a prophet. Didn’t Joseph Smith say something to that effect?
We’ve discussed mixing religion and politics in other places in Wheat and Tares. Here is a perfect example of how we can’t get away from politics even in religion. It seems pointless to say we follow a prophet when even the prophet has to convince other men to agree with him to get unanimity about any change. Getting that support is the very essence of politics. Then to think this is all done behind closed doors.
I just read about the recent changes in the temple ceremony and Pres. Nelson said that we should not speculate in social forums and just accept it, yet, the decision was made behind closed doors so we couldn’t see the discussion or the politics involved. Is that the way God works?
Huge B Brown was a liberal and was dismissed from the first presidency. Has there been another liberal since then? Maybe Faust? Is the politics of the brethren so sure of themselves that they want everyone to think the same with no voices to offer an alternative view like Brown probably did at times? Does follow the prophet mean shut up and don’t speak if you disagree, at least in the twelve because we already know how many members refused to wear masks or get vaccines.
I ask these questions because it makes me sad that what I once held as sacred is really a bunch of men so set in their ways that they can’t agree when there needs to be a change for the sake of righteousness and it appears they’ve closed doors to any form of discussion outside of their small circle.
This was a super interesting conversation, and it adds so much context to what really happened. You can really see the power dynamics and political maneuvering that were happening behind the curtain. The church announced decisions like, “well, God changed his mind and we all agree that this is the new revelation.” When in reality there were decades of hard-fought political battles happening behind the scenes.
“[Institutional] revelation is a process, not an event.”
This was a critically important point to emphasize. We are generally taught this notion that leaders can somehow dial up God’s office and ask what they should do, but that’s just not the case. Whether there’s true divine intervention or not, leaders are still human and can pretty easily mistake their own biases and opinions for revelation.
That’s not to say that inspiration can’t happen, but that it’s not a simple or easy process to move the rudder on a huge organization.
This whole conversation really makes me wonder what we’ll find in 20 or 30 years in the the Uchdorf and Nelson papers about Uchdorf getting demoted (despite how they’ve tried to spin it publicly).
Uchdorf was instantly popular and loved since they day he was called to the Q12. He is a dynamic speaker, smart, popular, and he gained Mormon celebrity status while in the FP. There’s no question that dropping Uchdorf from the FP instantly marginalized him – we hear from him much less often now than we did when he was in the FP.
Uchdorf was replaced with a grumpy anti-LGBTQ hardliner who certainly had a hand (pun intended) in the puppeteering of Pres. Monson with the PoX. Why would RMN drop the popular Uchdorf and give the fossilized Oaks a top-three chair and then immediately walk back the failed PoX?
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out. Let’s just hope the families don’t donate the records to the church archive (or at least make copies for scholars to look at).
It’s an interesting and importnt point that Dr. Harris raised that there was no consensus in the LDS Q15 regarding ordaining women simply because they weren’t willing to talk about it at all. The RLDS/Community of Christ experience is instructive here, as was pointed out.
On April 3, 1984, then RLDS Prophet-President Wallace B. Smith included two short paragraphs in an inspired document he presented to the World Conference. The major message of that document referred to the ministries of a temple to be built by the church in Independence, Missouri, and general counsel regarding priesthood ministry. The document was considered by priesthood orders and councils, then presented to the Conference delegates on April 5, and by a far from unanimous vote it was approved in total as Section 156 of the Doctrine and Covenants. There is no provision to approve any other way than all or nothing.
The direction included this: “Therefore, do not wonder that some women of the church are being called to priesthood responsibilties. This is in harmony with my will and where these calls are made known to my servants, they may be processed according to administrative procedures and provisions of the law.”
In retrospect, I believe it was the right thing to do but done in the wrong way. Certainly no consensus involved. But that was the way we did things back then. Valuable lessons were learned, although too late to do anything about the huge exodus from the church by many members, which I’ll term traditional and/or conservative. Priesthood calls for women began to be considered by stake and district conferences in January 1985. I was part of Blue Valley Stake in eastern Jackson County at the time, and eventually stake leaders had to suspend normal operation of the stake for some time because of the discord. As a side note, that was when my own call to the office of high priest was approved by World Church leaders and councils but not a stake conference as was the typical practice, and I was ordained in my home congregation. I was an editor at the church publishing house at the time.
In the early 2010s, the now renamed Community of Christ held several national conferences to consider priesthood and sacrament issues related to the LGBTQ+ community. Those conferences were set up on a consensus model and were structured so that many different points of view could be considered. A modified rank-choice voting method was used to eventually recommend to the First Presidency a course of action. Today there are no barriers to LGBTQ folks from being ordained or to celebrate the sacrament of marriage in the US, Canada, British Isles, Australis, and New Zealand. There may be other areas that have simply slipped my mind. At the same time it should be noted that the church operates worldwide and in some countries homosexuality is illegal and can be severely punished.
Rich,
Even though it was difficult, the Community of Christ extending the priesthood to women puts them on the right side of history. The fact that the Quorum of the 12 in the LDS church wouldn’t even discuss women’s ordination is a resounding condemnation of leaders’ inability to see women as human beings and children of God. I would not be surprised if in 2014, with the Ordain Women movement, leaders refused to discuss it again. In conference they couldn’t even provide a scriptural justification for the female priesthood ban. Their cop out is Jesus ordained 12 men. Jesus also instructed His apostles to remember him by drinking wine symbolizing his blood. Yet we don’t follow His example with that. The church loves to cherry pick scripture to support sexist doctrines but won’t honestly engage with the scriptures as a whole when it doesn’t suit their agenda.
It’s complete hypocrisy for church leaders to say in 1978 that all are alike unto God, including male and female, and then turn around and refuse to even consider that women are children of God too.
The moral of the story is that our prophets do not prophesy but rather languish in the ignorance of the past. Our seers see nothing but what they want to see. Our revelators reveal nothing but rather only react to revelations from elsewhere.
The prophet will never lead the church astray, said the man to the church already astray. Turns out it was not an empty promise, but a sincere commitment to never lead at all.
The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards Justice and the church will be dragged kicking and screaming down that entire arc, one progressive step at a time.
I did not attend Stanford, but was at the UW in Seattle, and experienced the common disgust with BYU in the PAC. (I have a similar disgust for Notre Dame, but that came much later, living in Chicagoland.) The arrogance of the religious schools is bad enough, but finding out that there was a BYU Football Revelation in 1978 confirms the suspicion that Mormon religious truth was altered for non-religious purposes. Altering revelation to win football games is similar to altering revelation to gain statehood.
I feel it is only a matter of time before the Books of Mormon and Abraham are downgraded by LDS to the status of 1830’s fictional narratives. It could be over the issue of imaginary history, or nonexistent genetics, or structural racism, or the science fiction of Kolob. These books could soldier on as inspirational fiction, like CS Lewis, Harry Potter or The Little Prince. But the fact that modern church authorities can dispense with parts they disagree with is tampering with the Word of God.
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“The moral of the story is that our prophets do not prophesy but rather languish in the ignorance of the past. Our seers see nothing but what they want to see. Our revelators reveal nothing but rather only react to revelations from elsewhere.”
What can I say except, I disagree? The spirit of prophecy is alive and well among the apostles–and it is the lifeblood of the church organization as a whole.
This was a fascinating account. I feel like we can’t overstate the influence of these hardliners. I mistakenly believed decades ago that the hardliners’ influence would be tempered because the more of a hardliner you were, the more likely you would have health problems (e.g. heart attacks, etc). The reality is that many of the hardliners are too stubborn to die, and the more tolerant or progressive voices are willing to play peacemaker. They are more committed to their Christian principles of patience and love toward the hardliners, turning the other cheek, being humble, etc., and so they (and we all) lose. It’s a bleak system.
The notion of “hardliner” is kind of in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? I agree that there’s a pattern of liberal thinking breaking down rigid conservative thinking that typically precedes innovation. Even so, destruction can follow on the heels of forcing change that is irrational or unsupportable or even just premature.
If “prematurely” ending the ban in 1969 would’ve brought about “destruction,” then it would’ve been the justly earned punishment of a rightly vengeful god.
We have to stop, just stop, making excuses for what was clearly and incontrovertibly human error grounded in the vile but pervasive prejudices of 19th and 20th America.
I am not sure I would’ve done any better than Brown or McKay, but I pray that my heart and mind is more open than a Lee or a Smith.
Thanks for the great post. Knowing our history is so important.
Jack: I don’t know how anyone can justify the idea that Jesus would approve of the stances that I’m referring to as “hardline,” and yet, they do.
Jack,
“…destruction can follow on the heels of forcing change that is irrational or unsupportable or even just premature.”
The key word here is “forcing.” What you describe happens in an authoritarian or hierarchical system where free speech and expression are curtailed. I believe that the voice of the people moderates the extremes you fear. Unfortunately, the church as an institution does not have a good record of listening or allowing expression. And leaders who express concerns and engage in dialogue (Hugh B. Brown is not the only example here) frequently find themselves demoted or silenced.
such history will be harder to obtain since the Bethren are asked to not keep journals and at their release they and other private papers become property of the Church. President McKays secretary retaining her own journals of her memories with him and the First Presidency probably helped to launch that policy change, even though President Kimball was a journal proponent.
2 things come to mind here:
First, Pres. David O. McKay announced that the members of the First Quorum of Seventy were going to be ordained High Priests in 1961. One of the other Brethren made the comment about how Joseph Smith had said that ordaining the Seventy to be High Priests was contrary to the order of Heaven. Pres. McKay replied “Brother ______, did you ever think that what was against the order of Heaven in 1835 would not be against the order of Heaven in 1961?” (words to that effect). This has 2 elements to it. First, the order of Heaven can change. Second, did any General Authority push back against this change?
The second is that is their any examples of GA’s pushing back against Joseph Smith’s revelations? Did he need 100% of them to be onboard for every revelation? Plural marriage seems to be the only one I can think of.