Decalogue for Dissenters

The first Sunstone piece I may have ever read was likely Armand Mauss's "Alternate Voices: The Calling and its Implications," though I first encountered it at Times and Season's reposted as "Alternate Voices". I remember being particularly impressed by the final section, "Decalogue for Dissenters", and apparently Elder Dallin H. Oaks (who himself was a founding member of the editorial board of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought) saw value in it too, for he sent a short letter (three lines) to compliment Brother Mauss on his piece and express approval of it’s interpretation of his conference address. Those of us today who at times feel called to dissent, whether in person or even on Facebook or through blogging, will likewise find value in Armand Mauss's words:

Decalogue for Dissenters

My remarks in this final section are directed mainly to those who would undertake to join the ranks of “alternate voices” as speakers, not just as listeners. These include, I hasten to add, not only academics or other professional intellectuals but anyone who would aspire to be efficacious in offering alternative ideas or counsel to the saints and their leaders at any level, whether in the pages of Dialogue and SUNSTONE, in ward council, priesthood quorums, Relief Society, or Sunday School. 

I would like to share ten principles that I have learned, sometimes painfully in the breach, during the past twenty-five years from my own efforts to offer an effective “alternate voice” at various forums and occasions. As a rhetorical devise, I will use the imperative tone appropriate for a decalogue; I apologize in advance if the tone also seems imperious in places. Also, since my efforts have taken place in the context of an ultimate commitment to the LDS faith, some of the following principles will be less applicable to those who don’t share that commitment. 

1. Seek constantly to build a strong personal relationship with the Lord as the main source and basis for your own confidence in the alternate voice you are offering. We often have to do without the Church’s approval, but we need the assurance of the Lord’s. 

2. Do your homework before you speak up. We must be sure that our knowledge of the scriptures, of history, and of other relevant data on a given matter will bear up well under scrutiny and under efforts at rebuttal. Otherwise, our offerings will be exposed as unreliable, we will lose credibility as intellectual leaders or teachers, and we will be suspected even by our sympathizers as mere malcontents. No one expects infallibility, but we must know whereof we speak, especially if we espouse an unpopular or untraditional idea. 

3. Relinquish any and all aspirations (or even expectations) for leadership callings in the Church. Actually, that is wonderfully liberating. In any case, stake and ward leaders, to say nothing of general authorities, rarely call people to powerful positions who are suspected of too much “independent thinking.” To be sure, the ranks of “alternate voices” have provided occasional examples of bishops, stake presidents, and Relief Society leaders, showing that there may be some happy exceptions to this generalization, but don’t count on that. If you have a career in C.E.S. or in any other Church bureaucracy, don’t expect approval or promotion to accompany your identification as an “alternate voice.” 

4. Endure graciously the overt disapproval of “significant others,” including family members, but never respond in kind. Lifelong friends and old missionary companions may sever (or reduce) friendship ties when they learn that you are one of "those.” They simply cannot understand what your “problem” is. If such reactions prove especially crucial in your case (e.g., if your marriage is threatened), you will have some tough choices to make. 

5. Pay your “dues” as a member of the Church. Pay your tithing, make clear your willingness to serve wherever called, and do your best to get your children on missions. Try as hard as anyone to “keep the commandments.” You still probably won’t get much Church recognition, but you will win over a few who once looked on you with suspicion. More important, you will make it difficult for your critics to dismiss you as an apostate, for all will see that “thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death” (D&C 121:44). 

6. Be humble, generous, and good natured in tolerating ideas that you find aversive in other Church members, no matter how “reactionary.” As “alternate voices,” we cannot complain when we are ignored or misunderstood if we respond with contempt toward those whose ideas we deplore. Besides, if we have any hope of educating them, we have to start where they are and treat them with love and tolerance. No one is won over by being put down, especially in public. Whether in our writing or in our exchanges during Sunday School classes, we must try to be gracious as well as candid (difficult though it be on occasion) and always remember to show forth afterward “an increase of love toward him whom thou has reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy” (D&C 121:43). 

7. Show some empathy and appreciation for Church leaders, male and female, from the general level down to the local ward and branch. Anyone who has ever held a responsible leadership position knows how heavy the burdens of office can be, especially in callings like bishop, Relief Society president, and stake president (to say nothing of apostle), in which the decisions made can affect countless numbers of people for good or ill. We may privately deplore the poor judgment, the unrighteous dominion, the insensitivity, and even the outright ignorance of some leaders. Yet, after all, they are, like us, simple mortals doing their best according to their lights. Some of them sacrifice a great deal for no apparent benefit, and all are entitled to our support, and occasionally our praise, whenever these can reasonably be given. When they do something outrageously wrong, they need our sympathy even more. “There but for the grace of God . . . ” etc. 

8. Do not say or do anything to undermine the influence or legitimacy of Church leaders at any level. They have their callings and prerogatives, and we should not step forth to “steady the ark” by publicly offering our alternative leadership. Please don’t misunderstand: I am not advocating silent submission in the face of official stupidity. There is much that we can do without playing the role of usurper. When we write for publication, let us by all means criticize policies, practices, or interpretations of doctrine; but let us not personalize our criticisms with ad hominem attacks. They are not only discourteous and condescending, but quite unnecessary. (They can also get you “ex-ed.”) 

We should feel free, though, to seek private interviews and/or correspondence with Church leaders, including our own bishops, in which we can offer, in a spirit of love and humility, our constructive criticisms and suggestions. If these are ignored, then at least we have exercised our callings as “alternate voices,” and we have done so without sowing seeds of contention. We are not responsible for how a given leader carries out his or her stewardship. Yet we are not powerless, which leads to the next principle. 

9. Take advantage of legitimate opportunities to express your “alternate voices” and to exercise your free agency in “alternate” ways within the LDS church and culture. We must never lapse into a posture in which we just sit and gripe. If we find the correlated lesson manuals to be thin fare, it is up to us as teachers to enrich them with relevant supplementary material (including some “alternate voices”). If we are not teachers, then at least we are obligated as class members to speak up knowledgeably and enrich the class, not simply boycott it. 

If we find a general intellectual famine at Church, then we are free to start study groups of our own to supplement the Church fare for those who feel the need. Some of our more conservative leaders may not like such unsponsored study groups, but they have no right to forbid them, and they seldom try (but don’t forget principles 2, 3, and 4). In short, even if we are not bishops or general authorities, and even if we are ignored by those who are, there is much constructive that we can do with our “alternate voices”: “For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as they do good they shall in nowise lose their reward” (D&C 58:28). 

10. Endure to the end. The calling of “alternate voice” is too important for us to allow ourselves either to be intimidated by the exercise of unrighteous dominion or to be silenced by our own fatigue. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9; D&C 64:33). I have seen many a rich harvest in people’s lives from seeds planted by “alternate voices,” and I hope to live to see many more. 

Though I have often failed to comply with all ten of these principles, I have learned from my failures as well as from my successes that the likelihood of influence and efficacy for “alternate voices” depends heavily upon compliance with those principles. They also add up to a personal philosophy that has yielded me a great deal of inner peace in my years of coping with the predicament so common among “alternate voices”: commitment to the religion but a feeling of marginality in the Church. That is my testimony.

Lowry Nelson's Reflections on the State of Academic Freedom at BYU and the Personality of Heber J. Grant

Last month I began reading the memoirs of brother Lowry Nelson. Immediately, the historian in me desired to transcribe and share Chapter 16 ("Again the Church and I"), which included one of the most remarkable exchanges in 20th century Mormon history: the 1947 correspondence between Dr. Nelson and the First Presidency of the LDS Church regarding the racist Priesthood/temple ban, which so deeply concerned him.

Yet that chapter wasn't the only chapter in which Dr. Nelson wrote about the intersection of his career and his church. Chapter nine, "The Church and I", gives us a glimpse into the atmosphere at Brigham Young University in the early 20th century, as well as the surprisingly idiosyncratic personality of Church President Heber J. Grant. Moreover, Nelson further details the experience that that got him in "hot water," later published as an article in Dialogue: Journal of Mormon Thought entitled "The Ordeal of Lowry Nelson and the Mis-spoken Word." Nelson laments how the atmosphere at BYU began to degenerate enough that he left the university before spending the bulk of his career at the University of Minnesota and finally retiring back to Provo:

In the Direction of His Dreams
Memoirs of Lowry Nelson

Chapter 9 (pages 248—260)

The Church and I

During the 1920s and the early 1930s, the academic atmosphere at BYU was remarkably free of restraints. About 1933, however, the Church authorities became somewhat uneasy about what was happening. Partly, this unease was the result of an extraordinary summer session in which four faculty members from the University of Chicago gave courses primarily for teachers in the LDS seminaries at the high school level. There were courses in the Old Testament, New Testament, the history of the Christian Church, and one in social ethics. The men were well-known authorities in their fields. The seminary men were extraordinarily enthusiastic about these courses, which opened new windows on their limited theological education and showed the vast landscape of the world of biblical scholarship. This turned out to be something of an affront to the Church authorities. The Church had always claimed to have the “truth,” so why go outside for instruction?

My old friend Dr. Widtsoe, now an Apostle of the Church, had returned from presiding over the British and European Mission and was made Commissioner of Church Education. It should be noted that almost any teacher in science—physical, biological, or social—is frequently asked by Mormon students how his ideas or instruction conflict with or conform to Church doctrine. Often the questions are not raised in the class, but letters are sent to the President of the Church complaining about the professor.

Dr. Widtsoe conceived the idea of holding personal conferences with individual faculty members, with another Apostle and President Harris present. An appointment was arranged for each and every faculty member. Questions about the individual’s faith—whether he prayed, paid tithing, attended meetings, held office in organizations, and so on—were the mainstay of the interviews. I was not asked these questions formally as most others were. Both Dr. Widtsoe and President Harris, as I have pointed out several times in this memoir, were friends, and they always seemed to have complete confidence in me. I mention this because it is important to what happened shortly after this “inquisition”—as the faculty termed it. I didn’t know Apostle Callis, the third man present at my interview. But I was practically waved out of the room a minute or so after I had entered.

Not long after my interview, I found myself in real “hot water.” It was during the summer of 1934, while I was commuting by car to the State Capitol organizing the Welfare Division. On my return in the afternoon, I always went to my office to see what I had to attend to. On one particular day, I was asked to call President Harris, whose office now was in the Maeser Building on the hill. (I was occupying his former office in the Education Building on the lower campus.) Harris told me that Oscar Russell, an old friend of his, had brought in a French professor of economics from the University of Algiers. This Frenchman was making a study of the relation of religion and economics and would like to interview me and get copies of my studies. I was introduced to him, and he, Russell, and I returned to my office. I obtained the bulletins and presented them to the Frenchman. Since he also wanted to interview a student, I introduced him to one who happened to be in my office, Howard Forsyth. While the interview was taking place I returned to my car, anxious to get home because I had a regional social workers meeting that night in Provo. Oscar came over to the car window as I was about to start the motor and told me that the Frenchman would also like to interview an apostate Mormon. He asked if there was anyone I could suggest. I laughed, and said, “I have a meeting tonight which Dean Brimhall will also attend.”

“Would you consider him an apostate?” Russell asked.

“Not exactly, but, you know, he is not active in the church.”

“Well,” asked Russell, “what would his attitude be about immortality?”

Of course, that was a ridiculous question, and I simply said it would be necessary to ask him. “What is your own attitude about immortality? he asked.

“I suppose I would have to say that it is something I do not know. It is something one can consider as an hypothesis which cannot be tested by any method we know, whether it is true or not. Up to now, nobody has taken me up and shown me the pearly gates.”

I was still anxious to leave, but asked him what his own attitude was. “I can explain it this way. My field is the study of speech. I have an explanation as to why people lose their voices. It involves the behavior of certain muscles of the throat. I have never seen these muscles behave, but I know they do act in the way I have been able to describe. In that sense I feel I can say that I know immortality is a fact.”

I told him I thought he had made a great leap in logic and wished I could discuss it further with him, but had to leave. I did say that I thought his was only an hypothesis about the muscles. Some day it might be tested and found false. He was not impressed.

I soon forgot the whole thing. He was a Ph.D. and held an important post in his field at Ohio State University. I felt free to talk frankly with him, as I always could with my colleagues at the university. A short time after this event, however, I met a friend on the street in Salt Lake City. After an exchange of pleasantries, he said: “I understand you are a very dangerous man at BYU. Oscar Russell says he wouldn’t send his children there because it would undermine their faith.”  That Oscar was spreading this rather widely soon came to me from other sources. I was distressed. It seemed to me quite beneath the kind of behavior one would have a right to expect from a person of his training and position. After all, our conversation had not even been fifteen minutes long. I was also worried that his spreading rumors about BYU would cause harm to the institution.

So, out of anxiety, I did the wrong thing: I wrote him a letter. In it I reproduced our conversation somewhat as I have just done. I also mentioned the fact that I felt agnostic about the problem, in the true meaning of the word—not knowing. I submitted to President Harris the draft of what I wanted to send to Oscar and asked, “Should I send this?” He wrote in the margin of the draft, “Certainly, FSH.” [Franklin S. Harris]

Russell was something of a linguist, by the way, and was acting as interpreter for the French economist. I surely thought he would understand the word “agnostic.”

In a short time, Oscar struck with everything he could muster. He made copies of my letter, wrote a four-page single-spaced letter of his own, and sent copies of both to the members of the Board of Trustees of BYU and to President Harris and Professor Guy C. Wilson—a veteran Church educator now serving on the BYU faculty whom Russell had known for many years.

Both Harris and Wilson opened their mail while I was still in class.  Wilson came into my office with his copy later on. I was floored. Russell had used the occasion to tell of his own faith and knowledge about immortality. I don’t recall what all else he had said, except that I was by my own confession no better than Robert C. Ingersoll (probably the most famous self-styled agnostic in American history). We all got copies of the letters on Wednesday. It was the custom then for the Council of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency to hold a weekly meeting in the Temple on Thursday. After this meeting, following the receipt of the letters, one of the Apostles, Richard R. Lyman, called President Harris from his home and told him what had happened. President Grant had read the letters in the meeting and was very angry. “You better get Lowry and come up in the morning [Friday] and call on President Grant.”

We went, of course, and it proved to be a memorable day. We called on Dr. Lyman in his Church office, and he said President Grant was so angry that none of them felt they should try to say anything in my defense.  Then he told us of some of this own talks with his colleagues. He mentioned a fellow Apostle, Orson F. Whitney, who wrote a regular column in the Church newspaper called “Saturday Night Thoughts.” In one of these columns, according to Lyman, Whitney had mentioned the miracle of an ax floating on the water. “Now Brother Orson,” Dr. Lyman had said, “you know an ax won’t float on water.”  He also told of challenging Dr. Widtsoe on another occasion when he had written something that Lyman thought less than logical. He had said, “Now John, you couldn’t tell that group of men [pointing to a group photograph of engineers on the wall of his office] what you have just told me.”

The Council meeting must have been an interesting performance by President Grant, although no more detail was offered by Dr. Lyman other than to emphasize that the President was very angry. One can only imagine Apostles Widtsoe and Callis, who had just gone over the staff to discover any heresies, sitting there with red faces and trying to sink through the floor. As an angry President, Grant was not to be interrupted by anyone when he was on the trail of a “professor,” especially one who was showing something less than complete knowledge that the “gospel was true.”

President Grant was an uncomplicated man. Far from being intellectually interested in problems, he already knew he had the answers: that he was right, that Mormonism had everything he or anyone else needed to be saved in the world to come. He had one sermon. It dealt with his own efforts to improve his ability—to play ball, to learn to sing, and various other accomplishments. His theme was persistence and practice. He had, in short, a monumental ego. His basic secular interest was business, and he tended to measure the quality of other men by the standard of financial success. He was made an Apostle at the age of twenty-six, and as my colleague Professor John C. Swenson once said: “The trouble with President Grant is that nobody had asked him any questions since he became an Apostle.” He was anti-intellectual, and was greatly annoyed by any letters he received from students at BYU that were critical of their professors. He had already gotten the State to take over several junior colleges of the Church, including Weber, Snow, and Dixie, and had tried to get the Idaho Church to take over Ricks College in Rexburg. In this he and been unsuccessful. Grant wanted nothing more than to get rid of Brigham Young University and the annoying letters about professors.

President Grant received us by appointment at 11am. He greeted us kindly and affably, but explained that he didn’t want to discuss the matter of our visit until 3pm when his counselors, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., and David O. McKay, could be present. We moved to depart, but he began talking about other things and, as it turned out, spent the entire hour with us sitting there listening to him. He seemed completely relaxed, whereas I had expected him to be cold and standoffish. He told us two long stories, one concerning his outwitting a man—I believe a son of Brigham Young—who came to a bank where Grant was working and expected to borrow a considerable sum. It was the Church bank. Anyway, he told how he avoided having to make the loan, which he knew the man was not worthy to have. I was not interested in the details and remember none.

The other story was far more interesting. It had to do with a celebrated case in Mormon history in which an Apostle, accused of adultery, was dropped from the Council of the Twelve and dis-fellowshipped. The Council had held an inquiry at which the woman testified. The accused Apostle, A.C. Carrington, denied that he was guilty so vigorously, claiming that he was a victim of the woman’s charges, that the Council voted in his favor. President Grant said he believed the woman, although he had no clear evidence to refute the testimony of Carrington. In some manner, which I now forget, he did get further evidence and again brought the charge against his colleague. This time Carrington confessed to having had sexual relations with the woman, but denied it constituted adultery, because adultery involved “mixing of seed” and he (Carrington) had used a silk handkerchief. All of the President’s stories of his experiences made him the hero. So much for 11 o’clock appointment. We were to be back by 3pm.

After lunch, President Harris and I called on the manager of Deseret News, simply as a good-will visit that might yield favorable attitudes toward BYU. S.O. Bennion had recently been appointed to the position after a long tenure as President of one of the LDS Missions. Somehow he got on the subject of President Grant. He said he was called to the President’s office one day and found the President upset because the Deseret News had not reported a sermon he had given the day before at a funeral. Bennion said he had been visited several times in his mission by President Grant, and had always found him to be a fatherly, genial guest. “I had never seen this man before,” he said of Grant’s behavior this time. “He was not the President Grant I knew. It was someone else.” Bennion told us he then called his editor, Mark Peterson, and asked him to look up the item—which he knew had appeared—and bring it to the President’s office. When the President saw it, he was embarrassed and apologized. Said Bennion, “I think his daughters put him up to these things.”

The appearance before the First Presidency was rather brief. I was so embarrassed that President Harris nervously went to such lengths to defend me that I was unable to say anything. I think it was just as well, because there was not much I could say. President Grant said, “Of course, we have the evidence here.” (He pointed to a drawer in his desk.) He went on to say that it would be turned over to the Commissioner of Education for him to make an investigation. About the only word of consolation I got from the meeting came from J. Reuben Clark, Jr., when he said, “You used a very unfortunate word in your letter.” He was referring of course to “agnostic.” I couldn’t say at the time that I thought I was writing to an understanding man of some knowledge; at least I certainly hadn’t written to President Grant.

The following Wednesday the speaker at the weekly assembly in College Hall was David O. McKay, whom I had known for a number of years and greatly admired. I knew all the McKay family. The youngest brother, Morgan, had been a member of our fraternity. Word was passed to me that President McKay would like to see me after the assembly. I went with him, President T.N. Taylor of the Utah Stake, and President Harris to his automobile at the curb. President McKay said, “All I wanted to tell you was that there will be no investigation.” At that I confess I shed a tear.

There was still some aftermath. Apostle Stephen L Richards, who was related to the Knight family through the marriage of their children, came to Provo on a visit and let President Harris know that he would like to have a talk with me. Accordingly, I showed up at the Knight home (now the Berg Mortuary). A fire was lit in a bedroom fireplace upstairs, and Brother Richards and I went there for a talk. As we talked about the letters in which I had said I didn’t know that immortality was a fact, he suddenly said something I shall always admire him for: “I am sure you know as much as I do about it.” I was rather sure that was true, but had heard all my life the burning testimonies of men in authority in the Church that they “knew” that there was an existence after death. He went on to suggest that I write President Grant a letter expressing my loyalty to the Church and so on. I did this, but I am sure President Grant never trusted me. He had all the “evidence” he needed in the tirade of Oscar Russell. I never heard from him.

A footnote on Oscar Russell. He had been trying for years to obtain an appointment in Utah but to no avail. In his letter, he was obviously attempting to prove his own virtue, and by that to ingratiate himself into the favor of President Grant. I confess that the thought entered my mind that I might duplicate the correspondence and circularize the board of Ohio State University, but I had no intention of doing so. I still wonder what they would have thought. Oscar did finally get a job in Utah as superintendent of the deaf and blind school in Ogden. I received one more letter from him after the election of a new president at the University of Utah. I had been a candidate along with Adam S. Bennion, and the Board was tied seven to seven; after many votes, they had chosen a compromise candidate. Oscar wrote to congratulate me on being a candidate along with “such a distinguished man as Adam S. Bennion.” I did not acknowledge the letter; I was through writing to Oscar.

Pressures on the faculty were increasing and President Harris was no longer able to maintain the spirit of free inquiry that had been so much a mark of his administration up to this time. At least one other faculty member, Hugh M. Woodward in philosophy, had been called on the carpet over his teaching of comparative religions. He had even published a book, The Common Message of the World’s Great Religions. In his interview with the First Presidency, Hugh told me that he remarked to them that, since they were members of the Board, they had a right to eliminate the book if they so desired. “No,” said President Grant, “go ahead and teach about these other religions, but when you get through with them show that they are not worth that.” He snapped his finger. Some faculty members found other jobs; Murray Hayes, a geologist, went to Washington and Walter Cottam, a botanist, to the University of Utah. Woodward (philosophy) found employment with the WPA educational program, and Coach Ott Romney became Athletic Director at West Virginia University. Grant Ivins (animal husbandry) became price administrator for Utah during World War II.

I was unhappy and disappointed by these developments. In later years, I could see more clearly that during the 1920s and the early 1930s we had been living in a fool’s paradise as far as academic freedom was concerned. The admonition to the faculty by President Harris to “teach the truth” was both sincere and courageous. Of course, he would spell truth with a small “t”’ and his Board, consisting mainly of Apostles of the Church, would agree with the statement but would spell the word with a capital “T.” Up to 1934, the university had been regarded with what one might call “benign neglect.” Any attempt to get increased appropriations from the Church, despite the rapid growth in enrollment, was brushed off with the remark of President Grant that “BYU is now receiving more money than did the entire Church educational system in the days of Horace H. Cummings.” (This would be about the first decade of the century.)

Suddenly, however, there was now a new concern that something was going wrong. Every letter from a complaining student regarding some faculty member received extraordinary attention. Students reared in the provincial Mormon communities, knowing only Mormon beliefs, and with little knowledge of the developments in secular knowledge, inevitably encountered conflicts in such courses as geology, biology, anthropology, and sociology. If the Bible, as they had always been taught to believe, was “the word of God,” how could there be an alternative theory of the origin and age of the world as well as the origin of man and other life on earth? The theory of evolution was a formidable problem for some students, not to mention that of the instructor who might try to reconcile it with Genesis.

It is quite clear in retrospect that BYU cannot enjoy academic freedom according to standards established at most state universities and the great private institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the rest. The BYU situation compares with that of Harvard in the seventeenth century, when its first President was made to resign because he failed to have one of his children baptized by immersion. It is not quite that bad at BYU, but the guidelines are quite rigid and conformity with them is enforced; the nonconformist is easily purged because the faculty does not have tenure.

I was greatly relieved when the offer came from Washington to join the New Deal as adviser for four western states.