For people of my generation, the announcement made on live TV and radio by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints public communications department spokesman on 9 June 1978 is called simply The Revelation. The Church’s ban on ordaining men of black African racial genetic heritage started becoming a public image problem of the first magnitude with the rise of racial desegregation and the American Civil Rights Movement. The end of it came like the proverbial bolt out of the blue and was a welcome bolt at that.
The spokesman made the announcement at 11:00 a.m. On that Friday afternoon, which was my birthday, I was on the Brigham Young University Campus for work at the BYU Writing Lab, then located on the main floor of the library. It was the only time I ever saw a news story traveling through crowds of people. Those who had not heard the report could tell at a glance that something big had happened just watching the ripple effect through the crowd of college students. When someone told me in the writing lab about the announcement, I frankly wanted to believe it, but I would not let myself believe it without a second confirmation. I got that from my father over the phone a few minutes later.
In the 2013 LDS Scripture edition, The Revelation is prefaced in this way. I add my commentary.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few [2?] [free black members] black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice. [Comment: history seems clear enough. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent.] [the next line is a bombshell in the history of LDS Church scripture honesty --] Church leaders believed [my emphasis] that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice and prayerfully sought guidance. [making the verbs compound tends to suggest that the leaders were interested and prayed for a long time, when that was not necessarily the timing case.] [this is not the same thing as saying that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.] The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood.
This rewrite makes the situation more clear. I admit it also has a selective sense of history, what with its being short.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).
The Old Testament has slave imagery and references throughout.
Throughout Church history, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church.
During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, 2 free black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent, regardless of legal status.
Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice. They prayerfully sought guidance, particularly in the mid -twentieth century. The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood. A general conference sustained it in September 1978.
COMMENTARY
Bible translations show how word choice, grammar and sentence structure can make meanings ambiguously unclear.
Translators of the Old Testament used euphemisms like "The Groves" and "the Poles" to mask from readers references to alters of a female heathen deity that certain modern Biblical scholars now suspect scriptures once presented as God's wife.
The King James Bible translators used the word "murmur" when the ancient word used really was closer to the modern Yiddish "Kevetch" which implies loud complaining. Griping.
Thus, in the 2013 scripture edition, God yet again get the blame for the black priesthood ban. However, the implications of the wording “Church leaders believed” remains very interesting to contemplate. . . .
One of the lesser known facts surrounding the priesthood ban situation is this: the ban never actually worked. Leaders, going way back in church history, ordained men of mixed black genetics without knowing it. Had Brigham Young worded the ban along the lines of “no man with a black parent or grandparent back 4 generations can be ordained to the priesthood,” the ban would have worked better. It would have also been more clear than the prohibition worded “one drop of Negro blood.” That definition turned out to be "not measurable" and eventually bogged the ban down under its own ambiguity.
Research done for Michael Quinn’s Elder Statesman: the expanded biography of J Rueben Clark seems to suggest that the church leadership reviewed the ban in 1939, 1947, and 1955 with an eye to abandoning it – but the Church leadership never quite did. Its research also found the First Presidency made some informed exceptions in temple and priesthood regulations for people with a black ancestor way back amid a family history of whites.
Had the church lifted the ban in 1939, by the time the Civil Rights Movement got its first starts in 1948 the LDS Church could have helped lead the movement with the Southern Baptist Leadership Conference. History, though, is always a mess despite the best intents of humans to stage manage it. On this 35th anniversary of opening the LDS priesthood to all worthy males, the Church still has some public relations mopping up still to do.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
THE PRIESTHOOD REVELATION: 35th anniversary commentary
For people of my generation, the announcement made on live TV and radio by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints public communications department spokesman on 9 June 1978 is called simply The Revelation. The Church’s ban on ordaining men of black African racial genetic heritage started becoming a public image problem of the first magnitude with the rise of racial desegregation and the American Civil Rights Movement. The end of it came like the proverbial bolt out of the blue and was a welcome bolt at that.
The spokesman made the announcement at 11:00 a.m. On that Friday afternoon, which was my birthday, I was on the Brigham Young University Campus for work at the BYU Writing Lab, then located on the main floor of the library. It was the only time I ever saw a news story traveling through crowds of people. Those who had not heard the report could tell at a glance that something big had happened just watching the ripple effect through the crowd of college students. When someone told me in the writing lab about the announcement, I frankly wanted to believe it, but I would not let myself believe it without a second confirmation. I got that from my father over the phone a few minutes later.
In the 2013 LDS Scripture edition, The Revelation is prefaced in this way. I add my commentary.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few [2?] [free black members] black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice. [Comment: history seems clear enough. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent.] [the next line is a bombshell in the history of LDS Church scripture honesty --] Church leaders believed [my emphasis] that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice and prayerfully sought guidance. [making the verbs compound tends to suggest that the leaders were interested and prayed for a long time, when that was not necessarily the timing case.] [this is not the same thing as saying that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.] The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood.
This rewrite makes the situation more clear. I admit it also has a selective sense of history, what with its being short.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).
The Old Testament has slave imagery and references throughout.
Throughout Church history, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church.
During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, 2 free black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent, regardless of legal status.
Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice. They prayerfully sought guidance, particularly in the mid -twentieth century. The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood. A general conference sustained it in September 1978.
COMMENTARY
Bible translations show how word choice, grammar and sentence structure can make meanings ambiguously unclear.
Translators of the Old Testament used euphemisms like "The Groves" and "the Poles" to mask from readers references to alters of a female heathen deity that certain modern Biblical scholars now suspect scriptures once presented as God's wife.
The King James Bible translators used the word "murmur" when the ancient word used really was closer to the modern Yiddish "Kevetch" which implies loud complaining. Griping.
Thus, in the 2013 scripture edition, God yet again get the blame for the black priesthood ban. However, the implications of the wording “Church leaders believed” remains very interesting to contemplate. . . .
One of the lesser known facts surrounding the priesthood ban situation is this: the ban never actually worked. Leaders, going way back in church history, ordained men of mixed black genetics without knowing it. Had Brigham Young worded the ban along the lines of “no man with a black parent or grandparent back 4 generations can be ordained to the priesthood,” the ban would have worked better. It would have also been more clear than the prohibition worded “one drop of Negro blood.” That definition turned out to be "not measurable" and eventually bogged the ban down under its own ambiguity.
Research done for Michael Quinn’s Elder Statesman: the expanded biography of J Rueben Clark seems to suggest that the church leadership reviewed the ban in 1939, 1947, and 1955 with an eye to abandoning it – but the Church leadership never quite did. Its research also found the First Presidency made some informed exceptions in temple and priesthood regulations for people with a black ancestor way back amid a family history of whites.
Had the church lifted the ban in 1939, by the time the Civil Rights Movement got its first starts in 1948 the LDS Church could have helped lead the movement with the Southern Baptist Leadership Conference. History, though, is always a mess despite the best intents of humans to stage manage it. On this 35th anniversary of opening the LDS priesthood to all worthy males, the Church still has some public relations mopping up still to do.
The spokesman made the announcement at 11:00 a.m. On that Friday afternoon, which was my birthday, I was on the Brigham Young University Campus for work at the BYU Writing Lab, then located on the main floor of the library. It was the only time I ever saw a news story traveling through crowds of people. Those who had not heard the report could tell at a glance that something big had happened just watching the ripple effect through the crowd of college students. When someone told me in the writing lab about the announcement, I frankly wanted to believe it, but I would not let myself believe it without a second confirmation. I got that from my father over the phone a few minutes later.
In the 2013 LDS Scripture edition, The Revelation is prefaced in this way. I add my commentary.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few [2?] [free black members] black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice. [Comment: history seems clear enough. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent.] [the next line is a bombshell in the history of LDS Church scripture honesty --] Church leaders believed [my emphasis] that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice and prayerfully sought guidance. [making the verbs compound tends to suggest that the leaders were interested and prayed for a long time, when that was not necessarily the timing case.] [this is not the same thing as saying that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.] The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood.
This rewrite makes the situation more clear. I admit it also has a selective sense of history, what with its being short.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).
The Old Testament has slave imagery and references throughout.
Throughout Church history, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church.
During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, 2 free black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent, regardless of legal status.
Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice. They prayerfully sought guidance, particularly in the mid -twentieth century. The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood. A general conference sustained it in September 1978.
COMMENTARY
Bible translations show how word choice, grammar and sentence structure can make meanings ambiguously unclear.
Translators of the Old Testament used euphemisms like "The Groves" and "the Poles" to mask from readers references to alters of a female heathen deity that certain modern Biblical scholars now suspect scriptures once presented as God's wife.
The King James Bible translators used the word "murmur" when the ancient word used really was closer to the modern Yiddish "Kevetch" which implies loud complaining. Griping.
Thus, in the 2013 scripture edition, God yet again get the blame for the black priesthood ban. However, the implications of the wording “Church leaders believed” remains very interesting to contemplate. . . .
One of the lesser known facts surrounding the priesthood ban situation is this: the ban never actually worked. Leaders, going way back in church history, ordained men of mixed black genetics without knowing it. Had Brigham Young worded the ban along the lines of “no man with a black parent or grandparent back 4 generations can be ordained to the priesthood,” the ban would have worked better. It would have also been more clear than the prohibition worded “one drop of Negro blood.” That definition turned out to be "not measurable" and eventually bogged the ban down under its own ambiguity.
Research done for Michael Quinn’s Elder Statesman: the expanded biography of J Rueben Clark seems to suggest that the church leadership reviewed the ban in 1939, 1947, and 1955 with an eye to abandoning it – but the Church leadership never quite did. Its research also found the First Presidency made some informed exceptions in temple and priesthood regulations for people with a black ancestor way back amid a family history of whites.
Had the church lifted the ban in 1939, by the time the Civil Rights Movement got its first starts in 1948 the LDS Church could have helped lead the movement with the Southern Baptist Leadership Conference. History, though, is always a mess despite the best intents of humans to stage manage it. On this 35th anniversary of opening the LDS priesthood to all worthy males, the Church still has some public relations mopping up still to do.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
REMEMBERING FRANCES MONSON and contemplating the lives of prophets's wives
Frances Monson died this week.
She was for 65 years the wife of Thomas Monson, who has served as an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1963, a member of The First Presidency since 1985 and President of the Church since 2008.
She married Tom back in 1948. She married him when they were both quite young, and I suspect that she expected he would probably have a long editing and publishing career at Deseret Book and serve in some church leadership callings. Instead, he rose high quickly. Tom served as a bishop to a large ward full of old people when he was in his mid 20s. At the age of 32, he served as a Canadian mission president during a period of time when the First Presidency, influenced by President Henry D Moyle, like to call young, $ucce$$ful men to lead missionaries. When Tom was 36, President McKay ordained him the youngest apostle of that generation.
The practical result of this was – He traveled away from home for weeks at a time. She got to raise her three children as a solo act for long stretches of time. She got to attend all sorts of meetings and talk at them whether she really wanted to or not.
I heard Camilla Kimball speak at BYU in 1982. I heard Frances Monson speak at a regional conference in the early 2000s — I think it was her. I remember elements of Camilla’s talk very clearly. I do not remember the other talk at all.
When Mrs. J Reuben Clark was asked once about her life as J Reuben’s wife, she reply simply and with a certain resignation, “Fate decreed otherwise.” A Mormon girl simply cannot specifically plan or prepare for the sort of existence that engulfs the wife of an apostle or church president. It’s not a tough life in the sense of repairing desert railroads or working in a coal mine or hunting in the Arctic. It is a tough life, though; it takes its toll on health and energy.
The press releases would not say what Frances died of except the euphemistic “causes incident related to age.” I know I would die from exhausted by that sort of siege mentality lifestyle, especially when one cannot really retire from it.
Frances Monson is only the latest church president’s wife who died before her husband. Since 1945 most church president’s wives have died before their husbands. The mortality-timing issue in regards to the Church President’s wife features is startlingly noticeable — even before some presidents’s ordinations.
Frances Monson 2013
President Monson outlived her
Marjorie Hinckley 2004
President Hinckley outlived her
Clara Hunter 1983
President Hunter outlived her. Second wife Enis Egan outlived him by 12 years
Flora Benson 1992
President Benson outlived her
Camilla Kimball
Outlived President Kimball by 2 years
Fern Lee 1962
President Lee outlived her. Second wife Joan outlived him by 11 years
Jessie Evans Smith 1971
President Smith outlived her and she was years younger than he. He outlived all three of his wives
Emma Ray McKay 1970
Outlived President McKay, though she also died in 1970
Lucy Smith 1937
President Smith outlived her and served as president as a widower
In my lifetime
Members of the First Presidency J Reuben Clark, Hugh B Brown, and Marion G Romney all outlived their wives.
Apostles L Tom Perry, Russell M Nelson, Dallin Oaks, and Richard G Scott all outlived their first wives.
As for the LDS Church Presidents who practiced plural marriage:
Two of President Grant’s three plural wives died before him. His third wife Augusta outlived him by 6 years.
Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F Smith all experienced divorce and or death of plural spouses. This tends to illustrate the fact that polygamy as an institution increases a man’s measure of grief.
Considering President Monson
Frances’s death raises the issue as to whether President Monson will now occupy the penthouse reserved for the President of the Church – a penthouse where Presidents Benson (1994), Hunter (1995), and Hinckley (2008) all died. No president of the LDS Church has remarried while in office. One president served his entire administration as a widower with a widower counselor.
He and Frances were married for 65 years and they knew each other longer than that. This is no passing fancy or minor loss. Not many relationships of that vintage are still around in Ameica's throw away / burn-out young culture. The president’s bereavement and grief will be a leadership issue that the institutional church must endure.
She was for 65 years the wife of Thomas Monson, who has served as an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1963, a member of The First Presidency since 1985 and President of the Church since 2008.
She married Tom back in 1948. She married him when they were both quite young, and I suspect that she expected he would probably have a long editing and publishing career at Deseret Book and serve in some church leadership callings. Instead, he rose high quickly. Tom served as a bishop to a large ward full of old people when he was in his mid 20s. At the age of 32, he served as a Canadian mission president during a period of time when the First Presidency, influenced by President Henry D Moyle, like to call young, $ucce$$ful men to lead missionaries. When Tom was 36, President McKay ordained him the youngest apostle of that generation.
The practical result of this was – He traveled away from home for weeks at a time. She got to raise her three children as a solo act for long stretches of time. She got to attend all sorts of meetings and talk at them whether she really wanted to or not.
I heard Camilla Kimball speak at BYU in 1982. I heard Frances Monson speak at a regional conference in the early 2000s — I think it was her. I remember elements of Camilla’s talk very clearly. I do not remember the other talk at all.
When Mrs. J Reuben Clark was asked once about her life as J Reuben’s wife, she reply simply and with a certain resignation, “Fate decreed otherwise.” A Mormon girl simply cannot specifically plan or prepare for the sort of existence that engulfs the wife of an apostle or church president. It’s not a tough life in the sense of repairing desert railroads or working in a coal mine or hunting in the Arctic. It is a tough life, though; it takes its toll on health and energy.
The press releases would not say what Frances died of except the euphemistic “causes incident related to age.” I know I would die from exhausted by that sort of siege mentality lifestyle, especially when one cannot really retire from it.
Frances Monson is only the latest church president’s wife who died before her husband. Since 1945 most church president’s wives have died before their husbands. The mortality-timing issue in regards to the Church President’s wife features is startlingly noticeable — even before some presidents’s ordinations.
Frances Monson 2013
President Monson outlived her
Marjorie Hinckley 2004
President Hinckley outlived her
Clara Hunter 1983
President Hunter outlived her. Second wife Enis Egan outlived him by 12 years
Flora Benson 1992
President Benson outlived her
Camilla Kimball
Outlived President Kimball by 2 years
Fern Lee 1962
President Lee outlived her. Second wife Joan outlived him by 11 years
Jessie Evans Smith 1971
President Smith outlived her and she was years younger than he. He outlived all three of his wives
Emma Ray McKay 1970
Outlived President McKay, though she also died in 1970
Lucy Smith 1937
President Smith outlived her and served as president as a widower
In my lifetime
Members of the First Presidency J Reuben Clark, Hugh B Brown, and Marion G Romney all outlived their wives.
Apostles L Tom Perry, Russell M Nelson, Dallin Oaks, and Richard G Scott all outlived their first wives.
As for the LDS Church Presidents who practiced plural marriage:
Two of President Grant’s three plural wives died before him. His third wife Augusta outlived him by 6 years.
Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F Smith all experienced divorce and or death of plural spouses. This tends to illustrate the fact that polygamy as an institution increases a man’s measure of grief.
Considering President Monson
Frances’s death raises the issue as to whether President Monson will now occupy the penthouse reserved for the President of the Church – a penthouse where Presidents Benson (1994), Hunter (1995), and Hinckley (2008) all died. No president of the LDS Church has remarried while in office. One president served his entire administration as a widower with a widower counselor.
He and Frances were married for 65 years and they knew each other longer than that. This is no passing fancy or minor loss. Not many relationships of that vintage are still around in Ameica's throw away / burn-out young culture. The president’s bereavement and grief will be a leadership issue that the institutional church must endure.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN, UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN
Prologue
My father was born in 1912. If on the winters day he was born someone, say his father, had written an essay contemplating what his new baby’s whole life would be like – just how accurate would that prediction have been?
Consider what goes through a father’s mind the first time he sees his new son after his birth. What sort of man will this boy become?
A new Jesus?
A new Stalin?
A new Gandhi?
A new Hitler?
How would the fathers of Joseph Smith, of George Dewey, of Prescott Bush, of Bill Gates reacted if they had seen their sons's futures on their birth days?
Many things that shaped my father’s life had been invented in 1912, but who could contemplate in 1912 things that influenced his life – things like atomic power and television and the Internet? Or bananas available year round anywhere in America or mass-produced soap, automobiles, and canned spaghetti.
In January1912, it would be easy to believe that the baby boy’s whole life would be influenced and overshadowed by the powers of the time – the imperial empires of Germany, Great Britain, Ottoman, and Russia. The Powers of Austria and of France and of America. Within a short seven years, a number of those political entities more or less disappeared into the wreckage of The Great War. A whole new set of empires went into motion.
I contemplated today the life of a little boy born on 28 April 2013.
Those now involved in human genetic engineering, cyborg technology and global health initiatives like to talk about the possibilities that the future human could possibly live routinely to 125 years, given the right conditions. If that child did indeed achieve that prediction, he would die in the year 2138. It is anybody's guess what kind of humans and human civilization will surround him then.
Will the Federal United States still be around as a superpower or even a power in the twilight of the boy’s lifetime. When this boy becomes an old man, will the political structure of the World even closely resemble the World political map today?
A week before the boy was born, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom observed her 87th birthday. Two months after the boy was born, the Queen will celebrate the 60th anniversary of her coronation. If the Queen lives to be 90 and if her son lives to be 90 and if her grandson lives to be 90, then King George VII will rule from 2016 to 2038 and King William V will rule from 2038 to 2062. In the same year that the boy was born, a new heir to the Windsor Dynasty will be born. If the United Kingdom continues to have a monarchy – a big if – and if King William lives to a ripe old age and if his first born also lives to be 90, then this new heir born in 2013 will reign from 2062 to 2103.
If the boy is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he will be baptized in 2021, ordained a deacon in 2025, serve a mission in 2031. If he gets sealed at the age of, say, 24, that will happen in 2037. All of this speculating presupposes that a boy in the Mormon church of the future will still go on missions as a youth and as a retired person, which presupposes that people will retire from careers and have time for full time proclaiming the gospel. If he and his spouse serve a mission as a mature person that could come in the year 2083.
When he is in his 20s and 30, say from 2031 to 2041, will the world be peaceful or will armies at war want to recruit him or even conscript him? Will the USA military still be volunteer or will it go back to its old ways of forcing boys to flight other people’s struggles? Will the leaders of human society finally rise to the occasion to face the decisions that need to be made – peacefully?
We humans really have too. The possibilities of 21st Century War are too hideous to contemplate, but the boy born today may in fact see one. Or them. The wars of the 19th century were significantly more deadly than the wars of the 18th century, thanks to advances or improvements (both words seem wrong) in weapons and in an increased willingness to use deadly force to force a nation’s way on others. The wars of the 20th century were infinitely worse than the wars of the 19th century. Will atomic weaponry be common in the boy’s lifetime? And automatic weaponry become common household implements? Will the boy grow up to have his own drone for protection? Or will humans finally be sensible and ban such weapons in favor of non-lethal protection?
Among The Big Questions to answer in the 21st Century that this boy may see –
Will humans evolve into creatures that can live peacefully on a warmer planet with fewer resources?
Will we humans discover major unknown life forms in the oceans in his lifetime?
Will we humans discover extraterrestrial life in his lifetime?
Will alien life visit Earth in his lifetime?
Will humans travel back into space in his lifetime?
Will humans do anything on the Moon or Mars?
Will we make enough advances technology in his lifetime to travel – Star Trek-like – faster than the speed of light?
Will humans be traveling through time when this boy becomes an old man?
In 2013, the more apocalyptic of the futurists – looking at the simmering nationality hatreds and all the atomic weapons and the issues of global climate change coupled with dwindling resources – predict the destruction of technological civilization. Will the boy live in a large technological house? Or a hut? During the majority of his lifetime, will he urinate in plumbing or pee pee in thickets? Will he get his food from a supermarket? Or a private ranch? Or garden? Or hunting-gathering?
If he goes to college and earns a Ph.D in physics or British Literature, he will be in the class of c. 2045. Will the prestigious ivy league American colleges still be prestigious and expensive? Will this child do a job or a career that we have even heard of in 2013 or will his career be in a technology uninvented as of yet. Furthermore, if humans indeed will live way into their 100s, this will have an enormous effect on work and retirement – or work, retirement, work, retirement. A boy who grows up to be a man could conceivably have a number of different careers, requiring not one university experience but two. Or three. It is quite possible that the boy’s last career will being doing something that we have never heard of today because it does not exist today.
Today in 2013, we think of American retirement in terms of Social Security. If that survives to the boy’s retirement age, that means the boy as a mature man will retire maybe at 75 years of age. If people will live healthy lives into their 110s and 120s, retirement may be later than that. For even though we humans like to talk about nothing but leisure, we by and large define ourselves by work.
Six weeks before the boy was born, the Catholic Church cardinals elected a new Pope, the first from the Americas, the first Pope named Francisco. This Pope is the last one described by Saint Malachy of Armagh, a Roman Catholic bishop who died in 1148, was said to have had a vision while on a pilgrimage to Rome wherein he learned the exact number of all the popes who would rule from his time to the Apocalypse. Francisco is “Peter the Roman” – an Argentina with Italian roots but nothing in his birth name to suggest the predicted moniker. Will Catholicism continue into the future?
Will the LDS Church also continue into the future? Currently it looks as though Elders Dallin Oaks, Jeffrey Holland, and David Bednar will be the next three church presidents. However, who knows what tomorrow brings in a leadership based on seniority. Will it always be based on absolute seniority. Will the boys wife hold the priesthood in the sense of an ordained priesthood office?
FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS
The Sunday the boy was born I walked to Church and saw two of the boys who live in the neighborhood and attend Church in my Ward. They are both 15. As they walked down the street together close, they tugged at and wrestled each other on the way. I mention this as a way of introducing the topic of boys friendships / male friendship and writing my hope that in this little boy’s relationship world the culture will allow male friends to hold hands if they want to just to express friendship and to kiss if they want to for friendship and have intense bromances if they want to. When this boy grows up, will the culture will allow him to have emotions other than lust, violence, and irony?
I hope that American culture will allow the boy born today and his friends to have more of an emotional life than boys of my generation were allowed by the adults. We boys of my generation were allowed and got violence and humor. The culture allowed us to think in terms of sexual activity, but not in terms of romance, bromance, or friendship. Hopefully the 21st century boy and man can have an emotional, spiritual side
I hope that a boy born today would finally be able to avoid the traps that his grandfathers and fathers fell into: Grueling work for survival. Corporate hookup for prestige, survival, and glamour. Being tough – violent and uncaring – for the sake of survival toughness. Defining ourselves by work. Competing constantly with men instead of enjoying friendship.
Will this boy father children of his own some day? And grandchildren? In a world that will have 7 billion people . . . 8 billion ... 9 billion. .. . 10 billion . . . 11 billion, in a world where the commandment to “multiply and replenish The Earth” has been fulfilled several billion times over and over, will the boy have a moral reason to reproduce at all?
On the day the boy is born, Americans discussed, contemplated, argued over “reforms” in marriage to allow men to marry. This proposal would affect only a certain number of 3 to 5 percent of the American population – those men who prefer men for intimate companionship. Furthermore in the year the boy is born, fewer and fewer Americans actually get married. So it is a discussion that ultimately will really affect a small number of marriages. Will marriage continue to be “The Norm?” for regular people when the newborn is an old man?
When gazing a newborn boy for the first time, it is a little hard to look into the future and contemplate, well relationships. Romance. Sex. Despite all the current talk about traditional marriage and traditional family values, traditional family values have always had any number of people attached to the family. Accountants. Lawyers. Bankers. Ministers. Counselors. The wife’s girl friends. The husband’s guy friends. Mistresses. Lovers. The children’s friends. Considering the death of spouses, divorcing spouses, "la casa grande -- la casa bonita," and outright polygamy in many modern cultures – the majority of men in the world are not monogamous either through time or in eternity. The odds are the boy will in his lifetime in this epoch of mankind have multiple relationships.
Currently the world has 7 billion people, give or take, and a number that vast makes us wonder how any of us can make a name for ourselves or leave a record of ourselves in a world when one person seems so utterly outnumbered?
Hard to know how to end an essay like this, where I am trying to gaze into a crystal darkly.
Many of this boy’s relatives and neighbors anticipate the Second Coming of Christ in his lifetime, but since we crucified him the last time he was here, I bet he is in no real hurry to come back. Most of those hopes are wish fulfillment that someone can just by supernatural force turn the World into Their Kind of Place. The problem with supernatural intervention is that we humans will have to like what we get. One way or another, The New Order will require a very huge bureaucracy – bigger and more complicated than the bureaucracies we now have on a smaller scale.
MY BIRTHDAY BLESSING
Whatever happens to the boy, whatever he becomes, I hope that the world will treat him well and that plenty of people around him with love him and nurture him and not just exploit him.
My father was born in 1912. If on the winters day he was born someone, say his father, had written an essay contemplating what his new baby’s whole life would be like – just how accurate would that prediction have been?
Consider what goes through a father’s mind the first time he sees his new son after his birth. What sort of man will this boy become?
A new Jesus?
A new Stalin?
A new Gandhi?
A new Hitler?
How would the fathers of Joseph Smith, of George Dewey, of Prescott Bush, of Bill Gates reacted if they had seen their sons's futures on their birth days?
Many things that shaped my father’s life had been invented in 1912, but who could contemplate in 1912 things that influenced his life – things like atomic power and television and the Internet? Or bananas available year round anywhere in America or mass-produced soap, automobiles, and canned spaghetti.
In January1912, it would be easy to believe that the baby boy’s whole life would be influenced and overshadowed by the powers of the time – the imperial empires of Germany, Great Britain, Ottoman, and Russia. The Powers of Austria and of France and of America. Within a short seven years, a number of those political entities more or less disappeared into the wreckage of The Great War. A whole new set of empires went into motion.
I contemplated today the life of a little boy born on 28 April 2013.
Those now involved in human genetic engineering, cyborg technology and global health initiatives like to talk about the possibilities that the future human could possibly live routinely to 125 years, given the right conditions. If that child did indeed achieve that prediction, he would die in the year 2138. It is anybody's guess what kind of humans and human civilization will surround him then.
Will the Federal United States still be around as a superpower or even a power in the twilight of the boy’s lifetime. When this boy becomes an old man, will the political structure of the World even closely resemble the World political map today?
A week before the boy was born, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom observed her 87th birthday. Two months after the boy was born, the Queen will celebrate the 60th anniversary of her coronation. If the Queen lives to be 90 and if her son lives to be 90 and if her grandson lives to be 90, then King George VII will rule from 2016 to 2038 and King William V will rule from 2038 to 2062. In the same year that the boy was born, a new heir to the Windsor Dynasty will be born. If the United Kingdom continues to have a monarchy – a big if – and if King William lives to a ripe old age and if his first born also lives to be 90, then this new heir born in 2013 will reign from 2062 to 2103.
If the boy is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he will be baptized in 2021, ordained a deacon in 2025, serve a mission in 2031. If he gets sealed at the age of, say, 24, that will happen in 2037. All of this speculating presupposes that a boy in the Mormon church of the future will still go on missions as a youth and as a retired person, which presupposes that people will retire from careers and have time for full time proclaiming the gospel. If he and his spouse serve a mission as a mature person that could come in the year 2083.
When he is in his 20s and 30, say from 2031 to 2041, will the world be peaceful or will armies at war want to recruit him or even conscript him? Will the USA military still be volunteer or will it go back to its old ways of forcing boys to flight other people’s struggles? Will the leaders of human society finally rise to the occasion to face the decisions that need to be made – peacefully?
We humans really have too. The possibilities of 21st Century War are too hideous to contemplate, but the boy born today may in fact see one. Or them. The wars of the 19th century were significantly more deadly than the wars of the 18th century, thanks to advances or improvements (both words seem wrong) in weapons and in an increased willingness to use deadly force to force a nation’s way on others. The wars of the 20th century were infinitely worse than the wars of the 19th century. Will atomic weaponry be common in the boy’s lifetime? And automatic weaponry become common household implements? Will the boy grow up to have his own drone for protection? Or will humans finally be sensible and ban such weapons in favor of non-lethal protection?
Among The Big Questions to answer in the 21st Century that this boy may see –
Will humans evolve into creatures that can live peacefully on a warmer planet with fewer resources?
Will we humans discover major unknown life forms in the oceans in his lifetime?
Will we humans discover extraterrestrial life in his lifetime?
Will alien life visit Earth in his lifetime?
Will humans travel back into space in his lifetime?
Will humans do anything on the Moon or Mars?
Will we make enough advances technology in his lifetime to travel – Star Trek-like – faster than the speed of light?
Will humans be traveling through time when this boy becomes an old man?
In 2013, the more apocalyptic of the futurists – looking at the simmering nationality hatreds and all the atomic weapons and the issues of global climate change coupled with dwindling resources – predict the destruction of technological civilization. Will the boy live in a large technological house? Or a hut? During the majority of his lifetime, will he urinate in plumbing or pee pee in thickets? Will he get his food from a supermarket? Or a private ranch? Or garden? Or hunting-gathering?
If he goes to college and earns a Ph.D in physics or British Literature, he will be in the class of c. 2045. Will the prestigious ivy league American colleges still be prestigious and expensive? Will this child do a job or a career that we have even heard of in 2013 or will his career be in a technology uninvented as of yet. Furthermore, if humans indeed will live way into their 100s, this will have an enormous effect on work and retirement – or work, retirement, work, retirement. A boy who grows up to be a man could conceivably have a number of different careers, requiring not one university experience but two. Or three. It is quite possible that the boy’s last career will being doing something that we have never heard of today because it does not exist today.
Today in 2013, we think of American retirement in terms of Social Security. If that survives to the boy’s retirement age, that means the boy as a mature man will retire maybe at 75 years of age. If people will live healthy lives into their 110s and 120s, retirement may be later than that. For even though we humans like to talk about nothing but leisure, we by and large define ourselves by work.
Six weeks before the boy was born, the Catholic Church cardinals elected a new Pope, the first from the Americas, the first Pope named Francisco. This Pope is the last one described by Saint Malachy of Armagh, a Roman Catholic bishop who died in 1148, was said to have had a vision while on a pilgrimage to Rome wherein he learned the exact number of all the popes who would rule from his time to the Apocalypse. Francisco is “Peter the Roman” – an Argentina with Italian roots but nothing in his birth name to suggest the predicted moniker. Will Catholicism continue into the future?
Will the LDS Church also continue into the future? Currently it looks as though Elders Dallin Oaks, Jeffrey Holland, and David Bednar will be the next three church presidents. However, who knows what tomorrow brings in a leadership based on seniority. Will it always be based on absolute seniority. Will the boys wife hold the priesthood in the sense of an ordained priesthood office?
FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS
The Sunday the boy was born I walked to Church and saw two of the boys who live in the neighborhood and attend Church in my Ward. They are both 15. As they walked down the street together close, they tugged at and wrestled each other on the way. I mention this as a way of introducing the topic of boys friendships / male friendship and writing my hope that in this little boy’s relationship world the culture will allow male friends to hold hands if they want to just to express friendship and to kiss if they want to for friendship and have intense bromances if they want to. When this boy grows up, will the culture will allow him to have emotions other than lust, violence, and irony?
I hope that American culture will allow the boy born today and his friends to have more of an emotional life than boys of my generation were allowed by the adults. We boys of my generation were allowed and got violence and humor. The culture allowed us to think in terms of sexual activity, but not in terms of romance, bromance, or friendship. Hopefully the 21st century boy and man can have an emotional, spiritual side
I hope that a boy born today would finally be able to avoid the traps that his grandfathers and fathers fell into: Grueling work for survival. Corporate hookup for prestige, survival, and glamour. Being tough – violent and uncaring – for the sake of survival toughness. Defining ourselves by work. Competing constantly with men instead of enjoying friendship.
Will this boy father children of his own some day? And grandchildren? In a world that will have 7 billion people . . . 8 billion ... 9 billion. .. . 10 billion . . . 11 billion, in a world where the commandment to “multiply and replenish The Earth” has been fulfilled several billion times over and over, will the boy have a moral reason to reproduce at all?
On the day the boy is born, Americans discussed, contemplated, argued over “reforms” in marriage to allow men to marry. This proposal would affect only a certain number of 3 to 5 percent of the American population – those men who prefer men for intimate companionship. Furthermore in the year the boy is born, fewer and fewer Americans actually get married. So it is a discussion that ultimately will really affect a small number of marriages. Will marriage continue to be “The Norm?” for regular people when the newborn is an old man?
When gazing a newborn boy for the first time, it is a little hard to look into the future and contemplate, well relationships. Romance. Sex. Despite all the current talk about traditional marriage and traditional family values, traditional family values have always had any number of people attached to the family. Accountants. Lawyers. Bankers. Ministers. Counselors. The wife’s girl friends. The husband’s guy friends. Mistresses. Lovers. The children’s friends. Considering the death of spouses, divorcing spouses, "la casa grande -- la casa bonita," and outright polygamy in many modern cultures – the majority of men in the world are not monogamous either through time or in eternity. The odds are the boy will in his lifetime in this epoch of mankind have multiple relationships.
Currently the world has 7 billion people, give or take, and a number that vast makes us wonder how any of us can make a name for ourselves or leave a record of ourselves in a world when one person seems so utterly outnumbered?
Hard to know how to end an essay like this, where I am trying to gaze into a crystal darkly.
Many of this boy’s relatives and neighbors anticipate the Second Coming of Christ in his lifetime, but since we crucified him the last time he was here, I bet he is in no real hurry to come back. Most of those hopes are wish fulfillment that someone can just by supernatural force turn the World into Their Kind of Place. The problem with supernatural intervention is that we humans will have to like what we get. One way or another, The New Order will require a very huge bureaucracy – bigger and more complicated than the bureaucracies we now have on a smaller scale.
MY BIRTHDAY BLESSING
Whatever happens to the boy, whatever he becomes, I hope that the world will treat him well and that plenty of people around him with love him and nurture him and not just exploit him.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
THE RIGHT TO BEARS ARMS VS THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE
On 10 April 2013, the Guardian of London online newspaper featured 13 photos of U S Senators who oppose any gun control legislation. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, was in the group. The montage reminded me how much of current gun control debate focuses on a number of irrelevant issues.
We citizens should not to get distracted by them.
People on both sides of the gun control debate can agree on our right to self defense.
However, the right to self defense does not necessary require a gun. What gets lost in the current post Newtown massacre debate is this: under most circumstances, self defense does not require automatic weapons with large ammunition clips.
The right to self defense is an obvious right.
Furthermore, Book of Mormon and Bible scriptures guarantee it.
The Common Law guaranteed it. However ---
Using the Second Amendment as a right to personal defense is to misread it and its original intent. The second amendment is about community militias, which means it is really about power maintenance on a community level.
Automatic weapons have made civilian life more dangerous; they have made warfare even more awful all the way around. Automatic weapons are offensive in all senses of the term. In the days when a man armed himself with a sharpened stick, he could do only as much damage as his strength allowed or the strength of his opponents allowed. Today, automatic weapon means that any weakling with a trigger finger can do quite a lot of damage to civilians with relatively little effort.
THE CALLS TO ACTION
I urge members of Congress to work for abolition of at least two weapons that have made the whole world unsafe: atomic weaponry and the automatic firearm.
Now, as to proposed gun control legislation in Congress: I suppose the popular proposals are better than nothing. Marginally. Congress, however, refuses to address two issues that it must address.
One: profits from firearm manufacturing, particularly the profitably of automatic weapons, keeps us from developing, finding, and using non-lethal self-defense protection.
Two: the Second Amendment is out of date and needs replacing with a modern amendment guaranteeing explicitly the right to self defense.
Remember please this basic point: we should not put 21st century public safety ahead of a misreading of a 220-year-old sentence.
We citizens should not to get distracted by them.
People on both sides of the gun control debate can agree on our right to self defense.
However, the right to self defense does not necessary require a gun. What gets lost in the current post Newtown massacre debate is this: under most circumstances, self defense does not require automatic weapons with large ammunition clips.
The right to self defense is an obvious right.
Furthermore, Book of Mormon and Bible scriptures guarantee it.
The Common Law guaranteed it. However ---
Using the Second Amendment as a right to personal defense is to misread it and its original intent. The second amendment is about community militias, which means it is really about power maintenance on a community level.
Automatic weapons have made civilian life more dangerous; they have made warfare even more awful all the way around. Automatic weapons are offensive in all senses of the term. In the days when a man armed himself with a sharpened stick, he could do only as much damage as his strength allowed or the strength of his opponents allowed. Today, automatic weapon means that any weakling with a trigger finger can do quite a lot of damage to civilians with relatively little effort.
THE CALLS TO ACTION
I urge members of Congress to work for abolition of at least two weapons that have made the whole world unsafe: atomic weaponry and the automatic firearm.
Now, as to proposed gun control legislation in Congress: I suppose the popular proposals are better than nothing. Marginally. Congress, however, refuses to address two issues that it must address.
One: profits from firearm manufacturing, particularly the profitably of automatic weapons, keeps us from developing, finding, and using non-lethal self-defense protection.
Two: the Second Amendment is out of date and needs replacing with a modern amendment guaranteeing explicitly the right to self defense.
Remember please this basic point: we should not put 21st century public safety ahead of a misreading of a 220-year-old sentence.
Friday, April 5, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
COMMENTARY ON THE 2013 LDS SCRIPTURE HEADINGS OF THE DECLARATIONS
On 1 March 2013, the LDS Church released its 2013 edition of the LDS scriptures. It has new study guides and some rewritten chapter headings. The editors did their most interesting and comprehensive rewriting to the introductions to The Declarations. I present them with commentary, and with some rewriting for clarity. These headings do not lie technically, but they do not tell the full truth. They do illustrate how leadership can use selective historical facts,word choice, punctuation, sentence structure, and word order to influence how a reader will interpret them.
Official Declaration 1
The Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that monogamy is God’s standard for marriage unless He declares otherwise (see 2 Samuel 12:7–8 and Jacob 2:27, 30). Following a revelation to Joseph Smith [the wording implies that the revelation came in the 1840s by playing it front of the next phrase], the practice of plural marriage was instituted among Church members in the early 1840s (see section 132). From the 1860s to the 1880s, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal. These laws were eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. After receiving revelation [the most noticeable of which in 1880 and 1889 seemed to uphold the practice], President Wilford Woodruff issued the following Manifesto [the wording and word order implies but does not necessarily mean the Manifesto was a revelation], which was accepted by the Church as authoritative and binding on October 6, 1890. This led to the end [my emphasis] of the practice of plural marriage in the Church. [if you compare the wording here to the wording in the second declaration, this heading implies President Woodruff acted unilaterally.]
This paragraph explains the situation in active voice and more clarity. It is, I admit, marginally more candid.
The Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that monogamy is God’s standard for marriage unless He declares otherwise (see 2 Samuel 12:7–8 and Jacob 2:27, 30). Following a revelation to Joseph Smith in 1831, the First Presidency instituted the practice of plural marriage among Church members in 1841. From the 1860s to the 1880s, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal The U S Supreme Court upheld these laws. President Wilford Woodruff issued the following Manifesto; a general conference sustained it on 6 October 1890. President Joseph F Smith later issued a Second Manifesto, which promised to excommunicate people who entered into plural marriage; a general conference sustained it in April 1904. This ended the practice of plural marriage in the Church, but not in the culture.
Official Declaration 2
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few [2?] [free black members] black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice. [Comment: history seems clear enough. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent.] [the next line is a bombshell in the history of LDS Church scripture honesty --] Church leaders believed [my emphasis] that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice and prayerfully sought guidance. [making the verbs compound tends to suggest that the leaders were interested and prayed for a long time, when that was not necessarily the timing case.] [this is not the same thing as saying that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.] The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood.
This rewrite makes the situation more clear. I admit it also has a selective sense of history, what with its being short.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).
The Old Testament has slave imagery and references throughout.
Throughout Church history, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church.
During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, 2 free black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent, regardless of legal status.
Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice. They prayerfully sought guidance, particularly in the mid -twentieth century. The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood. A general conference sustained it in September 1978.
COMMENTARY
Bible translations show how word choice, grammar and sentence structure can make meanings ambiguously unclear.
Translators of the Old Testament used euphemisms like "The Groves" and "the Poles" to mask from readers references to alters of a female heathen deity that certain modern Biblical scholars now suspect scriptures once presented as God's wife.
The King James Bible translators used the word "murmur" when the ancient word used really was closer to the modern Yiddish "Kevetch" which implies loud complaining.
Thus, in the 2013 scripture edition, God yet again get the blame for the black priesthood ban.
The thing to remember about that ban is that it never actually worked. Leaders, going way back in church history, ordained men of mixed black genetics without knowing it. Had Brigham Young worded the ban along the lines of “no man with a black parent or grandparent back 4 generations can be ordained to the priesthood,” the ban would have worked better. It would have also been more clear than the prohibition worded “one drop of Negro blood.” That wording turned out to be "not measurable" and eventually bogged the ban down under its own ambiguity.
Official Declaration 1
The Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that monogamy is God’s standard for marriage unless He declares otherwise (see 2 Samuel 12:7–8 and Jacob 2:27, 30). Following a revelation to Joseph Smith [the wording implies that the revelation came in the 1840s by playing it front of the next phrase], the practice of plural marriage was instituted among Church members in the early 1840s (see section 132). From the 1860s to the 1880s, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal. These laws were eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. After receiving revelation [the most noticeable of which in 1880 and 1889 seemed to uphold the practice], President Wilford Woodruff issued the following Manifesto [the wording and word order implies but does not necessarily mean the Manifesto was a revelation], which was accepted by the Church as authoritative and binding on October 6, 1890. This led to the end [my emphasis] of the practice of plural marriage in the Church. [if you compare the wording here to the wording in the second declaration, this heading implies President Woodruff acted unilaterally.]
This paragraph explains the situation in active voice and more clarity. It is, I admit, marginally more candid.
The Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that monogamy is God’s standard for marriage unless He declares otherwise (see 2 Samuel 12:7–8 and Jacob 2:27, 30). Following a revelation to Joseph Smith in 1831, the First Presidency instituted the practice of plural marriage among Church members in 1841. From the 1860s to the 1880s, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal The U S Supreme Court upheld these laws. President Wilford Woodruff issued the following Manifesto; a general conference sustained it on 6 October 1890. President Joseph F Smith later issued a Second Manifesto, which promised to excommunicate people who entered into plural marriage; a general conference sustained it in April 1904. This ended the practice of plural marriage in the Church, but not in the culture.
Official Declaration 2
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33). Throughout the history of the Church, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church. During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, a few [2?] [free black members] black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice. [Comment: history seems clear enough. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent.] [the next line is a bombshell in the history of LDS Church scripture honesty --] Church leaders believed [my emphasis] that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice and prayerfully sought guidance. [making the verbs compound tends to suggest that the leaders were interested and prayed for a long time, when that was not necessarily the timing case.] [this is not the same thing as saying that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice.] The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood.
This rewrite makes the situation more clear. I admit it also has a selective sense of history, what with its being short.
The Book of Mormon teaches that “all are alike unto God,” including “black and white, bond and free, male and female” (2 Nephi 26:33).
The Old Testament has slave imagery and references throughout.
Throughout Church history, people of every race and ethnicity in many countries have been baptized and have lived as faithful members of the Church.
During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, 2 free black male members of the Church were ordained to the priesthood. In 1852, President Brigham Young stopped conferring priesthood on any and all black males of African descent, regardless of legal status.
Church leaders believed that a revelation from God was needed to alter this practice. They prayerfully sought guidance, particularly in the mid -twentieth century. The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood. A general conference sustained it in September 1978.
COMMENTARY
Bible translations show how word choice, grammar and sentence structure can make meanings ambiguously unclear.
Translators of the Old Testament used euphemisms like "The Groves" and "the Poles" to mask from readers references to alters of a female heathen deity that certain modern Biblical scholars now suspect scriptures once presented as God's wife.
The King James Bible translators used the word "murmur" when the ancient word used really was closer to the modern Yiddish "Kevetch" which implies loud complaining.
Thus, in the 2013 scripture edition, God yet again get the blame for the black priesthood ban.
The thing to remember about that ban is that it never actually worked. Leaders, going way back in church history, ordained men of mixed black genetics without knowing it. Had Brigham Young worded the ban along the lines of “no man with a black parent or grandparent back 4 generations can be ordained to the priesthood,” the ban would have worked better. It would have also been more clear than the prohibition worded “one drop of Negro blood.” That wording turned out to be "not measurable" and eventually bogged the ban down under its own ambiguity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
