A Historical Caveat
My heart really goes out to President Kimball…and all the other apostles who had to serve the Lord through the Sixties.
That was a mighty squirrelly time. To say the least. And that was why President Kimball’s talk – Voices of thePast, of the Present, of the Future – and many of his other talks, fought back so hard against what was going on at the time.
A lot of what happened then went against the grain of the gospel, yet at the same time, President Kimball was the one who presided over the Church and ushered in the Proclamation on the Priesthood, that made it so all worthy young men could be priesthood holders and people of all races could benefit.
Civil rights changes were a very good thing, and acceptance of people of different races being together and working together. All that must be remembered when I go back and read talks like this. It’s worth learning about, and for a deeper understanding, I recommend the Saints books. A very detailed history of what happened in our church at that time, and what they were going through. They’re free online to anyone who’s interested, and they’re very good. Volume 4 in particular covers the 60s.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers; the Church provides some, but history is complicated. We tend to want to excessively simplify with history…to either gloss it over, or to look at it and say, ‘Just burn it up and start over. Everything historical was racist and horrible.’ Both approaches are wrong-headed in my eyes. Just as in life, we need a middle mindset to understand what happened, so that we can benefit from it today.
To anyone who reads these older talks, please remember that. The words were different and can sound offensive to our ears today sometimes; the beliefs were different because history we take for granted – current knowledge and revelation we take for granted – hadn’t happened yet.
Everyone in the whole world knew so little about sex and their own bodies then – honestly, even now, a lot of people still struggle with a lot of ignorance in that area, even though we have more information and more access to it. Also, our knowledge and understanding of those who have same-sex attraction and their struggles was nearly nonexistent and very misunderstood back in this time.
And With That, I Give You…Time Magazine!
Did you know that Time Magazine has an online archive of a lot of their back issues? It’s called Time Magazine Vault. I just found that out and found the original article that went with this quote.
“Many churchmen are reluctant to give a definite yes or no to marijuana.” “It depends upon circumstances.” (Time, August 16, 1968.)
These were two separate statements given in the same article – in the magazine with the cover of Richard Nixon and his GOP running mate on the cover. Inside was even more interesting – just looking through the ads and other articles on my way to finding the section I was looking for was an experience. It’s such a time-travel experience.
The quotes come from page 64 of the magazine, in a section entitled ‘Churches’. No doubt President Kimball’s eye was caught when he read the full quote:
“Many churchmen are reluctant to give a definite yes or no to marijuana, on the grounds that the medical evidence as to its harmfulness is incomplete.”
The other quote states, “On the other hand, Dr. Joseph F. Fletcher of Massachusetts’ Episcopal Theological School, the nation’s leading exponent of situation ethics, argues that ‘the morality of pot depends on circumstances…”
President Kimball gave a good snort to the idea of situation ethics in his talk. Reading the original quote, I had a pretty good laugh thinking about it.
Anyone who knows our history knows that current medical and scientific considerations don’t count into apostles’ revelation for the Church one iota. I realize this may sound strange to my friends who aren’t of my faith – they ought to, right? We want to be healthy and follow good science, right?
We do (want to follow science whenever possible), but they (prophets and apostles receiving revelation from God) don’t consider that first. They never have. First comes the revelation, THEN comes the science. Always.
Our health code, the Word of Wisdom, which prohibits all smoking and alcohol consumption, was first given in 1833, only three years after we became a church in the first place. People in and out of the church were scratching their heads over that one at the time – what’s wrong with smoking? Everyone smokes. The alcohol is safer to drink than water – what’s wrong with alcohol?
The Surgeon General (the nation’s highest medical authority) didn’t say one word about smoking alone being bad for people until 1964! Over a hundred years later!
Hence President Kimball’s snort: “They have developed ‘situation ethics’, which seem to cover all sins.”
He made situation ethics sound like a disease when he said it like this. We in our church do love our black-and-white lines. That’s part of who we are. In some areas of life, anyway. The Word of Wisdom and the law of chastity are a couple of those areas. If we want to be able to do temple work, they're a firm requirement.
Does that mean we hate people who smoke or drink or have sex outside of heterosexual marriage or shun them? Heavens no!
We don’t shun. We’ll tell people (inside and outside the Church) to repent all day long, but we’ll still talk to you and invite you to our parties loaded with carbs and sugar and pray over them, asking the Lord to make them healthy for all of us. Because we love you. And we love sugar. And we really want it to be healthy even though it's not, because that’s all we have left to us after the alcohol, smoking, and coffee all goes away.
We’re human. Commandments are hard. They’re supposed to be hard. And the Lord tells us all the time to repent, every day. And we all do our best.
We love our Episcopal friends to no end, as well as those of any other faith or even no faith. But in a lot of cases, situational ethics do not exist in the dojo of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
