https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/70fg6g/til_that_between_1857_and_1858_there_was_a_war_in/dn3hcy2/

Would love to hear people's comments.

Part 1: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,247447,247447#msg-247447


Part 2: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,247447,2019206#msg-2019206


Part 3: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,247447,2019209#msg-2019209



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2017 07:54AM by steve benson.

Yes, that's all fine and interesting as far as ETB himself goes. But I was more interested in hearing the forum's comments on how Church leadership was more moderate and even liberal until Benson became a huge deal and to quote the reddit account:

"Ultimately the lessons the leadership seemed to have learned after years of political fights with Benson can be summed up as, no controversy, and no disagreement. New apostles were chosen for their ability to get along with the existing quorum. As long as Benson was there, that meant moderate to conservative apostles."

So, the takeaway is that ETB had ahuge effect on policy heard from the LDS pulpit, because - contrary to what one might think if one believed in "god appointed apostles" - the apostles filled their ranks with people unlikely to provoke ETB.

In other words, if not for ETB, Utah politics might today be far less Republican.

. . . who had him shuttled off to preside over the European mission during the 1964 presidential campaign of right-wing nut job Barry Goldwater. Fellow apostle Joseph Fielding Smith was glad to see him go, complaining privately that ETB needed to have his blood "purified," and get back to the business of being an apostle. For his part, and prodded by Brown, McKay managed to blunt ETB's efforts to radicalize the Utah Church with his rabid, John Birch-hugging, far-side-of-the-moon views.

When my grandfather eventually became president of the Mormon Church, he was effectively contained and controlled by his handlers and soon enough became too physically and mentally inoperative to do much harm.

Yeah, he certainly inflamed and encouraged his base of uber-conservative Mormon supporters in backwater Zion Central, but it could've been a lot worse had not cooler heads at the top prevailed.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1650743,1650751#msg-1650751

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1650743,1650743#msg-1650743



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2017 12:58AM by steve benson.