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The third lesson of the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson manual, “Freedom of Choice, an Eternal Principle,” focuses on the importance of one’s moral conscience. It addresses a primary conundrum of modern democracy: today’s liberty allows both the ability to freely practice religion according to your own belief as well as the freedom to practice immorality and disbelief. The potential for a righteous life, then, is tethered to the potential for sin. This makes the stakes all the more fraught. “Life is a testing time in man’s eternal existence,” Benson preached in an excerpt included in the lesson, “during which he is given…the right to choose between right and wrong.” The absence of a strong federal government that dictates moral values both enables religious agency but also accelerates religious dissent. This makes it all the more crucial, he argued, to teach our children how to use their freedom wisely, especially in an age when there are so many corrupting choices and potential evils at every corner.



That particular excerpt, along with seven others included in the lesson, come from one particular book: God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties (1975). The text is a classic embodiment of Benson’s mature political and religious thought, a libertarian blend that was half Book of Mormon and half John Birch Society.[1] The book is one of the most extensive and systematic expressions of that thought, as each section is connected to the primary argument concerning the proper relationship between religion, society, and government. Due to the Priesthood/Relief Society manual’s structure, of course, it only includes brief excerpts from the book, as evidenced by the numerous ellipses.

Here is what closely follows the quote mentioned above, which did not make the manual:

Some of our patriots are losing their children. In our attempt to save our country, we must not let our own homes crumble. Don’t neglect your own. You can’t delegate that divine duty nor neglect it without tragic consequences. Be careful in sending them away from your hearth for additional education. There are worse things that can happen to a young person today than not getting a liberal college degree.

It’s obvious why this extract was chosen to not be included in the manual. For all of the many teachings of Benson that remained a staple within the LDS tradition—a heartfelt devotion to the Book of Mormon text being perhaps the most obvious and endearing of them—his persistent skepticism of higher education, at least of higher education outside the hands of a particular ideological background, is not one of them. But the exclusion of this particular argument, as well as numerous other arguments from God, Family, and Country and other important sermons and addresses, points to both the necessity and the complexity of the way these Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manuals are constructed: “necessity,” because past discourses were enmeshed in, and thus representative of, a past age that often does not seamlessly fit the present; “complexity,” because by excerpting and de-contextualizing these past discourses we are often appropriating them for our own purposes while overlooking their original intent.[2]

That last point shouldn’t be a surprise, as it is a constant necessity for the survival of a religion.[3] But this broadly experienced phenomenon would have a hard time finding a more salient embodiment than these Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manuals, as they take paragraphs from sermons given in a particular time, written for a particular purpose, and imagined within a particular mental environment, and are now presented in topical sections, divorced from immediate contexts, and designed for contemporary issues. Benson’s original meaning for many of these excerpts is often lost as the paragraphs are separated from the overall argument based on a particular worldview. Yet since a considerable amount of that particular worldview no longer holds as much relevance today, his message needs to be re-appropriated—or, in a Mormon sense, translated—for 2015’s purposes.[4]

But the manuals’ structure—and the manuals themselves—are both “necessary” and “complex” in yet another, and perhaps even more important, way. First, they are necessary because there is a constant anxiety to remind Church members of the relevance of our inspired and chosen leaders; reading their words twice a month for Sunday meetings is a ritualized catechism that reinforces our devotion to the principle of continued revelation and prophetic leadership. Frequent encounters with the words of past presidents of the Church enable an intimate intellectual relationship with our faith’s founders and caretakers. In that sense, I can neither begrudge nor critique the wish to cultivate such a close relationship, as it is an attempt to correlate a divine experience at the center of our tradition.

But it is still “complex” because, well, we have yet to figure out a way to accomplish such a tough task. While as a fellow saint I can’t begrudge the wish to forge this relationship with the teachings of Church leaders, as a historian who spends much of my time proving the importance of context for understanding words and actions I can certainly cringe at the process we invoke as we seek to do that very thing. Further, I would argue that contextualized meanings and shifting priorities are as crucial to the Mormon tradition as they are to the historian’s craft. But while I believe the historian’s toolbox can offer some help in rectifying this problem of prophetic relativism, I would never venture to say it would be enough to quench the spiritual thirst at the heart of this deeply Mormon desire. That is a religious problem that deserves religious attention.

So though these manuals are deeply paradoxical and problematic, they are merely reflections of the religious tradition from which they were birthed. And though such a dynamic might tempt bewilderment and, at times, even scorn, perhaps the more fruitful realization is how they invite deeper investigation and engagement. Even as the problems are themselves “Mormon” in nature, so are the anxieties. And I would argue that those are not only complex but, in the end, necessary.

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[1] Scholar Patrick Mason, the Mormon Studies Chair at Claremont Graduate University, is currently working on an intellectual biography of Benson that will seek to finally place him as an important figure in the rise of the Religious Right in the post-World War II period.

[2] Yes, by using “original intent” in a post touching on how the original meaning of Ezra Taft Benson’s sermons being lost in the quest to find new meaning in a radically different age is meant to be an ironic joke. I’m a party animal like that.

[3] As BCC emeritus Steve Taysom often puts it, the most important skill of any successful religion is to adapt to changing times while at the same time convincing its practitioners that it never changes.

[4] Another example of Benson’s previously crucial message now relegated to the ellipses of the manual is the importance of mothers staying at home. This issue probably introduces even more anxiety given the heightened tension over gender relations currently in the Church and the fact that much of his teachings concerning domestic life hinge on that point even if the manual rarely—if ever—includes a paragraph that explicitly admits it.