I am in the middle of reading a fascinating new book, “Presidents and Prophets” by Michael K. Winder, and I felt prompted to relay the story of the reaction of many Church leaders to FDR and the New Deal. It seems especially relevant when discussing political neutrality today.
I will quote directly from the book:
When FDR announced the New Deal, President Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark Jr., David O. McKay and other Church leaders became outspoken critics of what they felt was socialism.
12 April 1945: Roosevelt dies in office. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith writes, “there are some of us who have felt that it is really an act of providence.” President J. Reuben Clark Jr. quips, “The Lord gave the people of the United States four elections in order to get rid of him, that they failed to do so in these four elections, so He held an election of His own and cast one vote, and then took him away.”
(After FDR was elected on a platform that included the repeal of Prohibition), George Albert Smith scoffs, “The attitudes of the President of the United States and his wife toward the use of liquor has acted like an invitation to many heretofore temperate people to become guzzlers.”
Church President Heber J. Grant was vocal in his disapproval of the policies of the thirty-second President, especially after the death of his pro-Roosevelt first counselor, Anthony B. Ivins, in September 1934. He would often become upset when discussing FDR, and in one heated discussions slammed his cane on the desk of Franklin J. Murdock, shattering the glass desktop in his anti-Roosevelt fury. It comes as no surprise, then, that in the election of 1936, President Grant openly endorsed the Republican candidate for President, Alf Landon. However, he pointed out that he was speaking for himself and not for the Church…As the 1936 election drew near, an unsigned, front-page editorial in the Church-owned Deseret News accused FDR of knowingly promoting unconstitutional laws and advocating Communism…Former First Presidency member Marion G. Romney, a staunch Democrat committed to vote for Roosevelt, was deeply torn…After fasting and three hours of prayer Marion concluded that the editorial was inspired and given through the Lord’s prophet. He then reversed his political loyalties and labored to dissuade his friends from voting for Roosevelt.”
In 1940, the General Authorities once again drafted a joint anti-Roosevelt statement. Yet despite all of the anti-Roosevelt sentiment against FDR, he carried Utah all four times he ran, increasing his total each election, a result that left President Grant “dumbfounded.” President Grant regarded the support for FDR as “one of the most serious conditions that has confronted me since I became President of the Church.”
It is worth pointing out that several Church leaders, including Ivins, Stephen L. Richards, B.H. Roberts and Presiding Bishop Sylvester Q. Cannon generally supported FDR.
Given the concern about political neutrality in the Church these days, I found this historical information fascinating. Can you imagine the uproar if President Hinckley openly opposed a presidential candidate in the 2008 election? Leave aside the IRS issues, just imagine the controversy among Church members.
One other point: the book does not mention that FDR ever tried to make the Church leadership suffer for opposing him. FDR was known for his imperial tendencies, and I would have expected him to retaliate against the Church, but the book has no information on that. Most of the information on FDR’s relationship with the Church is positive, and he appointed several Latter-day Saints to federal posts.
What’s also interesting about this is that even though the president of the church was decidedly anti-FDR, the state continued to support him (FDR). Another contrary example for those who think that all Mormons (and who vocally think Mitt) are a bunch of political sheep.
I dunno. It’s a double-edged sword, I suppose.
I’m troubled by how quiet the Brethren are on so many important issues of the day. The fact that the Church was the only major religious body in the U.S. to say “no comment” on the Iraq invasion (all other churches were opposed to it, save the SBC, who supported it) leads me to believe that there was disagreement among the First Presidency and the Twelve on the issue, so, in deference to unity, they opted to not say anything.
It’s an interesting contrast to that earlier era, when the Brethren were much more vocal about such things. For example, after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, President J. Reuben Clark issued the following statement with the approval of the First Presidency:
An interesting contrast.
I think that such insights are fascinating from a historical perspective. I tend to not read into them extrapolations into modern politics, however, as prophets and apostles have spoken with equal or greater vitriol against political leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King as well.
Gee, Pres. Grant just had a rough time of it didn’t he?
Not only did his people totally not come through for him on the question of Prohibition, they disappointed him in choice of Presidential candidates too.
Someone really ought to look into what was going on there. Lots of interesting questions.
Given the concern about political neutrality in the Church these days, I found this historical information fascinating. Can you imagine the uproar if President Hinckley openly opposed a presidential candidate in the 2008 election?
Grant had a Utah-focused church and could even not influence the way Utah voted. Hinckley has a worldwide church and much trickier balancing act. The President who would be best for Americans might not be the President best for the worldwide church. Would Hinckley speak as an American or as the leader of the worldwide church? Whichever he voice he used would evoke consternation from those who think he should have used the other voice. (Even some who agreed with the content of his statement).
I don’t know, Lemming. There are many times I’d rather hear something passionate and opinionated from the prophet, rather than the routine watered-down, catered to everybody comments. In a lot of ways, a world-wide church is really boring. Sometimes I roll my eyes at the balancing act.
Although I sometimes think I would love to hear some “red meat” discussions by the Church leadership these days similar to Heber J. Grant’s attitude in the 1930s, I also understand the need for the international balancing act. I lived in Brazil during the 2003 Iraq invasion, and Brazilians were 90 percent opposed to the invasion. A Church that vocally supported the invasion (for example) would also be a Church that loses members, especially in Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. Although President Hinckley’s April 2003 conference talk can be read as supporting the invasion, he is careful to calibrate it with a need to respect opposing opinions. So, to sum up, I think President Hinckley’s attention to public relations and tact is exactly the right stance for these particular times.
Check the church activity rates in Utah for the 1930’s. I suspect based on my own research that they were around 30-35%. Putting a small minority of Utah residents firmly in the prophets camp. Not enough to swing the state at HJG insistence. Utah LDS are much more active now. Perhaps 60-65%. If HJG had these types of activity rates he may have been able to swing the state against both prohibition and FDR.
bbell,
I wonder if you have a different conception of what activity meant back then as compared to now. I think you could effectively not go to church and still consider yourself an active member back then. That is, the fact that 65% were not going to church would not necessarily mean that 65% of the people weren’t willing to follow HJG. Maybe you’ve already controlled for that in your studies, though.
As to the IRS: in the 1930’s most people did not pay income tax, and if charitable deductions were allowed (I don’t know when that became part of the IRC), only a very small number of donors to the Church would have been in a position to take advantage of the deduction.
As to the bombing of Hiroshima and Pres. J.R. Clark’s comments about it: this is a good example of why church leaders should stay clear of criticisms of specific government decisions. Except for the fact that it was one bomb that wiped out Hiroshima (as compared to the hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs that destroyed Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, etc. etc.) the horror of the slaughter of civilians in World War II certainly did not begin on August 6, 1945, and singling out that one horror misses the point. Second, given the history of battles from Tarawa to Peleliu to Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and in particular the high numbers of civilian casualties in Saipan and Okinawa (many of them “suicides” at the insistence of the Imperial Army), it is arguable that the total casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were substantially lower than the casualties that would have resulted from an Allied invasion of the home islands. The deaths of nearly two hundred thousand civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in fact a horror, but I believe a lesser horror than would have been caused by an Allied invasion.
Mark B, the IRS reference was to the Church’s tax-exempt status, which could theoretically be at risk by taken open political stances (such as endorsing a candidate in a Church-run newspaper).
Thank you for your good point on Hiroshima.
Mark,
Well said. Today’s church leaders have learned that lesson, but unfortunately, the damage is done.
Geoff,
I should have made myself more clear regarding the tax exempt status and consequences of its loss.
One consequence, the loss of deductibility of contributions by members, is the one I suggested would have had little impact in the 1930s and 40s.
Another, the taxation of church “income” would also likely have had little impact then, since the Church was likely not showing much income and therefore little tax would have been due.
The third would be the reporting requirements imposed upon it as a taxpayer. That would have required disclosure of church income and expenses and is something that the church now tries assiduously to avoid.
Exemption of church properties from taxation is generally a state law matter, and depends in general upon two issues: the nature of the entity owning the property and the use to which the property is to be put. States (or their municipalities) make those decisions independent of IRS recognition of tax exempt status.
Bbell, #12, that’s an interesting argument. What is the basis for your research?
Hey Geoff,
Its based on a study of historical LDS activity rates that I read a few months ago. Activity rates in Utah by modern standards were in the toilet from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. They started creeping up in the 1950’s and are really quite high right now by historical standards.
HGJ I believe simply lacked enough “real followers” as a percentage of Utah residents to fight the prevelance of new deal and anti-prohibition voters. Hinckley would have an easier time of it now. See the lottery voting as an example.
“As for whether or not FDR was imperial, I would just remind readers of packing the Supreme Court, unprecedented four terms as president, Japanese internment, strict censorship of the press and on and on”
Not very convincing really.
Packing the Supreme Court – what any President would do given the chance.
Unprecedented four terms as President – since there were no term limits back then I don’t see how getting voted into office four times makes you “imperial”.
Japanese Internment – one of the great injustices of the war, but it also happened in other countries, so it hardly sets FDR apart.
Censorship of the Press – continued long before and after FDR, so again, nothing new here.
It’s so strange to hear a Prophet say some of those things in the original post. It’s rude, and frankly makes me think Joseph Fielding Smith and J Reuben Clark are just a couple of jerks.
“Packing the Supreme Court – what any President would do given the chance.”
About thirty before him had the chance, some even during economic crises of similar nature. None took advantage of it. I’m not sure that that’s dispositive of the issue, but it’s certainly probative.
“Unprecedented four terms as President – since there were no term limits back then I don’t see how getting voted into office four times makes you ‘imperial’.”
Again, every president had had the opportunity to do the same; the reason no amendment existed before FDR was because it was more or less agreed following George Washington that no one should hold it for longer than two terms. As a result, it never came up before FDR. He may have not violated a law, but he certainly violated a norm.
Talon, you seem to have a real talent for missing the point. I am not criticizing FDR. He was a product of his times, just as Heber J. Grant ranting and raving about FDR was a product of his times. FDR was a great president. I probably would not have voted for him, but he was inarguably a great president and accomplished great things, most of them positive. My question is a very simple one: he also had a history of spying on his political opponents, keeping tabs on them and retaliating in one way or another (just like LBJ and Nixon in their times). I wonder if he ever did this in any way against the Church. If he didn’t, wonderful. But I’m guessing there is a big FBI file on Heber J. Grant somewhere that Hoover was asked to keep.
JJohnsen, your #21 points out yet again why it is a good idea for Church leaders to stay away from partisan politics.
And he slept with Lucy Mercer! (FDR, that is.)
Mark B. #14 & Dan #16:
I have heard that justification innumerable times. It does not make me feel any better about vaporizing over 200,000 people in an instant.
The United States remains the only nation to use nuclear weapons in wartime.
I agree with President Clark’s assessment.
I grew up in a Mormon Democratic home that extolled FDR, But this book by Amity Schlaes will give anyone pause before they say great and FDR in the same breath
http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depression/dp/0066211700/ref=sr_1_1/105-1108563-0994051?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174360701&sr=1-1&tag=ac03-20
Shlaes’s main point is that the depression was actually extended rather than mitigated by Roosevelt’s (and Hoover’s) policies. But her interpretation of the evidence is very one-sided. From a review by Benjamin Friedman (not available online):
“Shlaes also undercuts her substantive argument with her relentless personal denigration of Roosevelt. In contrast to steadfast figures like Andrew Mellon and Calvin Coolidge (not, however, Hoover), whose commitment to the private sector she describes as a reflection of “strength of character,” Roosevelt, in Shlaes’s view, only made decisions for political advantage, or revenge. His policies, grounded in “cynicism,” were “devastating.” His “playfulness” was “destructive.” His campaigns were “hate campaigns.” Never, in Shlaes’s account, did Roosevelt adopt a policy because he thought it good for the country. Indeed, the only positive adjective applied to Roosevelt here is “respectful”; but tellingly, what Roosevelt is respectful of , as a canny political pro, is the potential vote-getting appeal of his opponent Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election.”
What is sometimes not sufficiently taken into account is the worldwide nature of the depression. For all of Roosevelt’s imperial tendencies and his demagoguery, he did save the US from a worse kind of demagoguery of the Huey Long variety, or a more sinister turn toward fascism. We have to remember that when he came into office the unemployment rate was 32 per cent and despair was deepening. We can argue about his reforms, but it’s hard to see how some relief and recovery were not necessary.
On the Mormon angle, FDR brought in Marriner Eccles to help draft the Emergency Banking Act, the Federal Housing Act, and the act creating the FDIC. He then served seventeen years as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Mike (26)
Actually, it was two instants: August 6 in Hiroshima and August 9 in Nagasaki. But that’s irrelevant.
So is the number of bombs and the amount of time it took to slaughter those people.
War is hellish awful, and the 2nd World War was more hellish awful than perhaps any other war. And the killing of non-combatants is horrible–but the Germans, the British, the Americans, the Soviets, the Japanese had all crossed that line so long before August, 1945, that one more city destroyed and one or ten thousand or one hundred thousand civilians killed didn’t weigh very heavily in the balance.
And I am glad the war ended when it did (and we could argue for years about whether the Japanese would have quit without the bombing and without an invasion–but I won’t), because there was a young infantryman named Neal Maxwell in Okinawa who had managed to survive that horror, but the odds on his surviving the next invasion would have been low, and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss his contribution to the kingdom.
And there was on the other side of the world another young infantryman at a staging area just north of Marseille. His unit was responsible for operating the base, where Army units from Europe were gathered, refitted and prepared for shipping to Asia. When the last of those had gone through, his would have shut down the base and followed the rest to Japan. I’m glad, frankly, that my dad didn’t have to take that trip.
Call me selfish or heartless, but in August 1945 I can’t think of one more American who should have died rather than the U.S. using whatever weapon it had in its arsenal to bring the war to a speedy end.
Finally, if you want to point out the peculiar horrors of the atomic bomb, being vaporized in an instant surely is not one of them. For those people, death was mercifully quick. No running from the flames, no agonizing long death from fire or injury or radiation sickness.
Perhaps we must admit that our own reed Smoot and his DSmoot Hawley tarriff was also a factor in the worlwide depression– adepression that would have ennded sooner but for that snake FDR.
In reply to Mark B, above. My father, was in the 100th Division, in Europe, which had been activated to be sent to Japan. But was not after the Japanese surrender. The Japanese did not surrender because of the atom bombs. The Japanese leaders didn’t care about their people. They cared about power. They surrendered because of the threat of Soviet invasion. The Soviets had already invaded and occupied the entire Sakhalin island and Kuril islands.
The Soviets, cowardly and finally declared War on Japan in Aug 1945 after the US had weakened them. The Soviets had a “peace” treaty with Japan so as not to have an “eastern front” while fighting the Germans on their west. The Japanese knew it would be better to surrender to the more merciful Americans than to the vindicative god-less Soviets.
Also look up “Day of Deceit” by Robert Stinnett:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743201299/theindepeende-20
Stinnett, through the Freedom of Information Act, discovered FDR knew in advance about Pearl Harbor, deliberately sending the US Navy there from San Diego, in harm’s way, to provoke and encourage the Japanese to attack – all as an excuse to get the US into the War. He made upper echelon Military Leaders scapegoats for the attack.
All because FDR, a liar, campaigned against getting involved in the war while running for President.
And it was Truman, a Democrat, who made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
It’s also a proven fallacy that FDR saved the US from The Great Depression. FDR’s economic policies prolonged the depression by subsidizing failing companies to continue operating at a loss.
If you believe such programs such as the NRA (National Recovery Administraton – later declared unconstitional), AAA, CCC, WPA, etc. etc., etc.,
(http://www.angelfire.com/oh4/newdeal/) employed “millions” of Americans, then you’ve been deceived.
Steve, there is a lot of historical dispute about whether FDR deliberately tried to draw the U.S. into the war, but it is beyond dispute that FDR and many “elite” Republicans thought it was necessary to try to change the minds of an isolationist public. Many people see FDR (and people like Willkie) as heroes for doing this. For a discussion on Day of Deceit, please see the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Deceit
Note that this subject is still very controversial.
By the way, I believe it is beyond dispute that FDR’s many economic experiments of the 1930s did NOT bring us out of the Depression, and in fact leader members of the Roosevelt administration were lamenting by 1940 that none of their economic machinations seemed to work. The only thing that did work was an embrace of private enterprise in 1941 as FDR began to prepare for the war. Meanwhile, public debt soared, and debt levels only became acceptable again in the late-1940s.
I consider many of President Grants comments on FDR’s policies to be quite enlightening. For one thing, many of the New Deal policies such as the IRA and AAA made the economic situation worse (there is the strong agreement of modern economics on this). These policies had the deliberate goal of suppressing production in order to increase prices to fight deflation. Never mind that money is merely a measure of wealth and that by destroying productivity FDR was destroying actual wealth and making the country poorer as a whole.
Furthermore Grant was famous for his strident opposition to Social Security. Warning from the pulpit in general conference that the taxes would start out small, but that they would be greatly increased as time wore on, that the monies raised from these taxes would not be saved to pay out benefits to future beneficiaries, that instead they would be diverted to the general fund to support waste, graft and corruption, and that finally the entire system would become bankrupt and unable to meet it’s obligations thereby dragging the entire nation into crippling debt.
??????
Yeah. Any time I talk to a member of the church about Social Security and I tell them about Grant’s opposition they are always surprised… and then become rather glum. Usually mumbling “maybe we should have listened to him”.
As for Clark’s opposition to the nuclear bomb, don’t forget that Clark was one of the last great America pacifists. Greatly effected by WWI, he came to view war as a great evil, and opposed FDRs attempts to involve us in WWII before the Japanese attack.
Cicero, excellent points. Thanks for coming back from the dead to comment.
My understanding of why HJG could not influence Utah on both Prohibition and FDR is that activity rates were about half what they are now in Utah. Perhaps 20-25% of the utah state population could be considered active LDS from about 1900 to about 1950. After 1950 activity rates really went up in Utah and they are currently quite high by historical standards giving the current prophet much more influence over things. See votes on the lottery for example.
“Furthermore Grant was famous for his strident opposition to Social Security. Warning from the pulpit in general conference that the taxes would start out small, but that they would be greatly increased as time wore on, that the monies raised from these taxes would not be saved to pay out benefits to future beneficiaries, that instead they would be diverted to the general fund to support waste, graft and corruption, and that finally the entire system would become bankrupt and unable to meet it’s obligations thereby dragging the entire nation into crippling debt.”
Cicero can you send me any conference talks that President Grant gave relating to this?
dmotola87@gmail.com
Someone above wrote:
“I think that such insights are fascinating from a historical perspective. I tend to not read into them extrapolations into modern politics, however..”
Oh really. Especially since President Heber J. Grant extrapolated by stating (per the quote in this thread):
“..as time wore on, that the monies raised from these taxes would not be saved to pay out benefits to future beneficiaries, that instead they would be diverted to the general fund to support waste, graft and corruption, and that finally the entire system would become bankrupt and unable to meet it’s obligations thereby dragging the entire nation into crippling debt.”
“As time wears on” is not extrapolating?
The fact that the Saints did not vote as they were directed by the First Presidency is a huge factor in the horrible conditions facing our nation today. The Saints were given the responsibility of preserving freedom and they failed in that holy calling.