Rags, rags, rags, we need rags! the Deseret News pleaded to early Saints

Few accounts of the Mormon Church in 1850s Utah tell us about “rag missions” but they were an important calling, and no less than Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball took to the pulpit to exhort LDS households, the women especially, to save and donate their rags to the church printing mill. The reason was critical in those times: it was to gather enough newsprint to publish the new Deseret News, which often moved from weekly to bimonthly due to a serious lack of newsprint.

I read “Spokesman for the Kingdom: Early Mormon Journalism and the Deseret News, 1830-1898,” a 1970s era BYU Press book by Monte Burr McLaws. It’s a tad dry but filled with interesting nuggets of info. Here’s what the Deseret News editorialized on Oct. 19, 1850. “RAGS! RAGS!! RAGS!!! Save your rags, everyone in Deseret save your rags; old wagon covers, tents, quilts, shirts, etc. etc. etc., are wanted for paper …” Rag requests were made to ward congregations by bishops and early Mormon George Goddard was sent on a “rag mission” by President Young that stretched from Franklin, Idaho, to Sanpete, Utah. For more than three years, Goddard, a merchant, went from town to town and door to door soliciting rags from residents, whether they were subscribers to the Des News or not. (By the way, Utah was once described as a journalistic cemetery and 90 percent of 19th century newspapers in the state failed)

According to McLaws, the very first talk in the Salt Lake Tabernacle was a “rag” discourse by Goddard, urging donations, and that was followed by more rag exhortation from Young and Heber C. Kimball. Rags were extremely valuable in the isolated Great Basin where the early Saints lived. Communication was at least a month away in the early years, and mailed news to the valley was often poached by settlers east.

Young’s paper mill needed supplies that rags could only partially fill but the need was desperate. Many of the rags could not be properly bleached and produced, via handpress, a coarse, dark gray paper that was difficult to read outside of sunlight, but that type of newsprint was common in the West.

In fact, rags, the need for, and lack of newsprint provided for one of Young’s most angry yet least-reported denunciations of Latter-day Saint women in the 1860s, according to McLaws.  In an Oct.9, 1862 discourse, Young raged against Mormon women who wasted rags. He “questioned whether there was a mother in the community that thought she was so well off that she did not need the extra money from saving rags. Answering himself, he charged that many of them would rather steal beef and other things they need than stoop to pick up rags to make paper on which to print the Deseret News,” recalls McLaws.

The Standard, Trib, DesNews and other papers are frequently called rags as a derisive term. However, there was once a time when a newspaper gratefully and desperately associated itself with rags of all types.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

In Lee v. Skousen tiff, LDS Church sided with the man who liked strippers

One of the more entertaining Utah political tiffs was the battle between Salt Lake City Mayor J. Bracken Lee and Salt Lake City Police Chief W. Cleon Skousen. The battle ended in 1960 when Lee managed to convince a majority of city commissioners to fire Skousen.

Skousen was hired in 1956 to re-energize a police force that suffered from low morale. He had been recommended by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The then-mayor, Adiel F. Stewart, not surprisingly, lobbied LDS Church leader David O. McKay for permission to get ex-FBI agent Skousen out of his BYU job. By most accounts, Skousen did improve the moral of the department. However, the moralistic, ultra-conservative Skousen was headed for a collision with the election of Lee as SLC’s mayor in 1959.

The Fall 1974 issue of “The Utah Historical Quarterly,” has an interesting account of the tension that developed between Mayor Lee and Chief Skousen. Both were political conservatives, but Lee, who was not Mormon, enjoyed recreational activities that the straightlaced Skousen regarded as immoral. According to historian Dennis L. Lythgoe, the pair clashed over Skousen regularly sending the city’s vice squad to bust striptease shows “to the private clubs of the city, such as Alta, Ambassador and Elks.” Lee allegedly ordered to Skousen to let up on the raids. Skousen refused. According to Lythgoe, “Angry words followed, with Lee suggesting that the police should stay away from striptease shows and admitting that he enjoyed them himself and had no desire to be arrested while attending one.”

Lee’s defense of striptease shows in refreshingly candid. In a footnote to Lythgoe’s article, he says in an interview “… I think the prettiest thing in the world is a nude woman — a good looking nude woman.” It’s clear that Lee was offended by what he believed was Skousen’s attempt to put a heavy police presence on issues that offended his personal morality. The pair also clashed over Skousen’s attempts to crack down on mild forms of gambling that went on surreptitiously at area private clubs.

When he became police chief, Skousen initiated a program where local taverns would self-police themselves. His reasoning was that if the taverns could self correct any potential violations of the law it would cut down on needed police presence. The taverns formed an association and hired a former police officer to advise them.

Lee disliked the program, and asked Skousen to disband it. He believed that tavern businesses were pressured and intimidated by both SLC police and the association if they spurned membership. At a public hearing charged by Mayor Lee on the program, both sides of the association debate were heard. In an interview with Lythgoe, Lees regards the tavern owners as thieves who had made a bargain with Skousen to steal less. He told Skousen, “I think you could make a deal with the underworld to only steal so much at night and they would be glad to police themselves.”

The rift between Lee and Skousen was moving beyond competing moral visions and into disputes over the role and size of government. Despite both men being traditional, anti-communism conservatives, Lee was realizing that Skousen’s morality tolerated an intrusive form of bigger government that his competing moral views opposed. Lee was not interested in vice cops chasing dancing women in panties or bras. Also, he wanted taverns to be policed by cops.

Not surprisingly, the final straw that led to Skousen’s firing was over the size of the police department’s budget. Lee wanted it trimmed far more than Skousen wanted to trim it. Skousen’s salary, at $10,000 a year, was larger than Lee’s. He also had three highly paid assistant police chiefs. Lee wanted those to go. The money issues, as Lythgoe recounts, couldn’t be worked out, and one day, in a Machiavellian move, during a routine commission meeting, Lee made a surprising motion to fire Skousen. Even more surprisingly, it passed 3-2 among city commissioners.

The mayor suffered short-term public relations/media problems but eventually withstood harsh criticism from Skousen supporters and others. In fact, Lee was re-elected as mayor of Salt Lake City twice after firing Skousen. In an interesting twist, the Deseret News, which had been an enthusiastic supporter of Skousen during his tenure, published a lukewarm, passionless editorial on his firing. What Lythgoe reports is that the Deseret News had prepared a full-page editorial harshly condemning Lee for firing Skousen. However, at the last minute, the LDS Church First Presidency spiked the editorial, and sent Counselor Henry D. Moyle to make sure the editorial did not run. Moyle’s church duties at the time included overseeing the editorial content of the Deseret News.

According to the article, Lee says that when he learned of the upcoming editorial, he called Church President McKay, who told him not to worry. Skousen is quoted as saying that Moyle was sent to spike the editorial because Lee was a Mason and the church worried about offending Masons. In an article footnote, then-Deseret News editorial director William Smart, who was editor and general manager of the News at the time Lythgoe’s article was published, Smart said that he had been opposed to Skousen’s firing but added this: “Well, we’ve never published nor ever will publish a full-page editorial — that’s ridiculous. And I’d really rather not comment on that. That’s an internal matter that I’d rather not get into.”

n the history of Utah journalism, it’s no secret that the Deseret News’ editorials are influenced by the hierarchy of the LDS Church. (In fact, recently, the newspaper, and the rest of the church’s media, has been restored to First Presidency control to a level that equals, if not exceeds, what it was 52 year ago.)

As to what drove the LDS Church leadership to side with the mayor who liked strippers over the ultra-straightlaced Skousen, I suspect Skousen is pretty close to the truth when he claimed “that the president of the church had always been more comfortable with a non-Mormon in office who was friendly than a Mormon who might feel a need to be independent,” writes Lythgoe.

As mentioned, it was an entertaining tiff in Utah history. The winner was Lee, who continued with a successful political career. Skousen resumed a private life, and enjoyed success with his brands of politics and religion for about two more decades until changing moods rendered him obsolete. However, in recent years the popularity of Mormon commentator Glenn Beck, a Skousen fan, has pushed his books, particularly “The 5,000 Year Leap,” back into prominence.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

The Adam-God debate, or how an apostle bested a prophet

(Can't find the Cal Grondahl cartoon that went with this post, so until I do, enjoy this Cal "Culture of Mormonism" classic.

We Mormons shy away from the old relic called the Adam-God doctrine. In recent years, the late prophet Spencer W. Kimball denounced it from the pulpit, as did the late apostle Bruce R. McConkie in “Mormon Doctrine.” McConkie added that those who said that Brigham Young pushed it had taken Mormonism’s greatest leader out of context.

But the later denials are, to be frank, historical revisionism. Brigham Young did believe Adam was the god of our earth, and that doctrine was pushed with fervor by Young and many church leaders for decades. It was debated by LDS apostles as late as the 1890s. Apostles Heber C. Kimball and George Q. Cannon believed Adam was our God.

Why the Adam-God doctrine never gained enough traction in the LDS Church and was eventually ruefully de-emphasized by Young is mostly due to one man, the LDS apostle, Orson Pratt, who just as fiercely opposed the Adam-God doctrine and backed up his opposition with LDS scriptures. Supporters of the Adam-God doctrine were finally forced into vague defenses along the lines of “God has not revealed the details of this wondrous doctrine.”

The Adam-God debate that flourished for so long among the LDS faithful and hierarchy is detailed in the spring 1982 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. The article, by BYU graduate David John Buerger, is fascinating reading, and makes me wish the LDS Church would offer more information about this historically interesting period of its development. On April 9, 1852, Young said this during a general conference speech: “Now, hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and Sinner! When our Father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. … He is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.”

Young added that Jesus Christ was a spiritual son of Adam: “Jesus, our Elder Brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the Garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. …” Young added that this doctrine would matter in the salvation or damnation of listeners.
As Buerger recounts, leading Mormons, including future prophet Wilford Woodruff, clearly understood that Young had decreed Adam as our God.

In later dispatches, published in The Millennial Star, the church strengthened its Adam-God doctrine by listing a geneology for the creators. In a school of the prophets class, Buerger writes that it was taught that Elohim was Adam’s grandfather, followed by Jehova, Adam’s father, and our God, Adam. Christ, as mentioned, was classified a spirit son of God Adam.

Of course, LDS doctrine today teaches that Jesus Christ is Jehova and that Adam was created out of the dust, as was Eve. Adam-God ran into trouble immediately; members could not find it in the scriptures. Nevertheless, Apostle Willard Richards had a succinct reply to doubters. He wrote, “If, as Elder Caffall remarked, there are those who are waiting at the door of the church for this objection to be removed, tell such, the prophet and Apostle Brigham has declared it, and that is the world of the Lord.”

In an 1854 general conference speech, Young went further: “I tell you more, Adam is the father of our spirits. He live upon the earth; he did abide his creation and did honor to his calling and preisthood (sic) and obeyed his master or Lord, and probably many of his wives did (the same) and they lived, and died upon an earth, and (then) were resurrected again to immortality and eternal life …”

However, one apostle, Orson Pratt, did not buy this new doctrine. He pointed to scriptures, including to what is Section 29, verse 42 in the Doctrine and Covenants and also Moses 4:28 and Moses 5:4-9. In defense, Young claimed that Joseph Smith had taught the Adam-God doctrine. Buerger’s research points to anecdotal evidence from third parties that Smith believed Adam was far more than his peers on Earth (a belief shared today by the current LDS Church) but past sermons of Smith’s also clearly show the first LDS prophet regarded Adam as an inferior to Jesus Christ, which puts him at odds with Young’s beliefs.

Other scriptural problems with the Adam-God doctrine include references to Adam’s death (Moses: 6:12 and Doctrine and Covenants 107:53) Also, Buerger cites Alma 11:45 in the Book of Mormon, where Amulek teaches that a resurrected body can die no more. How, Pratt reasonably wondered, can Adam have a resurrected celestial body and later die?

There were other contradictions to the Adam-God doctrine in theological books penned by apostles Parley P. Pratt and future prophet, John Taylor. Eventually, Young began to slowly abandon efforts to push the controversial doctrine, although he defended it often, sometimes with caustic remarks that skeptics were “yet to grovel in darkness.”

There is one recorded deviation by Young from Adam-God; as Buerger recounts, in an 1861 address to a non-Mormon audience, Young refers to Adam and Christ being created by a Supreme Being. However, this may be an example of the prophet speaking more simply to people — gentiles — he felt too naive to understand the doctrine. According to Brueger’s research, Young continued to teach the Adam-God doctrine, but mainly in more exclusive settings, such as teachings to general authorities.

In 1870, Young, quoted in the Deseret News, again said that God had revealed Adam’s celestial status to him. However, the doctrine’s steam slowly ebbed away. Eventually, Charles W. Penrose, editor of The Deseret News, signaled the church’s rejection of claims that Adam is our God. At first, Penrose said that Young’s personal views were not church doctrine; however, within a few years a church article stated that the debate over Young’s views were of no real value. Eventually, that changed to a view — held today — that Young had been misinterpreted.

The misinterpretation claim, as evidenced, does not survive historical scrutiny. It’s a shame that more information is unavailable on the fierce debate between Young, Pratt and others over the Adam-God doctrine, which comprised one of the most interesting eras in LDS Church history. The decades long controversy is an example of the progressive, brainstorming, exciting nature of the 19th century LDS church, where ideas — polygamy, new scriptures, Christ visiting America, celestial godhood, temples, priesthood revival, prophets, etc. roiled the theological world. It’s evidence of a uniquely American religion that still appeals to inquisitive minds.

-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardBlogs.