You have spoken much about your grandfather here in the past. I think he is the foremost GA who set in motion today's conservative position of the church. Have you ever considered or identified the factors that made ETB the fear-filled man (communism, blacks, Democrats) that he was? Did his rural Idaho upbringing with an absent father and judgmental mother cause him to be deeply insecure and fearful about his position in life?

people who disagree with communism are
deeply insecure and fearful about their positions in life?

Really? Would you consider that question appropriate in regards to your own grandfather.

I was told to worship and obey Steve's grandfather. He was a politician and an evangelical leader. He was allegedly a "profit of God". My grandfather was a miner. Not quite the same thing.

The lives of public figures are subject to public scrutiny. If not, they should stay out of limelight.

sometimes it takes Extreme Cases to highlight something that has a Factual basis...

People's choices ARE somewhat determined by prior experiences, aren't they?

What is the problem with the question? IF he was a man filled with fear of communism and blacks then he was. I did not know of the man until my daughter converted so I don't know. It was just a question. I would say my own grandfather feared communism. He was in WW1.

Seems like a very reasonable question to me. Now i'm curious what the answer will be...

I was raised in southern Idaho, there were plenty of "non members" as well as LDS who were uptight about communists at the time.

Evidence for that includes the following:

--Reed helped write ETB's speech, "Fourteen Fundamentals of Following the Prophet," in which ETB declared that God's Mormon prophet, seer and revelator had the power and authority to address any and all political issues--and who, in that process, was not required to preface his "prophetic" views with "thus saith the Lord" in order for them to carry official doctrinal weight. The controversy sparked by that speech resulted in the Mormon Church putting official distance between the speech and the institution of the Church.
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--Reed's wife, May Hinckley, provided the resources for and wrote another of ETB's famous sermons, "Beware of Pride," which was largely cribbed from the writings of Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, as found in Lewis's book, "Mere Christianity." May as the source of that sermon was directly confirmed to me by a member of the Benson family who was in a position to know. May later complained to me that all of her research on the topic of pride (about which she felt strongly and which she had eventually planned to publish in a book of her own) was taken by the Mormon Church for incorporation into ETB's "Pride" sermon. (The fact that she essentially wrote that sermon, however, was something I learned from another Benson source close to Reed and May).
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--Reed was a high-level official in the John Birch Society (who opened its Washington, D.C. chapter in the early 1960s). Reed espoused the view that Dwight Eisenhower (under whom my grandfather served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1952-60) was a least a dupe of the Communist's international conspiracy to control the world and perhaps, even worse, a knowing Communist agent in that conspiracy (This was a view strongly expressed by the JBS's founder Robert Welch, who my grandfather greatly admired).

Reed provided constant Bircher fodder, reading material, magazine subscriptions and books to my grandfather which premiered the Red Scare mindset, including the poisonous notion that the American Civil Rights movement was funded, supported and orchestrated by Kremlin-based Soviets--and that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was supposedly a tool of the Russian Communists to incite a nation-destroying race war within the borders of the United States. My grandfather's blatantly racist, anti-Black views reflected those found in JBS literature.

My grandfather, in personal correspondence to me, declared that, outside the Mormon Church, the JBS was the greatest tool fighting Communism in the world today.

Reed was part of the JBS move to honor ETB at a national JBS "God, Family and Country" rally, held in Boston in the early 1970s (As a teenager, I was invited to drive back to Boston with Reed and his family for that event).

Efforts were made (with ETB's blessing) to get Mormon Church President David O. McKay featured on the cover of the JBS's flagship magazine, "American Opinion," but were canceled when McKay found out and strongly objected.

ETB also claimed publicly that the Mormon Church supported the JBS, which greatly upset then-First Presidency counselor to McKay, Hugh B. Brown, and led to ETB retracting his claim.
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--Reed was a close, personal political confidant of ETB (much like Roy Cohn was to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare era of the 1950s).

Reed, in fact, accompanied ETB to Montgomery, Alabama in 1968 where, in the state mansion of then-Alabama governor George Wallace (an avowed segregationist and White supremacist), Wallace tried to persuade ETB to join him (Wallace) on the 1968 presidential ticket of Wallace's states'-rights American Party movement as his vice-presidential nominee. My grandfather (under Reed's influence, no doubt) was quite interested in the offer and only turned it down after then-LDS Church president McKay rejected a personal plea to McKay from Wallace asking McKay to allow ETB to join the ticket.
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Reed Amussen Benson--first child and oldest son of Ezra Taft Benson (whose first name eventually became my middle one, since he and I were born on the same day, January 2nd) had a profound and lasting influence on the life, times and political mind of his father, Ezra Taft Benson.

(Being born and raised in Mormon-populated, poliically conservative, overwhelmingly White and socially sequestered rural southern Idaho also didn't help, I'm sure).



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2011 05:01AM by steve benson.

I took his Book of Mormon class at BYU - not knowing anything about the John Birch Society at the time, I just thought he was an eccentric old man. He did bring in a strange dirt-flavored drink made from rare exotic plant roots which would supposedly prevent a person from ever getting cancer. Now I wonder, was it because of his age that he became so gullible, as I assumed at the time, or was he always that way?

Although, when you think about it, it's no less unbelievable than Joseph Smith talking into his hat.

He's do the routine for me upon request and it was pretty damn funny.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2011 01:12PM by steve benson.

very interesting!

Great post Steve and very informative.

Thanks for responding to the question and not being offended by it. I am a bit surprised that a father would be so swayed by the political opinions and activism of a son, but I will take your word for it.

To the posters offended by the question, opposing communism in and of itself is no fault. But ETB was more than an anti-communist - he was fearful of anything progressive. Nowhere near every white male of his generation was so fearful of liberal movements. Something drives the fear.

Another question for Steve: Reed and May Benson were active in the homeschool movement at the time. Can you comment on how their children turned out being isolated from mainstream thought?

Anagrammy

Those who bolted did so (at least to some extent and as far as I can observe or have been told) because of the strict home regimen imposed on them that denied them access to and enjoyment from many experiences typically available to their non-Benson youth peers.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2011 04:23PM by steve benson.

1) Thanks for asking.
2) Thanks for answering.

We are blessed/lucky/fortunate (you choose the word depending on your worldview) to have someone who can offer such insight and history into the upper echelons of Morgdom.

Gees Steve, I commned you for coming out with the truth about TSCC and your Birched grandfather.