“To Maintain Harmony”: Adjusting to External and Internal Stress, 1890-1930

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In his landmark organizational study, Max Weber outlined three forms of authority: traditional, charismatic, and legal. Originally charismatic under Joseph Smith and to some extent under Brigham Young, by the late nineteenth century, leadership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had become traditional. Leaders no longer functioned outside acknowledged lines of authority but operated with clearly established relationships to one another and to Church membership. The presidency of the Church automatically passed to the president of the Council of the Twelve. Being called to the First Presidency or the Twelve immediately vested Church leaders with authority both in the priesthood sense and in the sense of personal prestige, more the original meaning of the Latin auctoritas.[1]

Just as the leadership of the Church was not entirely or perhaps even basically charismatic by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, neither was it legal. It was not governed by the “rule of law and not of men.” Church leaders had not yet separated Church money and equipment from their private property. In fact, as late as Lorenzo Snow’s death in October 1901, the question arose whether his property and Church property were one and the same, and the separation was not completely solidified until 1922 and 1923 in Heber J. Grant’s administration. Furthermore, well into the twentieth century and to a lesser extent today, most General Authorities did not depend completely on their positions for a living. Since a bureaucracy requires a money economy, a true bureaucracy within the Church could not be organized before 1908 when the Church shifted to a money system by abolishing payments in scrip and kind.[2]

Administratively, the system of Church government that we know today was largely set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when leader ship was traditional and its structure was shifting from charismatic to more bureaucratic forms of leadership. Under Joseph Smith, administration centered in the prophet, who generally made final decisions and exercised personal authority. Although the current prophet still has the power of making final decisions on all questions, a Church bureaucracy operating under fixed rules handles most administrative matters. The Church Office Building housing the bureaucracy at 50 East North Temple rather than the Church Administration Building housing most General Authorities at 47 East South Temple, operates the Church’s day-to-day affairs, knows the files and rules, and provides continuity of administration. In the administrations of Joseph F. Smith (1901— 1918) and Heber J. Grant (1918-1945), reading committees drawn from the First Presidency and the Twelve approved texts for Church use, and the First Presidency considered and appropriated the exact sum of the Church’s share for the construction of a new chapel. Today, the bureaucracy handles both matters, though ultimate approval still rests with the First Presidency and Twelve as it would with administrative officers in any bureaucratic system.[3]

If the Church organization in the late nineteenth century was postcharismatic and prebureaucratic, it was also unlike classical prebureaucratic forms of organization which, typically, are avocational and directed by persons of independent means. An example would be a medieval fiefdom ruled by a vassal of a king. The situation of the General Authorities was much different. In virtually every case, a large part of their outside incomes were linked to Church-controlled businesses like ZCMI, Consolidated Wagon and Machine, or Hotel Utah, or they were beholden to the Church for outstanding loans. In some cases, as with James E. Talmage and John A. Widtsoe, Church stipends provided their entire or principal income.[4] Thus, financially the Church’s hierarchy had some characteristics of a bureaucracy though Church funds were not the only source of income for its organizational leaders. 

Yet the form of organization was collegial, essentially a prebureaucratic form. Many commentators on Church government have missed this point. Frank Cannon’s Under the Prophet in Utah pictures the Church as an autocracy run by Joseph F. Smith; Samuel W. Taylor’s recent study differs little from Cannon’s.[5]

Both doctrinally and historically, the Church leadership thus exhibited both hierarchical and collegial elements. Both are built into the scriptural injunctions about Church government. Doctrine and Covenants 107 declares that “the Presidency of the High Priesthood . . . has a right to officiate in all offices in the church” (v. 9), indicating a hierarchical superiority to other quorums in the Church. At the same time, the Twelve, “special witnesses of the name of Christ,” are said to “form a quorum, equal in authority and power to the three presidents previously mentioned” (vs. 23-24)—a collegial element. In addition, the Seventy “form a quorum equal in authority to that of the Twelve special witnesses or Apostles” (vs. 25-26). 

In light of these dual characteristics, crises—often those associated with succession in the First Presidency—made the conflict between hierarchy and collegiality more conspicuous than did operational problems. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization.[6] In most cases, however, Timothy Ware’s generalization made about conciliarism in the Greek Orthodox Church holds for the LDS Church as well: “In the Church, there is neither dictator ship nor individualism, but harmony and unanimity; men remain free but not isolated, for they are united in love, in faith, and in sacramental communion. In a council, this idea of harmony and free unanimity can be seen worked out in practice. In a true council no single member arbitrarily imposes his will upon the rest, but each consults with the others, and in this way all freely achieve a ‘common end.'”[7]

When schismatic tendencies and disharmony have developed in the LDS Church, in a number of cases the Twelve resolved them by collegial action of the Twelve. An instructive parallel is the operation of the cardinals during medieval schisms in the Roman Catholic Church.[8] Like the succession dispute between Urban VI and Clement VII, the crisis at the death of Joseph Smith not only posed the question of succession but also that of a unified Church’s continued existence. 

At the death of Joseph Smith, the Twelve acted on behalf of God and of the general Church as a council to preserve the body of the Saints from dissolution and the Church from destruction. In practice, of course, schism did develop, but in general, the largest portion of the Church membership recognized the collegial authority of the Twelve and followed them from Nauvoo to the West. 

Crises also developed as Mormonism made the transition from nineteenth to twentieth-century conditions. In these cases, the sources of strain came in the attempt to define the political, social, economic, and doctrinal position of the Church and its leadership as the Church moved from a highly unitary, internally rigid body to the more pluralistic organization known today. Under those conditions, the standard of conduct of Church members and the limits of conformity for members and leaders alike changed very rapidly, straining the internal harmony of the General Authorities and leading to the removal of some. 

Although Church leadership is partly hierarchical and partly collegial, the model for deliberations of the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve is collegial. As each General Authority is inducted ;into the Council of the Twelve, he is apparently so instructed. Perhaps the best example of that instruction is found in the journal of James E. Talmage. Francis M. Lyman, then president of the Council of the Twelve, told Talmage, after having him set apart, that during the deliberations of the Twelve and the First Presidency he must feel free to present his views as vigorously as he chose. After the body made a decision, however, he must leave the meeting supporting the decisions, duty-bound not to discuss the deliberations or any disagreements which might have developed in the Council. Because of a curious interpretation of that charge, Talmage’s journal changed radically. Before his apostleship, he wrote fully and freely about the operation of the Church. Afterward, it was virtually silent on matters of Church organization and policy. Yet Anthon H. Lund, Reed Smoot, George F. Richards, and Heber J. Grant understood the charge differently.[9]

The collegial principle under which the First Presidency and Twelve operated was, as they called it, “harmony.” In general, it worked very well for day-to-day operations and in developing internal programs such as the priesthood reform movement, temple ceremony revisions, and alterations of temple garment styles.[10]

Perhaps the best example of this ability to reach harmony on matters not involving larger issues is found in the codification of doctrine undertaken during the 1890s and culminating in the publication in 1899 of James E. Talmage’s A Study of the Articles of Faith. In 1894, the First Presidency asked Talmage, then a lay member, to give a series of lectures on the doctrines of the Church. Four years later, he was asked to rewrite the lectures and present them to a committee for consideration as an exposition of Church doctrine.[11]

In the process, Talmage reconsidered and clarified some doctrines which had been poorly defined before. For example, during the 1894 lectures, George Q. Cannon, First Counselor in the First Presidency, “expressed his opinion that the Holy Ghost was in reality, in the image of the other members of the God head— a man in form and figure; and that what we often speak of as the Holy Ghost is in reality but the power or influence of the spirit.” The First Presidency, however, “deemed it wise to say as little as possible on this as on other disputed subjects,” perhaps since the nature of the Holy Ghost was some what equivocal in the writings of Joseph Smith.[12]

After the 1894 discussion, Talmage published an article in the Juvenile Instructor incorporating Cannon’s views and also reproduced the position in the Articles of Faith manuscript. He was somewhat surprised when the First Presidency approved that section practically without revision. The rather controversial opinion of 1894 had by 1899 become the published doctrine of the Church.[13]

Harmony foundered, however, on the shoals of larger traditional interests—changes which seemed alterations in basic principles (plural marriage or organic evolution) or which involved larger political interests (dietary rules, member involvement in politics), or a combination (the League of Nations controversy). 

It is, I believe, at these stress points which challenged collegiality and traditional authority that we best see the operation of harmony. This is partly true because “the Brethren” often did not comment on discussions when harmony easily prevailed. Essentially, the Council of the Twelve and First Presidency faced, from the 1890s through the early 1930s, the difficulties of any traditional society under the stress of acculturation, attempting the task of, in Peter Berger’s phrase, “world maintenance” while trying to define a new twentieth-century Mormonism within an increasingly pluralistic society. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that traditional leadership was strained by both measures which broke with previous tradition and ‘those that continued it.[14]

Perhaps the most difficult problem Church leadership faced was determining the role of the General Authorities in national political society. In the nineteenth century, the Church had been politically unitary rather than pluralistic. Local and general authorities decided political questions in the Church’s interest, as they perceived it. In territorial Utah, the Church-operated People’s Party held virtually all political offices until conditions in 1889 and 1890 contributed to several anti-Mormon Liberal Party victories. In 1891, Church leadership formally disbanded the People’s Party and urged members to divide into the two major parties. Since the Republican Party had been most vigorous in its anti-Mormon activities, leaders feared that most members would become Democrats, essentially remaining unitary. Their solution was to have Republican General Authorities actively solicit membership while Democratic General Authorities remained relatively silent.[15]

Some Democratic General Authorities, like Moses Thatcher of the Council of the Twelve and B. H. Roberts of the First Council of the Seventy, objected. Thatcher, who had been in and out of difficulty for opposing his colleagues on expenditures for economic development, for supporting a strong millennialist position, and for differences with fellow apostle Marriner W. Merrill, declined to obey and was threatened with exclusion from the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893 until he recanted.[16]

In late 1893, the anti-Mormon Liberal Party disbanded, and its members joined the two major parties. Most became Republicans, tipping the scale enough to elect Frank J. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency, as territorial delegate and a GOP majority to the Constitutional convention of 1895. In 1895, Utahns elected a Republican majority to the legislature and the state offices.[17]

Thatcher and Roberts, together with Presiding Bishop William B. Preston and Apostle John Henry Smith, served in the state constitutional convention, and Thatcher and Roberts intended to run as Democratic candidates for the Senate and Congress in 1895. Thatcher and Roberts thought that since Church members were now politically divided and the Church had given up its political dictation, the American tradition of liberty required no prior restraint and hence no permission to run for office.[18]

On the eve of the election in the priesthood meeting of the October 1895 General Conference, Joseph F. Smith, second counslor in the First Presidency, attacked Roberts and Thatcher, charging they were out of harmony since they had not sought permission to run. Smith seems to have had three motives in mind. He was concerned about balance between the two political parties; he was an extremely partisan Republican of long standing; and he was concerned about the need of the General Authorities to act in harmony. He insisted that all Church officials secure permission from their quorum to run for office to determine whether they could be spared from their ecclesiastical duties.[19]

Discussed by the First Presidency and Twelve, largely in Thatcher’s absence since he was ill during much of the next six months, Smith’s views were codified in the so-called Political Manifesto and approved by the First Presidency and Twelve shortly before the April 1896 Conference. Thatcher refused to sign. Late in the year, after various efforts by his colleagues had failed, he was dropped from the Quorum and ordered not to exercise his priesthood. He fore stalled excommunication the next year only by recanting.[20]

The Thatcher case posed the classic conflict of traditional leadership—personal liberty and collegial authority. The goals of the First Presidency and Twelve included balancing the Church membership between the two parties and safeguarding the internal harmony necessary to lead the Church. In this case, the Council faced a combination of external and internal stress. The external stress came both from demands that the Church cease political dictation and from Republican Party officials. If the Church had indeed given up political dictation, however, could the Quorum in good conscience demand control over its members’ political activities? 

The Council resolved the issue by insisting that the Church had no desire to control politics but that it had a right to control the actions of Quorum members. In the interest of harmony, each member had to receive approval to participate in outside political activities that might compete with ecclesiastical duties. Thatcher, believing that this solution infringed upon his personal liberty—which indeed it did—refused to subordinate his own interests to the Council’s need for harmony, and was expelled. 

The incident reveals another feature of the Council’s operation—unequal authority between hierarchy and collegium. Though permision to run for political office had been necessary before 1891, it was apparently not necessary again until Joseph F. Smith opened his attack on Roberts and Thatcher in October 1895. Smith was fourth in line for the presidency and a counselor in the First Presidency. As such, his public statements on serious questions were weighty, particularly since he claimed to represent the Church’s interest and the opposing view, in this case Thatcher’s, seemed to represent a breach of harmony. Even today, a preemptive public statement or leak of a public position by a senior General Authority may, in the interest of harmony, dictate the public position of the Council on a particular question.[21]

An even more complex case is that of the Word of Wisdom. The current interpretation of abstention from alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco, had been enunciated by Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Brigham Young but was not codified until 1898—1905. As the General Authorities reached consensus, the First Presidency sent circular letters to stake presidents and bishops outlining the policy, and members of the Council began catechising local officials about adherence to the rules.[22]

After 1905, Council disagreement left the meaning of the Word of Wisdom to focus on public policy. Some apostles like Heber J. Grant, then a senior member of the Twelve, believed that adherence to the Word of Wisdom re quired members to promote Prohibition. Grant, an active Democrat, could insist on that position since the Democratic Party was largely Mormon. Republicans Reed Smoot and Joseph F. Smith saw the situation more from the perspective of Republican gentile businessmen, many of whom opposed Prohibition. The situation was further complicated by evangelical Protestants who initiated the Prohibition movement in Utah and chided Church leaders for moral sloth.[23]

Even for Mormon Republicans, the situation was not simple. President Smith and Elder Smoot feared dividing the Republican Party and strengthening the anti-Mormon American Party which controlled Salt Lake City government from 1905 through 1911. After 1911, they were apprehensive about the possibility of reviving an anti-Mormon coalition against ecclesiastical influence in the Prohibition question. On the other hand, a number of prominent Mormon Republicans, led at first somewhat reluctantly by Nephi L. Morris, president of the Salt Lake Stake, favored Prohibition and fought Smoot and his Federal Bunch political machine on this and other issues. This breach widened into a full rupture after the Republican Party refused to support statewide Prohibition in 1912 and a group of so-called “Prohibition Republicans” reconstituted themselves as the Progressive Party, supporting Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency and Morris for governor.[24]

Breaches of harmony were virtually unavoidable under these circumstances. Joseph F. Smith and Reed Smoot preached abstinence and at times even Prohibition from the pulpit. In private, they counseled political moderation, though at times favoring local option. This visible contradiction between official and unofficial signals confused the general Church membership. The penultimate conflict took place in 1915 when William Spry, Utah governor and Federal Bunch regular, in part with President Smith’s support, pocket vetoed a bipartisan Prohibition bill, divided the Republican Party, and thus committed political suicide. Republican Nephi L. Morris lost a bid for governor in 1916, while the Democratic Party behind German-Jewish business man Simon Bamberger carried the governorship and the legislature.[25]

Heber J. Grant’s pro-Prohibition stand also challenged harmony. A member of the national board of the Anti-Saloon League, Grant championed Prohibition from the pulpit and platform. Joseph F. Smith resignedly said that he had “frequently tried to modify his zeal,” but Grant did “as he wishes.” The legislature had passed a 1909 local option bill which Spry had, to a furor among Prohibition supporters, pocket-vetoed. Grant, who believed the liquor interests had bought the governor and Smoot’s political machine with Republican support, planned a strong Prohibition speech for the April 1909 conference. Francis M. Lyman, president of the Council of the Twelve, however, apparently sensing a breach of harmony, asked his colleague to speak on the “peaceable things of the Kingdom.” Annoyed (Prohibition was the “all absorbing topic of the day”), Grant nevertheless decided obedience was better than sacrifice and followed Lyman’s counsel.[26]

In this case, the strain on harmony was external. Harmony was achieved first on local option as a compromise and later on statewide prohibition. Breaches in that harmony came because of extracollegial stress caused when members worked publicly for positions generally opposed by the Council’s consensus. Late in 1915 when the overwhelming majority in Utah clearly favored statewide Prohibition, Smoot and Smith came out publicly and privately in favor of Prohibition, thus reuniting the Council and reestablishing harmony. By that time, however, irreparable damage had been inflicted on the Republican Federal Bunch machine Smoot had so carefully organized and President Smith had so fully supported. In this case, stress had little inside effect but resulted in tremendous external repercussions as members of the Church, looking for signals to reinforce the harmony they expected, were understandably confused by the conflicting rumors. 

A third breach of harmony was created by the problem of new plural marriages. Between the Manifesto of October 1890, ostensibly ending new plural marriages, and the Second Manifesto of April 1904 when President Joseph F. Smith strongly interdicted the practice, members of the Twelve and First Presidency sanctioned and performed various marriages both in the United States and abroad.[27]

When the election of Reed Smoot as senator from Utah and the resultant investigations brought some of these marriages to light, General Authorities reexamined their policy of approving new plural marriages. Obviously it was a costly one. Church leaders had agreed to end plural marriage in exchange for statehood; now their good faith was suspect. The extent to which all members of the First Presidency and Twelve participated in these decisions is not yet determined, nevertheless, the revelation of new marriages caused serious external and internal stress. 

The First Presidency and Twelve did not arrive at a consensus on a course of action until after 1904 and their new policy was as difficult to implement as it had been to reach. Plural marriage had been so thoroughly ingrained in the Latter-day Saint community that neither a public pronouncement nor a hierarchical decision could easily eliminate it. Members reading section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants understood “plural marriage” for “new and ever lasting covenant” or, in common parlance, “celestial marriage.” Apostle Marriner W. Merrill, for instance, insisted in one discussion that no year would go by without some children being born to plural marriages and that the Manifesto of 1890 was not a revelation from God.[28]

Some of the most politically minded, including Reed Smoot, Francis M. Lyman, and Joseph F. Smith, feared adverse public opinion, pressed most vigorously to stop the new marriages. In 1906, the Twelve dropped Matthias F. Cowley and John W. Taylor from their ranks for open advocacy of continued plural marriage and Marriner W. Merrill, another advocate, died. George F. Richards, Orson F. Whitney, and David O. McKay, none of whom was a polygamist or attached to the principle of plural marriage, replaced them.[29]

Even then, not until 1911 could the First Presidency and Twelve reach a consensus sufficient to try Taylor and Cowley for their membership in spite of the two apostles’ continued effort to influence others to enter new plural marriages. It was privately whispered that Smoot and Lyman were out of harmony for pressing so hard to end new plural marriages while public pronouncements stressed that Church leadership had resolved the question and that offenders would be tried. As in the case of Prohibition, contradictory public and private signals left many members unable to perceive a consensus within the First Presidency and Twelve. 

The hardening resolution, however, became apparent in 1909, two years before the Cowley and Taylor trials, when a special committee of the Council of the Twelve was formed under Francis M. Lyman to prosecute new polygamists despite resistance to the prosecutions both from the membership and from local leaders.[30]

In an apparent attempt to reeducate the general membership and public, the leaders reinterpreted “celestial marriage” and “new and everlasting covenant” to mean temple marriage and conducted the trials in public view. In various places, including testimony before the Senate committee investigating Reed Smoot, James E. Talmage emphasized that the terms referred to sealing for time and eternity in the temple. Results of the trials were publicized through Church periodicals. Gradually members became convinced of the new consensus, and those who refused to change were disciplined or forced underground.[31]

In this case, the sources of strain on harmony were extremely complex. Like the cases of political involvement and the Word of Wisdom, continued plural marriages created outside political pressure, but of a different sort, since there was no incentive outside the Church to maintain the plural marriage system. Internally, however, the stress was enormous since an extremely high percentage of general and local church leaders either were or had been polygamists. In addition, opposition from within the Twelve stemmed from members like Abraham O. Woodruff, George Teasdale, Marriner W. Merrill, and Matthias F. Cowley, normally the most loyal of members. It was only as they died or were expelled that a new consensus formed. By the time the Lyman committee was appointed in 1909, only seven of the fifteen members of the First Presidency and Twelve had been in the leadership when Reed Smoot was elected to the senate in 1903. 

Conflicting interests also appeared in the League of Nations controversy following World War I. Here, a majority of the Twelve and all of the First Presidency publicly supported the League and adopted a resolution that members would not oppose the League. Because of his opposition to the League Covenant as drafted, Reed Smoot ran into considerable difficulty, though his support of Henry Cabot Lodge’s reservations rather than William Borah and the irreconcilables, left him a loophole.[32]

However, Smoot opposed the League and attacked those who supported it by working through James Casey, editor of the Herald-Republican, a Church sponsored Republican Party newspaper. Its attacks on B. H. Roberts, Richard W. Young, president of the Ensign Stake and close friend of President Heber J. Grant, and Anthony W. Ivins, a member of the Twelve and Grant’s cousin, angered members of the Twelve and led eventually to the newspaper’s sale.[33]

As in the case of new plural marriages, leaks from the Council meetings left the public impression that the Council had changed its position to support Smoot. This led, in turn, to a confrontation between Smoot and several other Council members. He promised to make the matter clear in a public speech but feared losing the 1920 senatorial election, a fear which Heber J. Grant, though a Democrat, shared. Recognizing the important role a member of the Twelve could play in Congress, Grant allowed Smoot to turn his denial into a somewhat equivocal statement. The dispute was never resolved, but died with the League of Nations itself in 1921. Its principal results were contributing to the demise of the Herald-Republican, strengthening the position of Democratic apostles like Anthony W. Ivins,[34] and polarizing millenniarian sentiment within the Church. Some members believed like Smoot that neither the League nor any other earthly power could prevent war and pestilence on earth until Christ’s second advent. Others, like George F. Richards, saw the League as an agency for promoting world peace which would allow the gospel to spread in preparation for the Second Coming.[35]

A fourth major breach in harmony came from the conflict between a literal interpretation of the Bible on the one hand and the theory of evolution through natural selection and higher criticism of biblical texts on the other. 

Since the late nineteenth century, speeches and articles in the Improvement Era and other Church magazines generally allowed rather wide latitude, all the way from Joseph Fielding Smith’s biblical literalism to John A. Widtsoe’s belief that evolution may take place within “orders.” On the authenticity of the Bible, the Improvement Era had published the views of University of Utah professor Frederick J. Pack and others indicating that the earth was millions of years old and that events like Noah’s flood could not possibly have taken place literally since there was not enough water, time, or heat to accomplish the indicated flooding and evaporation. In 1921, Anthony W. Ivins and Charles W. Penrose of the First Presidency instructed Joseph W. McMurrin against strict biblical literalism on some issues: stories like Jonah and Job might not be literally true but taught particular principles.[36]

The crisis, however, centered on the question of man’s age on the earth. Joseph Fielding Smith simply rejected any scientific evidence which did not agree with his “Adam was the first man” interpretation of the scriptures. B. H. Roberts’s manuscript “The Truth, The Way, The Life,” dealt with biblical literalism and organic evolution by including pre-Adamic man. After a long discussion, the Twelve refused to approve the publication of both Roberts’s and Smith’s views. Smith disobeyed, however, preaching and publishing on the topic. This publication and the ensuing controversy which sur rounded it disturbed President Grant, not because he agreed with one position but because he feared the disharmony. James E. Talmage attempted to smooth over the disharmony in a speech denying organic evolution while allowing a scientific view of the earth’s age.[37]

The Political Manifesto, the Word of Wisdom, new plural marriages, and the League of Nations had each been tied to a political or social concern. In this case, the problem was doctrinal: what was the nature of creation, the development of beings, the nature of biblical texts, and the relationship of mankind to God? Though evolution and related questions required a reexamination of basic doctrinal positions, they were perhaps least disruptive, partly because they did not involve practical concerns and partly because the Church had a long tradition of discussion on the nature of man and creation. Brigham Young, for instance, had speculated that Adam had been brought to the earth rather than having been created or born here. 

From these five issues during a period of rapid change and adjustment, the historian can make some generalizations about stress within the Mormon ecclesiastical polity. In each case, the First Presidency and Twelve related basic problems to the need for maintaining harmony in the face of disruptive internal and external influences. In virtually every case, if they could not achieve actual consensus, they thought it important to maintain the appearance of harmony in order to maintain morale and promote brotherhood. The common contemporary tactic of lay members opposing one another by citing a favorite General Authority or scripture to support their position can be extremely disruptive. Such controversy is even more divisive in a collegial situation. 

Thus, disruptions of collegial harmony could, in extreme cases, lead to discipline and severance from the Quorum, as with Moses Thatcher and Matthias F. Cowley, or excommunication, as with John W. Taylor. In other instances, official displeasure rested upon Reed Smoot, Joseph Fielding Smith, and B. H. Roberts. Issues of basic doctrines, as with new plural marriages or of doctrine combined with public policy, as with the Word of Wisdom, caused the most difficulty over the longest period of time. 

Since Church leadership had already shifted from charismatic to traditional authority, the stress resulting from these challenges reveals much about how a traditional organization maintains consensus while simultaneously legitimizing change. In some cases, leaked reports of Quorum debates allowed Church members the comfort of recognizing that they were not alone—either in clinging to tradition or in favoring change. Dissension could be allowed over conflicting goals, as in the apparent either-or choice between supporting the League of Nations and reelecting Smoot, or in the conflict between sup porting Prohibition and keeping the Republican Party unified. On some issues, dissent could not be tolerated. Moses Thatcher, Matthias F. Cowley, and John W. Taylor were unwilling to maintain harmony at the cost of personal convictions and found, ultimately, that their collegium could not allow this deviance. 

The main tasks of charismatic leadership are rallying converts and true believers; traditional leadership must concern itself with both internal harmony and outside pressures. Between 1890 and 1930, the Church accepted, for the first time, the necessity of finding a way for God’s kingdom to coexist with Caesar’s. At least four of the five issues discussed were directly related to external pressures imposed by the need for accommodation. The Political Manifesto required division into political parties because of outside pressure. Prohibition was in part the result of pressure from evangelical Protestant de nominations who thought that professed Mormon beliefs in abstinence should require Mormon opposition to all alcoholic use in the community. Various groups with Victorian moral standards feared and hated plural marriage. The League of Nations controversy pressured the Church leadership to take an interest in national politics. Only in the evolution controversy was there little compelling outside pressure, and perhaps for that reason, it was the easiest to resolve or ignore. 

In retrospect, Church leadership’s efforts to maintain legitimacy during a rapid transition from being a religious monopoly to being a competing religious movement strained its internal structure. As long as the Latter-day Saints monopolized secular and religious interests in Utah Territory, they could “utilize the entire society” as their “plausibility structure” in world maintenance. After the monopoly was broken, they used “social engineering” to maintain the structure, and an important feature of that engineering was the principle of “harmony.”[38]

The disruption of collegial harmony is probably not out of proportion to the stress. If the removal of three members from the Quorum is used as a measure of stress, the only period which exceeds this one came in the wake of the Missouri persecutions when seven were dropped, though two of them, Orson Hyde and William Smith, returned to the Quorum. Even after the murder of Joseph Smith, the succession crisis, and the exodus from Illinois, only three were dropped from the Twelve, indicating that perhaps the stress associated with the problems in Illinois may not have been greater than those associated with accommodating to the norms of Victorian America. 

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[1] Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans, and eds., H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 196-252; Peter M. Blau, On the Nature of Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1974), pp. 42-43; on the history of the LDS Church see James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976) ; and Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978). 

[2] Weber, From Max Weber, p. 197; Anthon H. Lund, Journal, 5, 6, 21, and 24 Nov. 1901 and 6 March 1902, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City; Marriner W. Merrill, Journal, 27 Feb. 1902; ibid.; Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 26 Nov. 1923, ibid., hereafter cited as JH, with date) ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 409. 

[3] Weber, From Max Weber, p. 214. Fifty East North Temple, the Church Office Build ing, houses mostly middleand lower echelon officers, while the Church Administration Build ing at 47 East South Temple is the office building in which the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve are located. 

[4] Weber, From Max Weber, pp. 207, 214. On business interests, salaries, and other connections among the Church’s hierarchy see D. Michael Quinn, “The Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932: An American Elite,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976), especially 127-30; John A. Widtsoe, In A Sunlit Land: The Autobiography of John A. Widtsoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1952), p. 161; George F. Richards, Journal, 30 Jan. 1925, LDS Church Archives; Heber J. Grant, Diary, 12 June 1928, ibid. 

[5] Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O’Higgins, Under the Prophet in Utah: The Na tional Menace of a Political Priestcraft (Boston: C. M. Clark Publishing Co., 1911) ; Samuel W. Taylor, Rocky Mountain Empire: The Latter-day Saints Today (New York: MacMillan, 1978) ; Jan Shipps, “Writing about Modern Mormonism,” Sunstone 4 (March-April, 1979) : 43-48; Journal of James E. Talmage, 10 Nov. 1901, Manuscripts Department, Brigham Young University Library. On 23 Nov. 1918, as the Council of the Twelve considered the reorganization of the First Presidency upon the death of Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund wrote in his diary: “As a people we have learned the meaning of Section 107 in Doctrine and Covenants which tells us that the Twelve form a quorum equal in authority with the First Presidency, and they have also learned that Seniority in quorums means authority. (This may be called an unwritten law of the Church, but we have seen how it tends to harmony).” 

[6] See D. Michael Quinn, “Joseph Smith Ill’s 1844 Blessing and the Mormons of Utah,” Journal of the John Whitmer Historical Association 1 (1981): 12-27, and DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT 15 (Summer 1982); Gary James Bergera, “The Orson Pratt-Brigham Young Controversies: Conflict Within the Quorums, 1853-1868,” DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT 13 (Summer 1980) : 7-49; and Reed C. Durham, Jr. and Steven H. Heath, Succession in the Church (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1970).

[7] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 23. 

[8] See Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), pp. 2-23. 

[9] James E. Talmage, Journal, 8 Dec. 1911. For similar comments see Grant, Diary, 5 April 1900; John Henry Smith, Journal, 4 Oct. 1903, Western Americana Collection, University of Utah Library; and George Albert Smith, Journal, 6 Oct. 1903, ibid. 

[10] William G. Hartley, “The Priesthood Reform Movement, 1903-1922,” BYU Studies 13 (Winter 1973): 137-56; George F. Richards, Journal, 15 Nov., 10, 27, 28 Dec. 1921, 7, 13 July, 3 June, 31 Aug. 1922, 9 Dec. 1926, and 25 Jan. 1927. 

[11] U.S. Senate, Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate in the Matter of the Protests Against the Right of Hon. Reed Smoot, A Senator from the State of Utah to Hold His Seat, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1904-1906), 3:4 (hereafter cited as Smoot Proceedings) ; Lund, Journal, 5 Jan. 1899; Talmage, Journal, 27 Dec. 1898; see also Thomas G. Alexander, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology,” Sunstone 5 (July-Aug. 1980) : 28. 

[12] Talmage, Journal, 5 Jan. 1899; Doctrine and Covenants (1883 ed.), pp. 54-55.

[13] Talmage, Journal, 9, 16 Jan. 1899; Lund, Journal, 13 Jan. 1899. 

[14] In a sense, the LDS Church was facing a challenge to legitimacy not unlike the model with which Peter L. Berger deals in The Sacred Canopy: Elements of A Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967). This was a period in which the LDS leadership faced an almost classical problem of “world maintenance.” As Berger pointed out, “when a challenge appears . . . [the old verities] can no longer be taken for granted. The validity of the social order must then be explicated both for the sake of the challengers and of those meeting the challenge. The children must be convinced, but so must their teachers” (p. 31) ; see also Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), pp. 44-75. 

[15] Gustive O. Larson, The Americanization of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1971), pp. 284-90; Kenneth W. Godfrey, “Was There More to the Moses Thatcher Case Than Politics?” (paper presented to a joint Mormon History Association/Utah Endowment for the Humanities session 1, 3 Nov. 1979), pp. 21-22. For a thorough treatment see Edward Leo Lyman, “The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 1981). 

[16] Godfrey, “Moses Thatcher,” pp. 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 26, 29, 31.

[17] Ibid., pp. 25-26; Larson, Americanization of Utah, pp. 296-97. 

[18] B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 6: 330-331; Marriner W. Merrill, Utah Pioneer and Apostle: Marriner Wood Merrill and His Family, ed. Melvin Clarence Merrill (n. p., 1937), p. 192. 

[19] Roberts, Comprehensive History, 6:330-31. 

[20] Merrill, Utah Pioneer and Apostle, pp. 198-99, 205, 207, 209; Smoot Proceedings, 1:170, 563; Milton R. Merrill, “Reed Smoot, Apostle in Politics” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1950), p. 4; Roberts, Comprehensive History, 6:335-36. 

[21] A recent example of this same phenomenon is the controversy over the volume by Allen and Leonard cited above. At present, Deseret Book Company has not republished the book, although an unusually large edition sold out rapidly, reportedly because a senior Gen eral Authority dislikes it. Allen and Leonard have reportedly been told by other members of the Council of the Twelve, however, that they like the volume and consider it an im portant contribution to Mormon history. 

[22] For a general discussion of the development of the Word of Wisdom see Paul H. Peterson, “An Historical Analysis of the Word of Wisdom” (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972); George D. Watt, et al., eds. Journal of Discourses 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. & S. W. Richards, 1855-1885), 12:27-32; Grant, Diary, 5 May, 30 June 1898; Lund, Journal, 31 Aug., 2 Sept., 9 Jan. 1900, 26 June 1902; Emmeline B. Wells, Journal, 8 Sept. 1900, BYU Library; John Henry Smith, Journal, 5 July 1906; First Presdiency to C. R. Hakes, 1 Aug. 1902, to John W. Hess, 31 Oct. 1902, and to H. S. Allen, 1 Nov. 1902, First Presidency, letters sent, LDS Church Archives; George Albert Smith, Journal, 5 Aug., 2 Sept. 1905, 27 May, 2 June, 16 June 1906. 

[23] For a general discussion of these interests see Bruce T. Dyer, “A Study of the Forces Leading to the Adoption of Prohibition in Utah in 1917” (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1958); Grant, Diary, 15 March, 12, 16 Nov. 1908; Lund, Journal, 2 Oct. 1908; JH 4, 6 Oct. 1908. For a discussion of the national prohibition movement, see Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963). Gusfield’s thesis that the middle class tried to regain its status by imposing Prohibition on the lower classes seems not to apply to Utah since the main support for Prohibition came from a group already holding high status, and the opposition came from a similar group in the Republican party. The only exception might be found in the Prohibition Republicans who were trying to wrest power from the Federal Bunch. See also James H. Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900—1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963) who sees the Prohibition crusade as part of the movement for progressive reform; and Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York: Norton, 1976) both of whom see Prohibition as part of the American reform movement. 

[24] Lund, Journal, 23, 26, 27 Jan., 3 Feb., 15, 17 March, 17 Nov. 1909; John Henry Smith, Journal, 26 Jan. 1909, 4 Oct. 1911, Dyer “Prohibition in Utah,” pp. 29-31, 43-44, 55; Grant, Diary, 23 March 1909, Reed Smoot, Diary, 9 Oct., 11, 17 Nov. 1909, 4 Oct. 1911, Manuscripts Department, Brigham Young University Library; Reuben Joseph Snow, “The American Party in Utah: A Study of Political Party Struggle During the Early Years of Statehood” (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1964), p. 224. 

[25] Joseph F. Smith, “Editor’s Table: Temperance and Prohibition,” Improvement Era 12 (Aug. 1909) : 830-33; Lund, Journal, 5 March 1915; Jan Shipps, “Utah Comes of Age Politically: A Study of the State’s Politics in the Early Years of the Twentieth Century,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (Spring 1967): 109-11. 

[26] Lund, Journal, 2 Oct. 1908, 15, 17 March 1909; JH, 14 Oct. 1908, 20 March 1909; Grant, Diary, 12, 16 Nov. 1908, 23 March, 6 April 1909; Joseph F. Smith to Reed Smoot, 15 Feb. 1909 in Joseph F. Smith Letterbooks, LDS Church Archives; Dyer, “Prohibition in Utah,” pp. 43-44. 

[27] Lund, Journal, 9 Jan. 1900, 28 Sept. 1906, John Henry Smith, Journal, 9, 10 Jan. 1900; Smoot Proceedings, 1:110-11, 389-90, 406, 422, 487-88, 2:68, 141-43, 295-96; Joseph F. Smith to Reed Smoot, 9 April 1904, Joseph F. Smith Letterbooks; Cannon and O’Higgins, Under the Prophet, p. 177; Grant, Diary, 9 Oct. 1898; George Q. Cannon to Anthony W. Ivins, 27 Dec. 1897, Ivins Family Papers, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City; Anthony W. Ivins, excerpts from the A. W. Ivins Recordbook of Marriages, ibid.; and H. Grant Ivins, “Polygamy in Mexico,” typescript, ibid.; B. Carmon Hardy and Victor W. Jorgensen, “The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History,” Utah History Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980) : 4-36. 

[28] Matthias F. Cowley, Cowley’s Talks on Doctrine (Chattanooga, Tenn.: Ben E. Rich, 1902), pp. 180-82; Joseph Eckersley, Journal, 26 Dec. 1904, LDS Church Archives; Lund, Journal, 9 Jan. 1900, 18 Nov. 1903, JH, 19 Nov. 1903; John Henry Smith, Journal, 9, 10 Jan. 1900, 19 Nov. 1903; Joseph F. Smith to Samuel L. Adams, 24 Dec. 1903, Joseph F. Smith Letterbooks, LDS Church Archives; Talmage, Journal, 14 Oct. 1904; Merrill, Utah Pioneer and Apostle, p. 147; Smoot Proceedings, 1:408-10. 

[29] Lund, Journal, 5 April 1906; First Presidency to Heber J. Grant, 12 April 1906, First Presidency, letters sent. 

[30] George F. Richards, Journal, 14 July 1909 and passim. Richards’s journal provides excellent documentation for the various trials. 

[31] James E. Talmage, “The Story of Mormonism,” Improvement Era 4 (Oct. 1901) : 909; Smoot Hearings, 3:42-45. 

[32] James B. Allen, “Personal Faith and Public Policy: Some Timely Observations on the League of Nations Controversy in Utah,” BYU Studies 14 (Autumn 1973): 77-98; Smoot, Diary, 22 Sept., 12 Oct. 1919, 29, 30 July, 5 Aug. 1920; Lund, Journal, 5 Aug. 1920.

[33] Lund, Journal, 30 Jan., 3 Feb. 1919; Grant, Diary, 30 Jan., 31 July 1919, 17 July 1920; Smoot, Diary, 20 Aug., 12 Oct. 1919. 

[34] James H. Moyle to Heber J. Grant, 29 April 1920; Grant to Moyle, 13 May 1920, cited in James Henry Moyle, Mormon Democrat: The Religious and Political Memoirs of James Henry Moyle, ed. Gene A. Sessions (Salt Lake City: Historical Dept. of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1975), pp. 258-65; Grant, Diary, 23 Oct. 1920; Smoot Diary, 23, 24 Oct. 1920; Lund, Journal, 21 Oct. 1920. 

[35] Lund, Journal, 28 July 1920; George F. Richards, Journal, 3 Oct. 1919, 4 Nov. 1919. On the nature of Mormon millennialism see Grant Underwood, “Seminal Versus Sesquicentennial Saints: A Look at Millennialism,” DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT 14 (Spring 1981): 32-44. 

[36] John A. Widtsoe, Joseph Smith as Scientist: A Contribution to Mormon Philosophy (Salt Lake City: General Board, Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, 1908), pp. 109-13; Joseph Fielding Smith, Man, His Origin and Destiny (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1954) ; Charles W. Penrose and Anthony W. Ivins to Joseph W. McMurrin, 31 Oct. 1921, First Presidency, letters sent; Frederick W. Pack, Science and Belief in God (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1924). 

[37] Grant, Diary, 8 April 1927, 22 May 1930; 16, 25 Jan. 1931; Truman G. Madsen, “The Meaning of Christ—The Truth, The Way, The Life: An Analysis of B. H. Roberts’ Unpublished Masterwork,” BYU Studies 15 (Spring 1975): 260 and passim; Duane E. Jeffrey, “Seers, Savants, and Evolutions: The Uncomfortable Interface,” DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT 8 (Autumn-Winter 1973): 63-65. On 25 Jan. 1931, Heber J. Grant wrote in his diary, “After reading the articles by Brothers Roberts and Smith, I feel that sermons such as Brother Joseph preached and criticisms such as Brother Roberts makes of the sermon are the finest kind of things to be let alone entirely, I think no good can be accomplished by dealing in mysteries, and that is what I feel in my heart of hearts these brethren are both doing.” See also James E. Talmage, “The Earth and Man” (1931; reprt. ed., Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1976). On Brigham Young University’s vault copy of the published version of this speech is a notation “False doctrine,” in Joseph Fielding Smith’s hand. 

[38] See Berger, Sacred Canopy, pp. 49-50.