Utah’s first presidential vote was a landslide for the Democrat

Originally published in 2010 but not much has changed.

Utah voters have been reliably Republican in presidential elections for more than 40 years now. In fact, only once since 1948 — Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 — has the Democratic candidate carried the Beehive State.

It seems highly unlikely that President Obama will carry Utah in 2012, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, in 1896, the first time Utah voted for president, Democrat William Jennings Bryan (above) carried almost 83 percent of the vote against Republican William McKinley, who won the general election. The fundamentalist Bryan’s appeal was not his faith, but his support of unlimited coinage of silver. Utah and other “silver states,” such as Nevada, went big for the Democrats. However, four years later incumbent McKinley nosed out Bryan in Utah with 50.5 percent of the vote. A better economy helped the Republicans.

In 1916, Utah supported incumbent President Woodrow Wilson over Republican Charles Evans Hughes by an easy 20-point margin. However, beginning in 1920 Utah voted Republican for three state presidential elections.

Democrats longest dominance in Utah presidential politics began in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (below) over incumbent Herbert Hoover. The still young Great Depression made Republicans as toxic in Utah as the party was in many other parts of the nation. In fact, 1932 also saw the re-election loss in Utah of famed Republican U.S. Sen.  Reed Smoot. The longtime incumbent Smoot, who was an apostle in the Mormon Church, lost badly to Democratic challenger Elbert Thomas.

Roosevelt would carry Utah in all four of his presidential elections. As an incumbent, Roosevelt’s support never sunk below 60 percent of Utah voters. To provide an idea of Utah Democratic Party dominace during the Roosevelt era, the online Utah History Encyclopedia reports that in the Utah Legislature, there were 45 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the House, and 18 Democrats and 5 Republicans in the Senate.

That was likely the peak of Democrats’ success in Utah but the party continued its presidential success in 1948 with a narrow win by Harry S. Truman over Thomas Dewey. However, the next three presidential elections saw GOP wins in Utah by victor Dwight D. Eisenhower and 1960 loser Richard Nixon.

As mentioned, 1964 was the last presidential win by a Democrat in Utah. President Johnson’s landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater — who at the time was considered an extremist — was echoed in Utah, where Johnson carried almost 55 percent of the vote, or 6 points fewer than his national tally.

The next election started the long slide for Utah Democrats. Nixon swamped Democrat nominee Hubert H. Humphrey and Democrats in the state Legislature lost their majority status. Things have only gotten worse in the last four decades. Even in years where Democrats have won, including 2008, the Democratic Party candidate has stayed mired in the low to mid 30s support.

The issues of the mid 1960s to the early to mid 1970s — the peace movement, gay rights, abortion, the Vietnam War, the Equal Rights Amendment, other women’s rights issues, affirmative action, welfare — probably played a huge role in moving Mormons to the Republican Party. Whereas Utah Mormons had coalesced behind Democratic Party principles of ending the Depression, fighting a World War and providing security for working families, the post-1964 social, secular and extreme liberal shift in focus moved them away permanently.

Abortion, for example, is an issue wedded to the Democratic Party in Utah. No matter how that may frustrate Utah Democrats, it is nevertheless a reality.

Many Democrats compare the recently passed health care reform law to previous Democratic initiatives such as Social Security and Medicare.

It will be interesting to see if these accomplishments by President Obama move some Utah voters back to the party of FDR. Right now, I’d bet against that happening.

The Web sites Utah.media.edu (Allen Kent Powell’s article “Elections in the State of Utah) and uselectionatlas.org were among sources for this article.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published long ago in StandardBlogs

Mormon cinema has evolved into bigger-budgeted, better-produced Sunday School films

I just saw “Ephraim’s Journey,” which is essentially another take on — with a different perspective — of “17 Miracles,” which details the sufferings of one ill-fated handcart company that traveled to Utah; “Ephraim’s Rescue” deals mainly with the other handcart company’s suffering. The movies are very religious, with oft-repeated legends of miraculous healing, a visit by one of the Three Nephites, and the raising of the dead being treated as fact by director T.C. Christensen.

Christensen, who is the new main director of Mormon cinema, is talented. The cinematography, pacing and action moves the film forward. There are moments of mild humor, which humanizes the characters. Although you don’t realize this while watching, virtually all the characters in “Ephraim’s Rescue” look like members of your own LDS ward, or the crowds milling through a BYU football game. (It reminds me of a recent pundit, relating a visit to a Mormon ward, who remarked that the LDS pictures of Jesus Christ remind him of how Jesus was depicted in the 1950s.)

Although I tend toward skepticism on miracles, as an active Mormon, I’ll give “Ephraim’s Rescue” a thumbs up. It does what it seeks to do — raises the testimonies of many of the faithful. It’s moving to see an historical overview of the sufferings of the handcart companies and a review of the desperate efforts to rescue the stranded handcart pioneers. However, let’s be honest, the film is a slick, better-produced reproduction of the filmstrip LDS history movies we’ve seen in Mormon primary and Sunday schools.

In fact, T.C. Christensen’s handcart tragedy films remind me of “The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt,” the martyred Mormon apostle. I love that book and have read it at least a dozen times. It’s full of early Mormon history miracles. In one section, LDS Church member Philo Dibble, left for dead by a bullet wound, is healed instantly. In another anecdote, Parley P. Pratt heals a child of Mr. Wandle Mace, who was in the last stages of brain fever. These are just two of many anecdotes. In “Ephraim’s Rescue,” the title character raises the dead twice and heals many of the sick. In one scene, Ephraim heals the frostbitten-destroyed feet of a major character so effectively that the healed man dances a Jig, lifting the spirits of the handcart company survivors. (This may sound silly in my blog, but you have to see the film.)

This is where Mormon cinema has evolved over the past 13 years. We’ve gone from the gritty missionary drama of Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” (scenes include a black man mocking a black missionary and an apostate elder leaving a believing elder speechless) to the “correlation-approved” sanitized biographical films of Emma Smith and Joseph Smith, as well as Christensen’s Sunday School historical dramas.

The baker’s dozen years of Mormon cinema’s evolution was dictated chiefly by economics. The vast majority of films released to theaters did not make money. Dutcher’s two follow-ups, “Brigham City,” and “States of Grace,” (desperately pitched as “God’s Army 2″ in Utah) did not make money, although both were excellent films — even better than “God’s Army” — which challenged LDS beliefs and assumptions by deconstructing the doctrine through various situations. In “States of Grace,” there is a powerful analogy to the “burying of weapons” story from the Book of Mormon.

After the gritty era of Mormon cinema, the genre moved mostly toward comedies that riffed off Mormon culture. There was “Singles Ward,” “Church Ball,” “Mobsters and Mormons,” “The RM,” The Home Teachers” and so on. There was also an attempt to make LDS romance films, such as “Charlie” and “Baptists At Our Barbecue,” (both based on books and BTW, “Baptists …” directed by Christian Vuissa, is a great film) and a slew of romantic LDS-themed comedies, including riffs on “Beauty and the Beast” and even “Pride and Prejudice.” There were more serious LDS mission-related films, including “The Best Two Years” and “The Errand of Angels.”

It bears mentioning that there were efforts to produce bigger-budgeted LDS-themed films. “Book of Mormon Movie,” “Passage to Zarahemla,” and three movies from the popular LDS fiction series, “The Work and the Glory” were produced. They just didn’t make money. In fact, the “Work and the Glory” films, financed by the late Larry H. Miller, have likely lost more than $10 million, and that may be a conservative estimate. (In the post-Dutcher era, the most critically acclaimed films may have been the “Saints and Soldiers” World War II-era films, released in 2003 and 2012.)

By 2010 most independent films produced for Mormon audiences were being released directly to DVD with a maybe a token theatrical release in Utah. In 2011, my family saw “Joseph Smith: Plates of Gold,” in a theater but it was shown in a DVD format! (A good site to keep up on Mormon-themed films is http://www.ldsfilm.com/)

Mormon cinema that makes it to theater screens has evolved to meet the needs of its chief audience, active Mormons. That need is faith repetition, or perhaps more optimistically called faith-promoting. As mentioned, I enjoy the films, but I miss the challenges to our assumptions in the earlier films, in which characters who deeply believed in Mormonism sometimes succumbed to the temptations of passion, loneliness, and rage. Even the silly films, “Singles Ward, ” “Home Teachers” or “Church Ball,” have more honesty. They riff on the Mormon culture, which is a safe but tempting target. The only “riffs” in “Ephraim’s Rescue” are a couple of mild jokes on polygamy.

The main events of Mormon-themed cinema have moved into the bowels of the church. It will be interesting to see if there is a serious effort to move part of the genre back into independence.

-- Doug Gibson

-- First published in 2013 at StandardBlogs

Dead on the Corridor blends Mormonism with life along I-15

Review by Doug Gibson

In Dead on the Corridor (Anderson Publishing, 2017), a collection of short stories from Utah writer James Elliott, a deeply troubled woman, barely alive, enters a welfare office in St. George, Utah. In desperate need of help, she is instead ushered out by a worker whose compassion matches cartoon bureaucrats Selma and Patty Bouvier of "The Simpsons."

In blistering heat, the woman returns to a tent outside the city to die. It's an agonizing, lonely death. But she finds peace in her final moments, clutching a small version of the Christus Consolator statue, a saved, treasured relic from her earlier life as an student in Mormon seminary.

That story, with Elliott's dispassionate prose, creates passion for the reader. This particular story has stuck with me, and will for a long time. With other stories in the collection, located in the backdrop of the harsh but beautiful of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Utah, tales of the least among us, the people who are forced to be survivors, are related.

Besides "The Worth of Souls," which is the name of the above-mentioned story, other tales involve a young boy, fated to die a painful death accidental death in the desert, reunited with a young, lost murder victim. While his parents live the slow agony of losing a child, the boy makes a friend. Another story, told partially in flashback, recounts an elderly, beloved woman, a sort of "mother" to a ward, relate to her bishop how she killed her fanatical, sadistic husband decades ago.

Another story with a particular punch to this reviewer involves two individuals trying their hardest to survive. One is a former missionary with a big testimony of his faith and severe mental problems. The other is a young woman with a child trying to atone for a past and create a happier life for her small family. Their lives will cross tragically and the survivor will make a hard, callous decision that nevertheless is reasonable given the individual's circumstances.

Elliott has a lot of talent, and Dead on the Corridor provides a lot for readers to think about as they move through the short stories. Is everyone our brother and sister? Does having a job, financial comforts, control over our mental faculties, and a comfortable place to sleep every night allow us the right to feel superior over those who are struggling to attain those securities?

Dead on the Corridor merits a lot of readers. Elliott, besides the questions his stories offer us, passes the most important test. He spins a good tale. After you read these stories, do the author a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

Is it DeMille, Spielberg or Jackson who wants to direct a movie on Alma?

A lifetime of activity in the LDS Church provides more than just an average knowledge with “The Pearl of Great Price.” You become very well versed in the urban legends of Mormonism. One of the favorite urban legends I heard growing up in Southern California LDS wards was that the late, great director Cecil B. DeMille (“The 10 Commandments”) wanted to make a movie about the Book of Alma in “The Book of Mormon.”

If you’ve never heard of Cecil B. DeMille, that’s OK. In the last decade or so, I’ve heard a variation on the DeMille/Alma story. It’s actually the great, living director Steven Spielberg who wants to make a movie based on the book of Alma. If you haven’t heard of Spielberg, maybe it will be director Peter Jackson who wants to Alma on the big screen?

The only big-screen film version of “The Book of Mormon” I’ve seen is the low-budget, mediocre “Book of Mormon Movie Part I,” which should have been subtitled “Beach Blanket Lehi” for all its depth. True confession: I own that film, and have watched it a few times. The dialogue is so bad that I have a hard time believing that my church would have wanted the production company to make the film. I guess that means that “The Book of Mormon” is in the public domain, like other classics such as Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” or George A. Romero’s film “Night of the Living Dead.” That must be the reason so many cheap cartoonish versions of Alma are available through Living Scriptures, Liken the Scriptures or the LDS Church Distribution Center.

Back to Mormon urban legends: There’s a fun website, holyfetch.com, that tries to decipher all the Mormon legends out there. It doesn’t get them all, since there is no listing for DeMille, Spielberg, Alma, etc., but the site claims an answer to the big “is Alice Cooper a Mormon” debate. I’ve been hearing this one since I was old enough to know who Alice Cooper was. The answer, according to holyfetch, is … a sort of yes. You see Cooper, whose real name is Vincent Furnier, has a dad named Ether Moroni. With a name like that, right … RIGHT. The Furniers belong to an obscure Mormon castoff sect called The Bickertonite Church, also known as The Church of Christ. The church claims The Book of Mormon as its own scripture.

There’s very few members of this “Mormon” church, and I doubt Cooper attends, but dad Ether Moroni was an elder in the Bickertonites and, get this, holyfetch says Cooper’s grandad was an apostle in The Bickertonite Church. Now that’s a religious pedigree to be proud of!

There are more questions answered on the site. You can “find out” if Elvis read “The Book of Mormon” or if the late LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball was the model for “Star Wars’” Yoda.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published in 2010 on StandardBlogs.

90 years ago, book by Davis author served as gift to missionaries from LDS prophet

More evidence that the bookshelves and basements of Latter-day Saints’ homes provide historical value: I’m holding in my hands a book titled, “Flashes From the Eternal Semaphore,” written by Leo J. Muir, published by The Deseret News Press, third edition, 1928. What’s most interesting is the right hand page next to the inside cover, a June 1, 1929 signed note from then-LDS Church President Heber J. Grant to missionary, Raymond D. Kingsford, soon to be sent to the LDS Western States Mission, according to his daughter, Lou Ann Hirsch, who has preserved her late-dad’s gift from a prophet.

The note, on President Grant’s letterhead, reads, Elder Raymond D. Kingsford, (stamped)

Dear Brother:

This excellent book

is presented to you with the

compliments of the author,

Leo J. Muir, and myself. I feel sure you will thoroughly

enjoy its contents and that

it will be an inspiration to

you while on your mission.

Sincerely your brother,

(Heber J. Grant’s signature)

A semaphore is, according to most definitions, “a system of sending messages by holding the arms or two flags or poles in certain positions according to an alphabetic code.” (Online Free Dictionary). Muir’s “book” is more or less a collection of inspirational quotes, legends, and stories designed to promote honesty, integrity, and spirituality. Sort of a 1920s’ version of “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” It was apparently sent to hundreds of young elders who served missions for the LDS Church long ago.

I think its main historical value is its place as a preferred non-Scripture reference for LDS missionaries of that era. Whether officially endorsed by a prophet or not, every generation of missionaries likely have favorite church-related books that are packed in their bags next to suits, ties, garments, Scriptures, etc. When I was a missionary 29 years ago, I recall buying a small book that included a debate on Mormonism that involved two missionaries and representatives from other faiths. The “judge” was a rabbi, I recall. The book was popular among missionaries, although I can’t recall the title. The LDS debaters won, of course, and even the rabbi judge was converted.

Out of curiosity, I look for this book from time to time at LDS bookstores and can’t find it, although I’m sure I could track it down if I made a serious Deseret Industries/online sales effort. It seems to have run its course — long ago — as a missionary-preferred tool. Some books that never grow out of favor for missionaries are, of course, the LDS Standard Works scriptures, plus books such as “The Articles of Faith” and “Jesus The Christ,” by the early 20th Century apostle James A. Talmadge, who probably knew Leo J. Muir, personally. (“Articles of Faith,” by the way, was a thick, sturdy volume that also served as a sure weapon against flying cockroaches in Peru.)

As for Muir’s “Flashes From the Eternal Semaphore,” here are a few of the nuggets found within the 112 pages:

• “Let us scan at random the lives of great men

and observe how firmly they have mastered

their lives towards the ends they hold dear.

The canny Scotchman, Carnegie, expressed the

philosophy of the captains of industry in this

wise sentence:

‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.’

That is the strait and narrow path in business.” (31)

Or,

• “… Moderation and simplicity in

foods, in fashion and in faith lead always to

health, happiness and religious peace of mind.” (32)

Or,

• “The lewdster who amuses himself and others

in this base pastime is seldom aware of the dire

mischief hidden in his speech. Obscenity is

the hostile enemy of all noble virtues.”

One more,

“And well might every youth give solemn

heed to this prophetic counsel:

‘Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth

instruction; but he that regardeth reproof shall be

honored.”

The book is arranged in seven sections, with an Introduction, Five Semaphore Flashes (The first is “The Pursuit of Easy Things Makes Men Weak,” the last, “He That Soweth to the Flesh Shall of the Flesh Reap Corruption,” and has a Conclusion, titled, “The Majesty of Law.”

The author, Leo J. Muir, (1880-1967) was an educator in Davis County for much of his life. He was the first principal of Davis High School and eventually Utah superintendent of schools. When this book was published in the 1920s, Muir lived in California and was an LDS stake president and later the Northern States LDS mission president. A prominent Democrat, Muir was mayor of Bountiful. In 1960, he provided the benediction — following John F. Kennedy’s presidential nomination acceptance speech — at the Democratic National Convention. In Bountiful, there is an elementary school named for him.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

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

LDS retrenchment and why Ezra Taft Benson wanted to be George Wallace’s VP pick

In Matthew Bowman’s book “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith,” the Mormon business/educational strategy of correlation is explained. The business advantages of correlation are offset by an educational culture that stays, by design, into narrow theological positions that are not open to debate. In Bowman’s book, he also spends some time on the LDS retrenchment movement among its hierarchy, a conservative movement to interpret doctrine strictly according to Scriptures and revelation received through modern LDS prophets and apostles.

In what serves as a definition of retrenchment, Bowman recounts a message conservative LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie sent to an LDS academic (Eugene England). “God has given us apostles and prophets. … It is my province to teach to the church what the doctrine is. It is your province to repeat what I say or remain silent.”

Retrenchment, with its emphasis on simplistic answers to questions that could be debated thoroughly, fit well with correlation, a concept that by its nature was hampered by multiple alternatives. Retrenchment, which flourished through the last half of the 20th century, was a wish to return to the theological days of Brigham Young, a strong leader who brooked little dissent.

According to Bowman, the father of retrenchment was the late LDS apostle and president Joseph Fielding Smith. Fielding Smith was an opponent of colleagues in the LDS ecclesiatical hierarchy, such as B.H. Roberts, who in an attempt to explain evolution, “posited that generations of human, or human-like, beings had lived and died long before God sent Adam and Eve to earth,” writes Bowman, who adds that “… Fielding Smith, convinced that Roberts was promulgating false doctrine and suspicious that he was secretely promoting evolution, accused Roberts in a public lecture of desiring ‘to square the teachings in the Bible with the teachings of modern science and philosophy …” An offended Roberts, as well as apostle James Talmadge, complained to LDS Church President Heber J. Grant.

Grant wanted no part of the debate and advised the principals to drop the dispute. As Bowman notes, though, Grant’s reluctance to take a side essentially turned the LDS Church into an institution where, “No longer would church authorities debate matters of doctrine in public.” Because the world was slowly moving toward an era of post World War II Cold War conservatism, it’s not surprising that the conservatism that Fielding Smith favored became the ideology most popular among the LDS leadership.

Under Fielding Smith, his son-in-law, apostle Bruce R. McConkie, apostle and future prophet Ezra Taft Benson, current apostle Boyd K. Packer, and other leaders such as BYU President Ernest Wilkinson, Mormon theology was “characterized by an exclusive focus on the canon of Mormon scripture. They sought to grant it as much authority as possible and to take its claims as literally as possible,” writes Bowman. The new retrenchment conservatism of 1960s Mormonism echoed Fielding Smith’s disdain for Roberts’ pre-Adamic ideas. In his iconic book, “Mormon Doctrine,” McConkie describes the theory as “satanic.”

One aspect of retrenchment was a belief in dispensationalism. As Bowman writes, “Dispensationalists believe that because of human wickedness, the world was doomed to decay and degeneration before Christ’s return to save it; for them, the Bible taught of war, famine, conspiracy and disease.”

As early as 1946, Fielding Smith had written “Signs of the Times,” a dispensationalist tome that provided a pessimistic blueprint of the future. The Cold War, anti-communism, the counterculture movement, all served to fuel retrenchment efforts in the LDS hierarchy. W. Cleon Skousen, police chief, BYU professor, dispensationalist and anti-communist, became a best-selling LDS author. (Recently his books, long consigned to basements and Deseret Industry shelves, have regained popularity with the rise of Glenn Beck, a modern-day LDS dispensationalist).

As Bowman points out, the popular LDS musical play, “Saturday’s Warrior,” is a creation of retrenchment and dispensationalism. In the play, former pre-mortal spirits sent to earth are pressured by wicked earthly peers to be “cool.” In one now-dated scene, a Mormon is taunted because his parents’ are expecting an eighth child. Bowman points out that one of the play’s songs, “Zero Population,” is sung by “his villainous teenage friends (who) impropably praise birth control.”

Ezra Taft Benson was a major player in the retrenchment movement for a couple of generations. An impressive leader who was tapped by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be secretary of agriculture, Benson later exemplified the LDS Church’s opposition to communism, atheism and liberal initiatives to expand government. As Bowman writes, “To some Mormons, communism appeared to violate the principle of free agency, human beings’ right to choose their own destinies that derived from their divine heritage.”

David O. McKay, for example, LDS leader during retrenchment, was a strong opponent of communism. McKay was willing to incorporate that activism into major areas of the church he led, such as the McCarthy-ite investigation of professors at BYU, who were suspected of weak loyalties to the Gospel and patriotism

However, Benson took the LDS hierarchy’s opposition to communism to extreme levels. Had it not been for the wisdom of President McKay, Benson might have caused the LDS Church embarrassment that it would still be dealing with today. For example, Benson became a disciple of the conspiratorial anti-communist group the John Birch Society, an organization which had already been politically excommunicated from the Republican Party. As Bowman relates, Benson was so impressed with John Birch Society founder Robert Welch — a man who accused his former boss Eisenhower of being a communist — that he lobbied McKay to allow Welch to speak at the church’s semi-annual general conference and lobbied to have the LDS leadership endorse the Birchers. Fortunately, McKay resisted those efforts.

As Bowman relates, McKay also nixed Benson’s desire to be the vice presidential nominee of segregationalist third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968. It’s likely that the LDS Church would still be dealing with such an ignoble action today had not the wise McKay told Benson no.

Nevertheless, retrenchment did lead the LDS hierarchy into politically based decisions that extend from the 1970s (opposition to the ERA), the 1980s (opposition to the MX missile system construction in Utah), the 1990s (the excommunication of several LDS dissident academics) and even a few years ago, with its stance against gay marriage in California.

Retrenchment, however, is an ailing, perhaps dying ideology among Mormons. While there are still factions, usually older Mormons, who adhere to the rigidness of a Fielding Smith, Benson, Skousen and McConkie, most Mormons today have moved toward the liberal ideas of Roberts once denounced. In 2010, Deseret Book announced it would no longer print “Mormon Doctrine.” Harsh statements on homosexuality in General Conference by Packer were toned down for revised official publication.

History often repeats itself; it appears Mormonism’s leaders have tired of retrenchment. However, the impact of retrenchment should not be downplayed. It’s worth noting that at the end of the LDS era of theological debate, 1935, only 36 percent of BYU students believed that “creation did not involve evolution.” As Bowman notes, by 1973, “81 percent (of students) felt that way.”

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs