Benson Heads Mormons, Enlists 2 Key Moderates

Ezra Taft Benson, 86, a once outspoken national figure on the political right who has reportedly moderated with age, was formally named Monday as the new prophet-president of the 5.8-million-member Mormon Church.

Benson had been expected to succeed Spencer W. Kimball, who died last Tuesday at age 90, because the church’s Council of the Twelve Apostles has always elevated the man with the most seniority on the council. The only suspense Monday concerned whom Benson would name as his counselors or co-administrators.

Appearing briefly in a marble-columned hall of the Church Administration Building, Benson announced that his first counselor will be Gordon B. Hinckley, 75, and his second counselor Thomas S. Monson, 58, both regarded as moderates. Liberal Mormons said they had feared that Benson might name a theological-political conservative and return Hinckley to the council.

Hinckley, as second counselor to Kimball, conducted the daily church business when Kimball was seriously ailing during the last three years of his 12-year presidency. Monson, a Salt Lake City native, is chairman and president of the church-owned Deseret News Publishing Co.

John Carmack, who presides over the church’s affairs in California, predicted that Benson’s elevation would open up “a new era of action for the church.”

“The way I see it, you’ve got a man (Benson) who still has his mind, his judgment and he has two men who are very vigorous to help him,” Carmack said.

With more than 475,000 members in California, the Mormons are one of the state’s two largest non-Catholic denominations. The Southern Baptists have about the same membership in the state.

Carmack, reached by phone in San Jose, said that he and other Mormons have observed in private meetings “an evolutionary” change in Benson’s interests. “He is a man who has come to be totally committed to the gospel and spiritual matters,” he said.

In Eisenhower Cabinet

Benson, who served as secretary of agriculture from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was intermittently mentioned as a potential presidential candidate or running mate in the 1960s, and by fledgling right-wing third parties in the early 1970s. He at times expressed admiration for the John Birch Society and its anti-communist zeal.

Benson’s statements of recent years have been confined to religious doctrine, although as late as 1979 he warned church members that Americans must not tolerate “appeasement” of communism, a policy he said failed to prevent “the takeover of Nicaragua, the surrender of the Panama Canal” or infiltration of America by enemy agents.

In the same speech, he reminded Mormons that America is a holy land, according to Mormon doctrine: “Here is where Adam dwelt; where the Garden of Eden was located.” The church also believes that the resurrected Jesus preached in the Americas and that he will return someday and establish his temple in Missouri.

In a prepared statement Monday, Benson professed love for people “of every color, creed and political persuasion.” Noting the speculation about what direction the church will take, Benson enumerated only spiritual programs, especially three: “to preach the gospel, to perfect the saints (an abbreviated reference to Latter-day Saints, the Mormon term for church members) and to redeem the dead.” The latter reference was to temple ceremonies in which members offer baptism by proxy to ancestors who never had the opportunity to be Mormons.

Expression of Allegiance

While Benson’s statement Monday focused mainly on continuing mission work and support for the traditional family, he also professed love and allegiance to Jesus Christ and said he directs the worldwide Mormon Church. This might point toward a renewed effort to gain acceptance as a bona fide Christian church--despite the Mormons’ unique doctrines and the aggressive campaign of some conservative Protestant groups to label the church a cult.

In his address at the semiannual General Conference here last month, Benson focused on the idea that the Latter-day Saints share with orthodox Christianity the view that a believer must be “born again”--have a sincere change of heart--for salvation.

“The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people and then they take themselves out of the slums,” Benson said in words that could have been spoken by evangelist Billy Graham.

Benson’s elevation takes place at a time of heightened debate among Mormons about some details of the church’s early days. Recently recovered manuscripts, for example, suggest that the origins of the Book of Mormon, the church’s chief book of scripture, may have been described in folk magic terms by church founder Joseph Smith before religious imagery was used.

Warnings From Leaders

Some Mormon historians have discussed these and other research findings rather frankly, and have drawn warnings from the church hierarchy as a result. One church apostle has expressed the view that criticism of a past or present church leader should not be tolerated--even if it is true. Benson, however, has not been an outspoken critic of the intellectual dissenters.

The selection of the new Mormon leadership was made Sunday afternoon in an upper floor of the granite, six-spired Mormon Temple in downtown Salt Lake City.

It is believed that the private session proceeded much like it did at the last change of presidents. A former counselor in the First Presidency described in a church magazine six years ago what took place when Kimball was selected to succeed the late Harold B. Lee on Dec. 30, 1973.

“Dressed in the robes of the holy priesthood, we held a prayer circle,” wrote N. Eldon Tanner, since deceased. Kimball, as the senior apostle, asked each member in order of seniority if they wanted to organize the First Presidency at that time. Each member said yes, so Benson nominated Kimball to be the next president, the nomination was seconded and the choice was unanimously approved. Kimball then nominated Tanner as his first counselor and Marion G. Romney as his second counselor, and they were approved without dissent.

The Choice of God

In spite of the parliamentary procedure employed, Tanner emphasized that the choice was made by God and made known to the council through revelation.

The church was founded in 1830 by 24-year old Smith, who was killed 14 years later by a lynch mob. His successor, Brigham Young, seeking to escape further persecution for the practice of polygamy and other beliefs, soon led a large faction of Mormons from the Midwest to settle in Utah.

While Mormon leaders have on occasion been able to change some policies that have worked against the church’s acceptance in American society, they have never abandoned or even openly lamented the gerontocracy that results from their tradition--held to be God’s will--of promoting leaders strictly by seniority and giving their prophets life-time tenure. The average age of newly named prophets, including Benson, has been 76 1/2 years.

Benson was born Aug. 4, 1899, at Whitney, Idaho. He is the great-grandson of one of the original pioneers who entered the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young in 1847. He served a mission in Great Britain 1921-23, and earned college degrees at Brigham Young University and Iowa State.

Duties in Washington

Benson worked in various administrative capacities in agriculture during the late 1920s and 1930s before being appointed to be executive secretary of a national federation of farmers’ cooperatives in 1939 and moved to Washington.

When he was summoned as a Mormon apostle in 1943 he was in the midst of World War II service on an agricultural advisory committee to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the postwar period he headed the European mission of the church based in London.

After serving in the Eisenhower Cabinet he spent most of the 1960s supervising missionary work in Europe and Asia.