Prosperity & Protest

Last week 8,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gathered in Salt Lake City's Mormon Tabernacle to commemorate the 137th anniversary of the founding of the largest and strongest made-in-America faith. As usual, church leaders presented impressive testimonials to the thriving success of Mormonism. Since 1940, membership in the church has more than tripled, to 2,600,000. Last year alone, the church gained 117,000 new members. Two-thirds of the new comers were converts netted by the 12,000Mormon missionaries who toil from New England to New Zealand.

Financially, the church is thriving too. The vast Mormon-owned business enterprises--ranging from Utah's largest department store to a 360,000-acre Florida cattle ranch--help produce an income that some church observers estimate at $1,000,000 per day. The exact total is a closely guarded church secret.

Updating Doctrine. Outwardly secure and successful, the unique religion created by Joseph Smith and carried to Utah by Brigham Young is nonetheless at a testing time. Much as in the churches of mainstream Christianity, Mormonism is being prodded out of its old ways by a new generation of believers who temper loyalty to the faith with a conviction that its doctrines need updating. Worried about the relevance of Mormonism, some of them are all but openly critical of the policies fostered by the church's venerable, conservative hierarchy, headed by President David O. McKay, 93, and his Council of the Twelve Apostles.

Latter-Day Saints can now question some of the church's peculiar disciplines without being stigmatized by their neighbors. Although the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking confirmed the Mormon conviction that tobacco is an evil, there is widespread feeling that the church should relax its ban on cof fee and tea. "A lot of good Mormons drink coffee now," says one Utah saint. "The church should not make its prohibition a commandment." Still another quaint tradition is the Mormons' use of "temple garments"--a torso-covering form of underclothing signifying their covenant with the Lord--which devout believers, both women and men, are expected to wear.

A more serious complaint is that Mormonism is too much concerned with the perfection of its own organization, too little with the problems of the world. J. D. Williams, a professor of political science at the University of Utah and a former member of a stake (diocese) high council, argues: "It's time that the church indicated its concern for more things than simply internal structure and processes." He notes that the Salt Lake City League of Women Voters, in a city that is 52% Mormon, is almost exclusively staffed by "Gentiles" (non-Mormons). Church members should devote more of their energies to politics and community service.

Un-Christian & Unsound. The doctrine most under fire within the church is the traditional teaching that Negroes, the cursed sons of Cain, are not eligible for the priesthood, which is open to males of every other race.when they reach the age of twelve. (Negroes, however, can join the church and are not excluded from the Mormon concept of heaven.) Williams calls it "unChristian and theologically unsound," says that the teaching "looks so anachronistic that it engenders hostility in the world around us."

Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, a Mormon who describes himself as "deeply troubled by the issue," says that the church's policy "is like granting citizenship and saying 'you can't hold office.'" The nation's best-known Mormon, Michigan Governor George Romney, has refrained from calling for a change in the doctrine, in deference to the authority of his church's elders. But Romney's own civil rights record is so impeccable that his percentage of Michigan's Negro vote has gone up in each of his three gubernatorial campaigns. Williams also believes that "the doctrine will be changed, and in my lifetime." The problem is that Mormon belief cannot be redefined by convention or popular vote but only by a direct revelation from God to the President, Prophet and Seer of the church. Although he insists that most Mormons are not prejudiced against Negroes, President McKay has declared that he sees no possibility of a new revelation on the teaching. McKay's probable successor, Joseph Fielding Smith, 90, president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, has also said that he thinks a new revelation unlikely to occur soon. Unwilling to create a church schism over the issue, many Mormon liberals are confident that the continuing pressure of the civil rights revolution will sooner or later provoke a new divine dispensation--just as changing social conditions and government pressure led eventually to a "revelation" in 1890 that Mormonism should abandon polygamy.

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