Summarized by Kent Larsen
LDS approach to '60s issues still leaving its mark
Deseret News 22May99 C7
By Carrie A. Moore: Deseret News religion editor
Mormon legislators in Utah learned how to handle controversial political
issues from the way that LDS leades handled the issues of the 1960s, says
Utah State Archivist Jeffrey Johnson. Johnson presented this thesis to a
near-capacity crowd at the While Memorial Chapel on Thursday, May 20th,
delivering an address entitled, "Conflict, Change and Growth: Utah, the
Mormon Church and the 1960s."
Johnson explained that a civil rights demonstration on March 7, 1965 in
front of the LDS Church Administra building was "The first time such
pressure had been put on the LDS Church." The NAACP protest directly
challenged the LDS Church, claiming that its influence over Utah
legislators was keeping civil rights legision from becoming law in Utah.
However, LDS Church authorities perceived the demonstration as a challenge
to doctrine, specifically to the then doctrine that blacks could not hold
the priesthood. {This doctrine was changed in a 1978 revelation). The
protest ended when the Deseret News ran an editorial re-iterating a 1963
pro-civil-rights statement in General Conference by President Hugh B. Brown
of the First Presidency. Soon after the protest, the Utah leglislature
passed the civil rights legislation.
"You can see the same thing today with the church's support for gun
legislation," said Johnson. He claims that in the 1960s, LDS Church
authorities reacted to the protests on issues such as civil rights, Vietnam
and the counter-culture movement by calling on members to be more obedient
and to see these issues as challenges to obedience. Johnson says that
current Utah political leaders, "view problems in the 1990s through the
lenses developed during that time . . . That helps us understand the
struggle we're having today."
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