On Nov. 11, 1943, LDS apostles Joseph Fielding Smith
and Harold B. Lee gathered with Salt Lake City police officers, including Chief
Reed Vetterli, outside the small Center Street apartment of elderly Anna Sofie
Jacobsen. The apostles and officers burst into the home, breaking the door
according to some accounts, and discovered LDS Apostle, Richard R. Lyman, 74,
in bed with Jacobsen, who was not his wife. After gathering evidence, the two
apostles reported back to J. Reuben Clark, first counselor to LDS President
Heber J. Grant. Clark, who handled most of the church’s duties because Grant
was ill, had ordered the raid. A day later, Lyman was excommunicated “for
violation of the Christian law of chastity.”
The case of Richard Lyman is recounted by historian
Gary James Bergera in the Fall 2011 Journal of Mormon History. Unlike the case
of Albert Carrington, a 19th century LDS apostle also excommunicated for
adultery, Lyman’s case is more complex. Unlike Carrington — who seems to have
used his power to satisfy his lechery — Lyman appears to have been a victim of
his own personal compassion, sexual dysfunctions within his marriage to his
wife, Amy, personal tragedy in his family, and a rationalizing that his affair
with Jacobsen was part of a polygamous pact that he had made with his mistress.
For years, Lyman was bitter over his excommunication and sporadically continued
his relationship with Jacobsen, who was also excommunicated.
There is some mirth in the idea of apostles in suits
breaking in on the love nest of two senior citizens. However, by Bergera’s
account, the affair shook the Quorum. In his diary, Spencer W. Kimball writes,
“… To see great men such as the members of this quorum all in tears, some sobbing,
all shocked, stunned by the impact was an unforgettable sight. …” In his
memoirs, Kimball recounts the years that was spent getting Lyman ready for
rebaptism and still lamented that the apostle eventually “… died a lay member
of the church without Priesthood, without endowments, without sealings. …”
Bergera, in his article, has recounted trials in
Lyman’s life that may have led to his rationalization that a sexual
relationship with Jacobsen was not a violation of his church
calling. His marriage to Amy Cassandra Brown ceased to have a sexual
component after the birth of their second child. As Bergera relates in a
footnote, “according to one family member, once Amy had brought forth two
children, she informed Richard that their relationship from that point on would
be celibate, living in amiable harmony …” Amy Brown’s biographer, David R.
Hall, believes the pair’s gradual remoteness and lack of communication may have
led to Richard’s adultery, writes Bergera.
In the 1920s, Lyman was assigned to assist Jacobsen
in her efforts to return to the LDS Church. She was a Denmark native who had
been excommunicated after being involved in a polygamous relationship after the
church had banned the practice. In interviews just before he died (in 1963),
Lyman recalls Jacobsen as “wonderfully unselfish and helpful.” As he prepared
her for her rebaptism, the pair developed a close friendship and Lyman recalls
that “she ‘was getting along in years with little or no hope of having a
husband even in the great beyond,’” recounts Bergera. In 1925, after she was
baptized, Lyman, suggested to Jacobsen, that the survivor among them get sealed
to the other. Those preparations, which undoubtedly were a secret to Lyman’s
sole wife, Amy, eventually progressed to sexual relations between the pair, who
considered themselves “married.”
The death of the Lyman’s son, Wendell, 35, likely
contributed to stress that Richard and Amy, with their emotional distance,
probably didn’t handle well. Although Wendell’s death from carbon monoxide was
reported in the press as an “accident,” it was most likely a suicide. Wendell
had been depressed since the death of his young wife several years earlier and
had recently clashed with his father over his drinking problems.
Given these trials, it’s not a surprise to consider
that Lyman, in need of an emotional affair, allowed himself one that not
surprisingly led to adultery. Bergera includes how Lyman rationalized his
affair: “This woman had so many virtues and had done so much in an unselfish
way for others that she and I agreed that while the present practice of the
Church would not permit her to become my plural wife I began regarding her as
my prospective plural wife with the mutual understanding that when by death or
any other cause it would be possible for her to be my plural wife the ceremony
would be performed.”
When Amy Brown Lyman was informed of her husband’s
adultery and excommunication, her first words, according to Bergera’s article,
were “I do not believe it. I do not believe it.” For Amy, the leader of the LDS
Church’s women auxiliary The Relief Society, it was understandably a torturous
blow. Bergera recounts that some advised Amy that she would be justified in
leaving Richard. However, during this time of intense trial, as well as
personal, public, and religious humiliation, Amy stayed with Richard. Frankly,
it shows an admirable capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness by her. The
pair went into seclusion for a while, in contact with family and close friends.
A comparison of the distinct strengths, temperament
and even sensibility of the pair was demonstrated soon after the
excommunication, recounts Bergera. Richard, soon after being expelled from his
church, went to the LDS Church Office Building and asked to use his office. He
was refused and told he had to leave. Amy, who also worked there, was greeted
with warmth by future LDS Church President David O’McKay, who escorted her to
her offices. Although Amy died four years before Richard, she enjoyed better
health than him and nursed him through several age-related illnesses. Her
explanation for her loyalty was simple: As Bergera notes in a footnote, Amy
told “family members that ‘in every other way been an ideal husband and father
‘ and ‘she was not going to leave him now.’”
As mentioned, it took 11 years for Lyman to be
rebaptized. He made many requests but they were defiant gestures, opportunities
for him to criticize his former colleagues in the Quorum of the 12 Apostles who
had kicked him out earlier. Finally, in the fall of 1956, Lyman’s repentance,
couple with his wife’s assurances that she had forgiven him, resulted in his
rebaptism. He died, as mentioned, a lay member without priesthood or temple
recognitions. Those, Bergera recounts, were restored six years after his death.
As for Jacobsen, she lived the rest of her life in
her Salt Lake City apartment. Bergera was unable to learn if she as ever
rebaptized. Because the Lyman family, understandably, retreated into silence
during crisis, it’s difficult to know why Lyman was defiant to former leaders,
or the reasons for his sudden desire to repent and be baptized, or his
late-in-life apathy that prevented priesthood blessings while he lived.
His
case is fascinating; it bridged the older church with its polygamy and
preoccupation with making eternal plans while on earth, with the modern church
and its more PR-friendly responses. Bergera notes that had Amy Lyman not left
her husband in the 19th Century, she might have been excommunicated later for
adultery as well, because 19th century church leaders considered adultery a
dissolution of marital vows. There’s no doubt that the episode really shook up
Lyman’s colleagues in the Quorum. Some speculate that the uncompromising
message, considered harsh by some, of Kimball’s later, landmark LDS book, “The
Miracle of Forgiveness,” is shaped by his experiences with Lyman’s sin and
efforts to return to the church.
-- Doug Gibson
-- Originally published at StandardBlogs.
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