IN MEMORIAM -- ELDRED G SMITH: "PRESIDING PATRIARCH" VS "PATRIARCH TO THE CHURCH"

Eldred G Smith:    Presiding Patriarch vs. Patriarch of the Church

The John Smith family line in the LDS Church managed to secure for themselves a permanent lifetime job in the Church called Patriarch.   Sometimes it was called the “Patriarch to the Church” and sometimes it was called Presiding Patriarch.     As Michael Quinn observed about the occupants of the jobs – only one made a reasonably successful ministry of it.  The others  ran afoul of their prophet/presidents for either wanting to do too much with the job or doing too little. 

Most of the time Patriarch John Smith  acted as if he did not want either the church or the Patriarch position.  At one time or another, all the presidents of the LDS Church who supervised Patriarch John Smith tried to get rid of him – and could not or did not.  One president famously complained that John Smith had two wives but only lived with one of them.  

John Smith’s half brother Joseph F. Smith became president of the Church in 1901.  At that time, John Smith had been a general authority since 1855 and Joseph F had been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve since 1868.   This meant that if  John Smith had authority equal to that of an apostle, he might have been a contender for the leadership of the Mormon Church.   As it was, President Lorenzo Snow had made it clear that only apostles could attain the presidency, and the seniority was based on unbroken service in the Quorum of the Twelve.  That cut John Smith out of the loop of seniority authority. 

Still Joseph F Smith had John Smith ordain him President of the Church, which presupposed and assumed that the patriarch’s authority was equal to the president’s authority.   At the conference that sustained Joseph F Smith president, he mused out loud that the True Order of the Priesthood would sustain the Presiding Patriarch of the Church first, the First Presidency second, then the apostles third.  None of the apostles would agree to this, and so that arrangement never happened in practice.  However President Smith transformed John Smith into a full scale Presiding Patriarch, sat him at President Smith’s right hand in public church meetings, and had him sustained before the apostles at general conferences.

When John Smith died in 1911 and his grandson Hyrum G Smith became the next Presiding Patriarch, President Smith continued that pattern with him.   Hyrum G was an activist Patriarch with President Smith’s supervision and blessing. 

In the weeks before President Smith died, his counselors and three apostles who all later became presidents of the Church – namely Heber J Grant, David O McKay, and Joseph Fielding Smith – conferred together about the issue of whether or not Presiding Patriarch Smith would have seniority before them when President Smith passed away.  They all adroitly decided not to even bring up the subject with dying President Smith.  Thus when President Smith died in November 1918, the apostolic seniority tradition stayed neatly in place and continued.  Heber J Grant became the next President without any issue of Hyrum Smith’s seniority standing before the apostles. 

President Grant had  Hyrum G Smith as Patriarch sustained after the apostles and seated him after the apostles.   When he died unexpectedly in 1932, his youngish son Eldred G Smith was the obvious successor.   Grant, however, was never really impressed by anyone in that family and wanted to make a change so that someone from the Hyrum Smith / Joseph F Smith family would become the next Presiding Patriarch.   In particular, President Grant had in mind a son of Joseph F Smith by the name of Willard Smith, who happened to be married to one of Heber J Grant’s daughters.  This meant that the next Presiding Patriarch would have the dynastic genetics of both Heber J Grant and of Joseph F Smith. 

The Quorum of the Twelve would not propose the idea nor sustain it.    From 1932 to 1942, the impasse over the next Presiding Patriarch ==  Eldred G Smith (supported by the Twelve) vs Willard Smith (supported by President Grant and by extension the First Presidency) damaged the Patriarch office in three ways.    First, it went unfilled for years without much problem for the overall church.  Next, President Grant filled it with some men who were not Smiths, designated “acting patriarchs” for years with little noticeable side effects.  Third, the leaders eventually decided to make the position “Patriarch to the Church” instead of  Presiding Patriarch.   The First presidency allowed the Patriarch to be listed as a prophet seer and revelator, but he was listed after the Quorum of the Twelve and did not have a right to be included in the seniority listing.

By 1942, the apostles and the First Presidency decided to change the lineage of the office to that of Joseph F Smith but to ordain another member of that family not tied to Heber J. Grant.  That person was The Other Joseph Fielding Smith, grandson of Joseph F. Smith, son of the late apostle Hyrum Mack Smith.   The arrangement lasted 4 years.  The year after Heber J Grant died, President George Albert Smith (a third Smith line in church history) released Joseph F Smith as Patriarch for ill health reasons.   He did have severe back pain; that was true at the time.  However, fairly well-substantiated rumors persist to this day that the problem was that Heber J Grant did not vet Joseph F Smith carefully enough.  Homosexual relationships came to light. 

In 1947, Eldred G Smith became Patriarch to the Church but unlike his father, he was not called a Presiding Patriarch, and his place came after the apostles, not before.  By 1979, the whole issue of an priesthood office that came to someone by family inheritance was just too complicated for the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve to accept.   Eldred G Smith became an emeritus general authority and became the longest serving emeritus general authority in history.  He served as Patriarch 32 years; he held emeritus standing for 34 years.   No new Patriarch to the Church replaced him in the years since. 

So in that sense Eldred G Smith had the last laugh.  The Church had to keep him on a living allowance for 34 years.