Mormon Church picks 13th leader

Press, 13 November 1985, Page 8

Mormon Church picks 13th leader

By VERN ANDERSON, of the Associated Press (through NZPA) Salt Lake City Ezra Taft Benson, the new head of the Mormon Church, faces challenges as imposing as the faith’s phenomenal growth. He will also be the most controversial Mormon to be elected as leader this century. Not the least of these challenges is Mr Benson’s own reputation as a dogmatic churchman, rabid anti-Communist and Rightwing true believer with more than a passing flirtation with the John Birch Society, an anti-Communist movement formed in the United States in 1958, which has been often criticised for the methods it urges to fight Communism. “I think it is going to represent a great leap toward political and religious fundamentalism, and I think it’s going to be a period of great schism and sadness in the Mormon Church,” said J. D. Williams, a Mormon political science professor, of Mr Benson’s impending presidency. But others, including Mr Benson’s family, do not share the alarm of some Mormon liberals that the former United States Agriculture Secretary wilt try to make over the Church in his own arch-conservative image. Their view, and that of former colleagues in the Department of Agriculture, is one of a kindly, sensitive, spiritual giant devoted to his wife and six children and to his ecclesiastical mission.

But they also say that Mr Benson always speaks his mind.

Mr Benson, aged 86, is thirteenth Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He succeeds Spencer Kimball, aged 90, who died on November 6 from the infirmities of age.

Mr Kimball and all predecessors back to Brigham Young were, like Mr Benson, the president and most senior member of the Council of the Twelve.

That body met in the Salt Lake Temple on Monday to choose the man Mormons believe is the Earthly agent for Jesus Christ and whose pronouncements carry the weight of divine revelation.

The announcement of their decision was made yesterday.

The dark view of a Benson presidency held by Professor Williams and others is based on a history of provocative statements and actions, including Mr Benson’s active support for the John Birch Society in the 1960 s when his son, Reed, was the society’s Utah coordinator.

For example: • “The Birch society,” Mr Benson once said, “is probably the most effective non-church group .... in the fight against galloping socialism and godless communism.”

© “It is well-nigh impossible for a Mormon, if he really understands the doctrine, to be both a good church member and a liberal Democrat,” he told an Associated Press reporter in 1974.

• In 1980, he informed an audience at Church-owned Brigham Young University that those who would remove prophets from politics would take God out of Government.

© In another speech at the university Mr Benson said that the words of a living prophet should take precedence over those of a dead one on a whole range of non-religious issues. @ “You are the provider, and it takes the edge off your manliness when you have the mother of your children also be a provider,” Mr Benson told male students at Brigham Young University. His long history of theological dogmatism and penchant for mixing politics with religion have many church intellectuals convinced that Mr Benson, as Professor Williams put it, “has been enormously anxious for this office and the opportunity to translate his ultra-conservative views into Church doctrine.” “I see him as the leader of the moral majority in

Mormonism and his hour of opportunity has arrived,” he said.

Unlike Professor Williams, a Mormon philosopher, Sterling McMurrin, sees no real cause for concern about a Benson administration.

The leadership, he said, must concern' itself with problems created by a doubling of membership since 1970 to 5.8 million, much of it in Third World cultures vastly different from the country that spawned Mormonism 155 years ago in upstate New York.

,“My own impression is that he’s mellowed out quite

a bit,” Mr McMurrin said. “And I think the office will have a very real (moderating) effect on him.” A Benson grandson, the syndicated editorial cartoonist, Steve Benson, of the “Arizona Republic,” believes his grandfather already has tempered somewhat, and as president, will disarm his critics.

“He’s a very humble man,” he said. As evidence, he cites Mr Benson’s avoidance, because he is a high Church official, of becoming officially linked to the Birch Society, even though there is certainly some commonality there.

“That is particularly true of Benson’s view of the U.S. Constitution as a divine document and Communism as an evil conspiracy and the single greatest threat to freedom and religion,” he said.

A Former Agriculture Secretary, Earl Butz, served three years as an Assistant Secretary to Mr Benson during his eight-year stint in the Cabinet of Dwight Eisenhower in the 19505. Mr Butz describes his old boss as a man who was not very adept politically because he would not compromise deeply held beliefs, but who always had the ear

and confidence of the President.

“He was a principled man. He was a clergyman. And he heard a different drummer from the one the politicians on the hill would hear,” recalled Don Paarlberg, an assistant secretary to Mr Benson. “And they at times would sail past each other.”

Nevertheless, Mr Paarlberg gives Mr Benson high marks as a tireless administrator who cared deeply for his employees, once successfully counselling a man to face a drinking problem that threatened his job.

Some observers before the election believe that the

tone of a Benson presidency would be coloured by the men he chose as his . two counsellors in the governing first presidency, i and whether Gordon Hinckley was one of them.

Mr Hinckley, aged 75, and a relative moderate in the conservative Church hierarchy, was a counsellor to the enfeebled Mr Kimball and effectively ran ■ the Church in his stead in recent years. . \ ' “He’s a moderate, decent, capable administrator and leader,” Mr McMurrin said of Mr Hinckley. “So I think a good deal of what happens will depend on whether he remains there.”