Succession in LDS Leadership

LDS History, LDS Organization, Main, Succession,

[UPDATED 01/27/08 2125 MST]

This entry is suddenly getting a lot of hits, due undoubtedly to the death earlier today of Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley. With the death of Pres. Hinckley, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been dissolved; Pres. Thomas S. Monson and Pres. Henry B. Eyring return to the Council of the Twelve Apostles (which now actually has 14 apostles in it); and Pres. Monson resumes his role as President of the Quorum of the Twelve, taking over from Pres. Boyd K. Packer, who has been serving as Acting President of the Twelve.

The Quorum of the Twelve, under the leadership of Pres. Monson, now leads the LDS Church. At some point, most likely within the next week or two, the Quorum of the Twelve will move to reorganize the First Presidency, with Pres. Thomas S. Monson as President of the Church, along with two counselors of his choosing. There’s a good chance (based on tradition) that Pres. Monson will retain Elder Eyring as one of his counselors, but that’s Pres. Monson’s choice, not a requirement.

Also note that this means that a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve will be called, though possibly not until the LDS General Conference in April.

[UPDATED 10/06/07 1034 MDT – Elder Henry B. Eyring has been called and sustained as 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency, while Elder Quentin L. Cook has been called to the Quorum of the Twelve. See here.]

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Peggy Fletcher Stack over in the Salt Lake Tribune writes about the “wild speculation” (her phrase, not mine) regarding whom Pres. Hinckley will call to replace Pres. Faust as 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency. First, in my own experience, the speculation tends to be tame rather than wild, though (in fairness) it’s probably a bit more of a topic of discussion within Utah than outside of it. Second, Stack gives no substantive basis for the specific candidates she mentions; one could as easily list all of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve instead of the few she picks out. Stack does correctly note that counselors have on occasion been chosen from outside of the Quorum of the Twelve, though it’s been roughly half a century since that happened. However, she incorrectly states that the calling as a counselor in the First Presidency is a “lifetime calling”; when the President of the Church dies, his counselors are automatically released and revert back to their positions in (or outside of) the Quorum of the Twelve, and the new President of the Church is free to select whomever he wants as counselors. (I sent Peggy a note on this, and she replied that she inadvertently left out a conditional phrase; easy enough to do with deadlines.)

Those minor quibbles aside, Stack’s article clearly lays out the principles underlying succession at the highest level of the LDS Church. Once you are called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, you are on a very slow-moving track toward being President of the Church — but only if you live long enough (i.e., longer than those called before you). This has always struck me as a very elegant and corruption-free process. There is no voting, no jockeying for position, no way to leapfrog ahead of those called to the Quorum before you. It is, quite literally, in God’s hands.

Continue reading Succession in LDS Leadership →

Pres. James E. Faust (1920-2007)

LDS History, LDS Organization, Main

One of my most distinct LDS General Conference memories over the past 40 years surrounds Pres. Faust being called as a General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After having been sustained as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve earlier in the conference, he got up to speak briefly. He opened his first-ever talk in General Conference by saying, “For 22 years, until last Thursday morning, I have been a lawyer. And since then I have been trying to repent.” Laughter rumbled through the Tabernacle.

Copyright (c) 2006 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

That was in October 1972,  just five years after I had joined the Church and while I was in the Language Training Mission, learning Spanish for my two years down in Central America. For the last 35 years, I have always enjoyed, listened carefully to, and learned from Pres. Faust’s remarks in General Conference and elsewhere. As a former Democratic state legislator and a former member of Pres. Kennedy’s Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, he has served as a role model for those of us in the Church who believe that there are — or at least were — core principles within the Democratic Party worth defending and promoting.

I will miss his warm voice and unmistakable cadence, which I have listened to for nearly two-thirds of my entire life. My prayers are with his family and friends.  ..bruce..

Ah, those troublesome Buddhas

Humor, Main, World Religions

It’s hard at times to distinguish between real news and The Onion:

Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

Talking about King Canute commanding the tides…I can hardly wait to see what the ChiComs decree regarding Catholic sacramental services. Hat tip to the Drudge Report.

Speaking of The Onion, I thought this was a delightful article:

NEW YORK—An emergency coalition of deities from several major world religions is still sorting through the wreckage of a tragic bus accident that claimed 67 lives Friday in the culturally diverse Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens….

More than half a dozen gods reportedly responded to the scene within moments of the crash. Because the victims hailed from 14 countries and professed an as-yet-undetermined number of religious faiths, however, the soul-placement process has been laborious, and fewer than a third of the deceased have so far been escorted to their appropriate afterlives.

“What a mess this is,” said Ganesha, the Hindu lord of success and obstacles. “Assuming we ever manage to figure out who worships our particular pantheon, there’s still the problem of divvying up the Buddhists, Jains, and other non-Hindus who worship me, Lakshmi, Vishnu, and about 1,000 other gods.”…

One god, who asked that His name not be spoken aloud, said the theological muddle was a rarity, and that He and the other deities usually have no trouble operating without an official post-disaster protocol.

“We don’t normally have to deal with these kinds of details,” the god said. “If there’s a rocket attack in the Middle East, it’s pretty easy to figure out who goes in to mop up.”

Further complicating matters is the presence of the devil, Beelzebub, who has demanded that the coalition relinquish all souls to him.

“These are all vile, vile sinners, and I’m not leaving until I get them,” the dark lord said, though other gods appeared unreceptive. “Look, my numbers have been way down this month. I’m sure everyone here did something damning at some point, right? Come on.”…

The only thing that would have made the article better would have been for them to refer to Mormons instead of Catholics at the very end, but given the on-going controversy around Mitt Romney, they probably thought it was too obvious a move. ..bruce..

Mormons and Hell

LDS Doctrine, Main

This touching (and well-written) article — from Jennifer Pemberton, a woman who is not LDS but who has LDS relatives — got me thinking about Hell, something else that divides us from most conservative Christians. She talks about the conflicts between her grandmother (not LDS) and her great aunt (LDS) over religion, and her great-aunt’s final health decline and death:

Aunt Ruth died a week later. My grandmother was inconsolable — a complete surprise. “There’s no relief,” she said over the phone. “We can’t say, ‘She’s with the Lord now.’ I can’t help but think of her burning in hell, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.” How could I console her? “We don’t know that,” I said. “More likely she’s with Wendell and Richard and Grandpa. It’s one big family reunion up there for the Mormons.” I shouldn’t have included my grandfather in the mix, but she let it slide.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, with a laugh.

“At least if the Mormons are right, we’ll all be safe,” I said.

We were joking again, irreverent at the most inappropriate times — the only way we knew how to make sense of things.

“It wouldn’t hurt to invest in a pair of that holy underwear,” I added. “Just in case.”

Just about the same time I ran across this article, I also ran across this video mashup of Jack Chick’s ‘Titanic‘ tract using footage from James Cameron’s movie by the same name. Between the two, I was struck anew at how stark much of conservative Christian theology is regarding the concept of Hell and the significant (and often radical) differences in the LDS concept of Hell. (More after the jump.)

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Mormons and the Vietnam-Era Draft

LDS History, Main, Military, Politics

I see that the Boston Globe, as part of their campaign against Mitt Romney, is trying to paint a sinister portrait of the LDS Church working “hand-in-hand” with the Selective Service Board on draft deferments for LDS young men serving full-time missions during the Vietnam era.

What a load of hooey.

Not that the deferments didn’t happen; they did. I should know: I had one. My draft number (in the 1972 spring draft) was 4, an absolute guarantee that I would be drafted after my 2-year (fixed-term) mission was over. The only person on my dorm floor with a draft number under 100 was Glade Roper (now a judge in Texas), who spent the next few weeks calling me “Sarge”. I made my plans to enlist in the Navy when I came back, since I would no longer have a ministerial deferment at that point. As it turned out, I didn’t have to; the draft ended several months before I returned from Central America.

But this is why the Boston Globe story is a load of hooey: during the Vietnam Era, Mormons were almost certainly over-represented in the US Armed Forces. At a time when many universities were banning or discouraging military recruiters and eliminating their ROTC programs, BYU welcomed all such recruiters and had large and active Army and Air Force ROTC programs. Likewise, anti-war protests during the Vietnam Era were relatively rare and small at BYU. US-based Mormons as a rule were at this time fiercely patriotic, pro-military, and generally anti-Communist; they probably questioned the Vietnam War less than any other major religious group in the US, even when the LDS leaders themselves had long-standing concerns and issues.

By and large, Mormons were not draft-dodgers; instead they were volunteers. Yes, ministerial deferments were available for the standard two-year period of serving a mission, but many LDS young men turned around after those two years and either enlisted or were drafted. In fact, the only person I personally knew of who died in Vietnam was Paul Rose, the older brother of an LDS acquaintance in a neighboring ward (LDS congregation) in La Mesa, California.

I know nothing of Mitt Romney’s personal history with the draft and military service; as I’ve noted before, he’s not my choice for President, and I feel no particular need to defend him. But the Boston Globe’s insinuation that Latter-day Saints were collectively a bunch of draft dodgers is just silly.  ..bruce..

A few observations on LDS temples

LDS Doctrine, Main, Temples

I received a very thoughtful and civil e-mail from a reader of this blog, who told of his own brief experiences investigating the LDS Church and in particular of some issues he had with the concepts of temples, temple recommends, and temple ceremonies — and how restrictive and exclusionary LDS practices and doctrine regarding the temple appeared to be. He was somewhat encouraged by my posting on “Who gets saved?” but still had additional questions. I wrote him an e-mail reply late last night; I’m going to use a slightly edited and extended version of my response for this post.

The temples detailed in the Bible (Moses’s Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, and what is generally called Herod’s Temple [New Testament era]) all had restrictions on who could enter where and when — and restrictions far more strict than the LDS Church has for its temples. Let me focus on Herod’s Temple for now.

Continue reading A few observations on LDS temples →

Mormonism and Democratic Politics: Are They Compatible?

LDS History, Main, Media, Politics

Richard Bushman is probably the great LDS historian of our generation, much as Leonard Arrington was of his. Under the auspices of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Bushman sat down with a group of journalists to try to explain, from a historical perspective, LDS interaction with society and politics. His comments, as always, are insightful, informed, and honest. A sample:

Joseph Smith was nominated as a protest candidate in February of 1844. Like other protest candidates, he began to warm to his work and got quite excited about it. He may have dreamed for a moment that through some strange concatenation of events, he would get elected. Every candidate has to dream such things.

His involvement in politics was manifested in a political platform of which he was very proud. He would bring it out whenever he had visitors and read from it. It is an interesting document because it represents a man whose world had been his own people, whose own project had been to create a kingdom of God, and who now had to turn his mind to politics.

He began by citing the Declaration of Independence, the famous passages about all men being equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, which of course could be a lead-in to religious rights. But he didn’t use it that way. Instead, in the very next sentence, he talked about the obvious contradiction: “Some two or three million people are held as slaves for life because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours.” His platform called for the elimination of slavery, proposing that the funds from the sale of Western lands, a major source of revenue along with the tariff in those days, be devoted to purchasing slaves from their masters in order to avoid the conflict that would otherwise ensue.

Josiah Quincy, soon to be mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith in the spring of 1844 when this platform was in circulation. Much later, Quincy wrote about that visit, saying that Joseph Smith’s proposal for ending slavery resembled one that Emerson made 11 years later in 1855.

As Quincy put it, writing retrospectively in the 1880s, “We, who can look back upon the terrible cost of the fratricidal war which put an end to slavery, now say that such a solution of the difficulty” – Joseph Smith’s and Emerson’s – “would have been worthy a Christian statesman. But if the retired scholar was in advance of his time when he advocated this disposition of the public property in 1855, what shall I say of the political and religious leader who had committed himself, in print, as well as in conversation, to the same course in 1844?”

I cite this example to illustrate the radical tone of Joseph Smith’s political thought, which seemed to carry over from his religious radicalism. It extended to prison reform and better treatment of seamen, big issues in the 1840s and 1850s. Smith seemed to identify with all of the underdogs in society. I think that was why he thought he might get elected – because the little people, the beat-up people, would rise and select him.

Read the whole thing. Hat tip to Meridian Magazine. ..bruce..

Top 10 Reasons Why Mormons Should Vote for Mitt Romney

Humor, LDS Society, Main

[Inside joke alert — and weak joke/pun alert — most of these will only be funny to a Mormon, and not always then.]

My wife just forwarded this from an e-mail making the rounds in LDS circles:

Top 10 Reasons to vote for Mitt Romney

10. We can do away with these dumb secret ballots and manifest our support
of the candidate “by the usual sign.” And we can get rid of costly
recounts by simply saying “opposed, if there be any.”

9. The Secret Service could be renamed the Sacred Service and would have
dark suits, sunglasses, ear pieces, and CTR rings.

8. The vice president could be replaced by two counselors

7. At inaugural balls, everyone would have to dance a Book of Mormon
apart.

6. NASA could commission a satellite to “hie to Kolob.”

5. All official government prayers could include the phrase “that we all
can get home safely.”

4. The President could not only explain things in Layman’s terms, but also
Lemuel’s terms.

3. At his inauguration he would swear on the Bible “as far as it is
translated correctly.”

2. All foreign policy statements would begin with “We Believe.”.

1. The presidential limo would be a black Suburban with a vanity plate:
“RULDS2?”

[Giuliani is still my candidate, though Fred Thompson looks pretty good, too.  ..bruce..]

Some thoughts on higher dimensional realms

LDS Doctrine, Main

[UPDATED 02/27/08: I was startled today to find that Jeff Lindsay has written a poem, “Flatland“, inspired in part by this paper. And a wonderful poem it is; go read it.]

I have a half-finished post on the nature of eternity, but I realized that I really need to address some foundational issues with regard to it. And since I co-authored a paper on the subject (“Some thoughts on higher-dimensional realms”, Robert P. Burton and Bruce F. Webster, BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Spring 1980), p. 281 ff.) nearly 30 years ago, I thought I’d simply repost the paper, both in PDF format (as transcribed — not scanned — by BYU Studies) and as text that you can read here.

The gist of the paper is that there is evidence in the scriptures as well as in LDS sources (historical and doctrinal) that there are macroscopic physical dimensions outside of the 3D+time continuum in which we appear to reside. I did this as a University Scholar project my senior year (1977-78) at Brigham Young University; it was the first published writing I ever did (though certainly not the last), and so it’s a bit more awkward and stilted than I would write today. But it still brings together the sources that led me to this conclusion three decades ago, and my studies since then have only reinforced them.

The article itself appears after the jump. I have inserted some comments within brackets ([…]) when appropriate. Footnotes are also indicated with brackets ([1], etc.) and are given at the end of the article. Finally, I have noticed some typographical errors in the PDF transcription of the article (there are sadly quite a few) and have corrected these silently.

Continue reading Some thoughts on higher dimensional realms →