Mormon `revelations' decided by hierarchy, memoirs say
John Dart
St. Petersburg Times
January 28, 1989
Hugh B. Brown, a high-ranking member of the Mormon hierarchy for 22
years up to his death in 1975, says in recently published memoirs that
many church decisions called ``revelations`` were actually decisions
first ``thrashed out`` thoroughly by the top authorities.
Those decisions ``are no less revelatory, but it is simplistic to
think that it comes as a bolt out of the blue,`` said the memoirs'
editor, Edwin B. Firmage, a grandson of Brown and a law professor at
the University of Utah.
Because the Mormon Church hierarchy presents a unified front after its
pronouncements, any prior divisions or debates usually appear only
much later in biographies and memoirs.
The Brown memoirs, for example, provide an authoritative glimpse into
an aborted attempt to lift the ban on blacks in the priesthood nearly
a decade before that change was announced as a revelation in 1978.
According to the book, Brown came close in the late 1960s to winning
approval for such a change among his colleagues in the church's First
Presidency and the Council of the Twelve.
Brown also had proposed about that time that aging leaders like
himself be retired to emeritus status rather than hold lifetime
offices. But when that policy was instituted, also in 1978, it was
applied only to the church posts below the Council of the Twelve
Apostles, a body whose senior members traditionally move up to the
post of president and prophet.
Brown, who was 92 when he died, was named to the Council of the Twelve
in 1953 by President David O. McKay. He later became a part of the
First Presidency - a counselor to McKay - from 1961 to January 1970,
when McKay died at age 96.
The decision-making procedure, Brown explained, generally worked like
this:
``(An idea) is submitted to the First Presidency and Twelve, thrashed
out, discussed and rediscussed until it seems right. Then, kneeling
together in a circle in the temple, they seek divine guidance, and the
president says, `I feel to say this is the will of the Lord.' That
becomes a revelation. It is usually not thought necessary to publish
or proclaim it as such, but this is the way it happens.``
Most Mormons are unaware of such a complex procedure, said Mormon
historian Michael Quinn in an interview. Or, if they are aware of it,
they are uncomfortable with the notion in light of the appearance of
unanimity and divine inspiration when decisions are announced.
``There can be intense disagreements,`` said Quinn, who formerly
taught at Brigham Young University and is on a fellow****p at the
Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.
``For people who study organizational behavior, this is nothing new,
but for Mormons the idea of coalitions of power is an uncomfortable
one,`` Quinn said. Quinn wrote a biography of J. Reuben Clark, who
along with Brown was a counselor to McKay.
In an afterword to the memoirs, published by Signature Books in Salt
Lake City, Firmage detailed an aborted attempt by Brown in the late
1960s to admit black members to the priesthood - a level of church
service im****tant for dedicated young male Mormons. Brown ``never
believed this policy had the slightest doctrinal justification,``
Firmage said.
As described by Firmage, it was a battle of wills between Brown, a
part of the three-man First Presidency, and Harold B. Lee, who ``was
the dominant senior voice`` on the Council of the Twelve and who
thought the ban was doctrinally based.
Brown was then the senior adviser to the ailing President McKay. Lee
was dominant on the council because of the advanced age of Chairman
Joseph Fielding Smith, who at age 93 would succeed McKay as head of
the church. Upon Smith's death in 1972, Lee became church president,
but he died the next year and was succeeded by Spencer W. Kimball.
Brown got a proposal to permit full priesthood for blacks approved by
the council, but it was during Lee's absence. When Lee came back, he
opposed the proposal and persuaded other council members to back his
own statement reaffirming the ban as doctrine.
Brown also said in his memoirs that when a new apostle was named to
the Council of the Twelve the typical procedure was for the church
president to ask members of the council to submit names for his
consideration, but that the decision rested with the president.
Maintaining that the ``genius of Mormonism is cooperative action,``
Brown endorsed the notion for the highest level. ``I believe that the
First Presidency should not make major decisions without submitting
them to and being approved by the majority of the Twelve. I have seen
this tested a number of times and am convinced that it is the best
policy.``
In the 1950s and '60s, Brown was known by Mormons mainly as a lifelong
Democrat within a predominantly conservative Republican hierarchy. He
had sought to soften the church's restrictions on birth control and
divorce, and - in his 1969-70 dictating sessions with Firmage -
complained that the church hierarchy appeared to favor Republican
political views.
``I think there has been and is now too much of a tendency to cater to
the wishes and decisions of one party as against the other. This must
be changed,`` Brown said.
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