ONE FINE DAY IN 1990 RAY BECKHAM, WORKING IN THE PUBLIC RELATIONS office at Brigham Young University, received a mysterious call from church headquarters. Phone home and tell your wife you will be gone for three days and come right now, as you are, he was told. Beckham’s wife was provided with no information about where he was headed or why. He was given blind instructions to drive eighty miles into the desert.
With no knowledge of his destination or of what lay behind the orders, Beckham obediently followed church instructions. At his destination he found 150 or so men, women, and children milling about. It turned out to be a secret mock disaster exercise, one of five such unpublicized projects under Presiding Bishop Victor Brown, carried out to determine survival needs under different conditions.
In this exercise, Beckham, as the top-ranking church officer on the scene, quickly took charge. At the time he was a regional representative responsible for about ten stakes. At the “disaster” site a meeting was held with the “survivors,” who were divided into teams to lay out a tent camp and assigned other duties such as cooking. With shortwave radio contact provided, helicopters dropped in equipment: generators, tents, blankets, food and water, a portable camp kitchen.
Sunday was set aside for questioning. A team of twenty interviewers came in to interrogate each participant privately while camp was being torn down. The intent was to try to develop emergency pods for storage in different worldwide locations for use in disasters. These self-sufficient units were to have enough equipment and supplies to last three days, since outside help would probably arrive by then. Different pods were to be developed from exercises carried out to simulate such conditions as severe winter weather, earthquake, and floods.
Beckham did not know what use was made of the information developed from these exercises, but the survivalism behind such projects remains a part of Mormon culture, though muted. It lingers both as an expression of millenarianism, the scriptural belief that turbulent times will precede Christ’s return, and in memories of pioneer privation. There is in Mormonism always something of Scarlett O’Hara’s famous vow in Tara’s radish patch when she railed at the heavens, “As God is my witness…I’m going to live through this, and when it’s over, I’m never going to be hungry again.”
The most obvious at-home expression of this prudent attitude toward providence is the church admonition that every family is to store a year’s worth of food supplies. The idea is not to store everything a family might actually eat in a normal year but to store enough dried or preserved commodities to survive a year of privation. Hence the stress on canning, dried milk, and grain storage.
Some Mormons today are embarrassed about the food storage practice, aware that it strikes outsiders as, well, a bit peculiar. But Ensign frequently prints advisories on the topic. There are standard church publications to guide storage principles worldwide (Essentials of Home Production and Storage, manual, 1978, item no. 32288; and Providing in the Lord’s Way, manual, 1991, item no. 32296). The faithful are advised that in some parts of the world taro or manioc, for example, can replace cereal grains. In certain areas keeping live animals might be appropriate. Survival list supplies in a Deseret Book catalog include a hand crank radio and flashlight, and such book titles as Don’t Get Caught with Your Pantry Down, the Emergency-Disaster Survival Guidebook, Food Storage Planner, and A Year’s Supply.
A September 1997 Ensign piece reprinted Ezra Taft Benson’s 1974 words reminding the Saints: “For the righteous the gospel provides a warning before a calamity, a program for the crises, a refuge for each disaster…. The Lord has warned us of famines,” he continued, “but the righteous will have listened to prophets and stored at least a year’s supply of survival food.”
Due to Mormons’ traditional apocalyptic edginess, Utah has a goodly number of businesses based on survival merchandise. Saints can buy 72-hour emergency survival kits and 3,600-calorie food bars from Deseret Book stores by mail order as well as in person. This People, an upscale, glossy, independent, conservative Mormon quarterly, ran a full-page ad in its Fall 1998 issue trumpeting, “What Will You Do When Money Can’t Buy Food?” Perma Pak of Salt Lake City promised immediate delivery (“While the supply lasts!”) of top-quality, low-moisture foods. (“DON’T TAKE CHANCES. Fix the cost of food TODAY!”) Companies like Perma Pak and Emergency Essentials process non-Mormon as well as Mormon orders for such merchandise as fifty-five-gallon water barrels, one-hundred-hour candles, forty-pound bags of grain, and food packed in large rust-proof cans.
Mormon children are accustomed to growing up with closet and basement shelves dedicated to survival materials and stored food items, regularly rotated. Young adults get practical advice in the institute manual Achieving a Celestial Marriage in a lesson on “Family Preparedness.” Reminding Saints of biblical warnings about famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, the manual admonishes that preparedness should include fuel, clothing, and a two-week supply of water as well as food.
How does a young family get started with all this? The manual offers these practical suggestions: buy extra work and cold-weather clothes and bolts of cloth and leather; find someone in your area who sells grain in bulk and buy a ton or so; set aside 25 to 50 percent of your normal Christmas budget to begin your storage program; mend old clothes and furniture and spend the cash saved on storage essentials; forego a vacation one year and put the money into emergency supplies; buy sugar and salt by the case; save a year’s supply of seeds to plant a garden.
The survivalist emphasis is unique to Mormonism, but some other aspects of the demanding lifestyle resemble Protestant Evangelicalism, especially the emphasis on chastity and on abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, as well as drug and substance abuse, as required by the Word of Wisdom, an 1833 revelation given to Joseph Smith and enshrined in D&C 89. (Word of Wisdom observance, along with the tithe, is required for a temple recommend.) Mormonism, unlike other religions, added caffeine to the list of prohibited substances.
It is a healthy lifestyle. Various studies show that, on average, Mormons live eight to eleven years longer than other Americans. A 1997 UCLA study showed their death rates from cancer and cardiovascular diseases to be about half those of the general population. The strong emphasis on chastity also lowers their risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. This study, carried out on adult, active priesthood holders in California, indicated that these persons experience only 16 percent of the deaths normally expected from smoking-related cancers and only 6 percent of the deaths expected from emphysema, asthma, ulcers, cirrhosis of the liver, homicide, and suicide. Some of the results probably relate to the fact that Mormons have a strong emotional and practical support network in their family and church community. Indeed, studies show similar results for devout members of other churches, such as the health-conscious Seventh-day Adventists, who have accumulated a particularly impressive array of data on themselves.
The Word of Wisdom specifically counsels against “wine or strong drink”; tobacco, as it is “not for the body, neither for the belly,” though acceptable as an herb for sick cattle; and hot drinks, later defined as coffee and tea. (Cold caffeinated drinks, such as colas, were added later.) Despite the strict prohibition on alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, the counsel of verses 12 and 13 in the Word of Wisdom is largely ignored: “Yea, flesh also of beasts and of fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.” Mormons, in contrast to Seventh-day Adventists, have no vegetarian tradition.
That the Word of Wisdom was not consistently applied as church law throughout Mormon history has been a somewhat touchy subject in church headquarters. Just how touchy was discovered by the late Leonard J. Arrington, official church historian from 1972 to 1982. Widely regarded as a distinguished scholar by Mormons and non-Mormons alike after the 1958 Harvard University Press publication of his Great Basin Kingdom, Arrington suffered his first snarl the following year on home turf. That year he wrote a piece for BYU Studies in which he noted that early Mormons regarded the Word as guidance rather than law.
In that article, Arrington quoted from an 1861 speech by the colorful Brigham Young, who took note that “many of the brethren chew tobacco” and ended with these instructions: “We request all addicted to this practice, to omit it while in this house [the tabernacle]. Elders of Israel, if you must chew tobacco, omit it while in meeting, and when you leave, you can take a double portion, if you wish to.” The quote was accurate enough; that was not the problem. The problem, as Arrington observed, was that the “quote was better forgotten. I should have learned a lesson from this.” BYU Studies learned its lesson. Publication was suspended for a year.
A later tangle over the Word of Wisdom history occurred in 1974 with the appearance of Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons, edited by Dean Jessee and published by the church’s own Deseret Book Company. This was the first completed project of the new church history department as organized under Arrington. The letters, generally appealing expressions of warm fatherly concern, included a letter to Brigham Jr. (later one of the Twelve), suggesting that the son stop using tobacco. Boyd K. Packer, probably the most outspoken and conservative member of the present-day Quorum of Twelve, objected. Strenuously. It appeared that Packer wanted future history department projects to be run past the church’s Correlation Committee before publication (see Chapters 14 and 15 for more on this committee).
In real life, history is a bit messy. There is evidence that Joseph Smith himself liked a nip every now and then, especially at weddings. But in 1836 he acceded to the temperance preferences of his colleague Sidney Rigdon and substituted water for wine as the beverage used in the sacrament of communion. (This tradition continued even after pasteurized grape juice was invented and swept much of the Protestant marketplace.) Still, Smith’s own Mansion House, which operated a hotel, maintained a fully stocked barroom, and Nauvoo also had a brewery that advertised in the church newspaper, the Nauvoo Neighbor. According to the writings of Smith’s fellow prisoner John Taylor, later the church’s third president, the prophet requested and drank wine at Carthage Jail the night before he was murdered in 1844.
The church’s own quasi-official Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which appeared in 1992—nearly two decades after Letters and other publications outside the church had made these issues more a matter of public domain—now interprets the original revelation as “counsel or advice rather than as a binding commandment.” It dates the abstinence requirements for a temple recommend as beginning in 1930. (For more about the church’s ideas on how history should be written, see Chapter 15.)
The other famous Mormon lifestyle commitment that has also varied throughout church history is the tithe. The tithe, defined as a biblical 10 percent of income, amounts to a compulsory head tax for the faithful member. Failure to tithe does not result in excommunication, but without it a Saint cannot hold major church office or employment and will not receive a temple recommend card.
Most devout Mormons define the 10 percent in terms of gross, not net, income, though this is not a matter of church law. Children are taught the tithing principle from an early age. If they receive an allowance of ten quarters, they are taught to set aside one quarter to give to the church. They also learn early of two major responsibilities in addition to the tithe: the fast offering, money given in lieu of two meals the first Sunday of each month, to be used for welfare and humanitarian purposes; and the savings account they are to establish to finance their own missions.
Church authorities from the top down regularly stress tithing in conference and stake talks, and church publications such as Ensign print exhortations about the responsibility to tithe as well as inspirational pieces on the blessings of tithing. Sometimes there is unofficial discussion in places like Sunstone about sticky issues and special cases. Should a family’s support of a missionary count toward tithing? Should non-cash job benefits be computed as part of the tithe? Must one estimate the value of non-cash gifts as part of his cash tithe? Is it fair for two families of the same income to be required to pay the same tithe if one family also has huge medical expenses? Are pensions or inheritances to be tithed?
A tithing “settlement” is held at the end of each year with the bishop, and the entire family is required to attend. Families do not display their 1040s at the annual tithe settlement. At this meeting, members are told privately what they have donated during the year and then asked two questions: whether they wish to submit extra donations, and whether they are full tithe payers. Normally the conversation ends at that point, left to the member’s own conscience.
However, that does not mean the church is casual about its tithe-collecting activities, as Steven Epperson discovered when his career as a BYU assistant professor of history was terminated in 1997. There were several issues in the Epperson case, but it appears likely that he was the first publicly known casualty of BYU President Merrill Bateman’s 1996 announcement that all church members employed by the university were required to have ecclesiastical endorsements that certify temple recommends. Bateman maintained that temple worthiness was always the standard for BYU employment, though previously it was not formally codified and strictly enforced. At the time Epperson had been paying fast offerings but not tithes because his wife was starting a nonprofit children’s music conservatory and family finances temporarily were unusually tight. In early 1996 his bishop refused to certify his temple recommend. Epperson offered to reestablish his tithe-paying after the music school’s summer camp in July, when the family’s cash flow would ease, but this did not satisfy his bishop. In October Epperson was notified that his teaching contract would not be extended beyond the current school year.
The tithe and welfare systems amount to a compromise of the church’s original ideal: communal equality. In the early Ohio years the “Law of Consecration” was supposed to mean that members deeded their possessions to the church and received their needs in common, holding lands and businesses in stewardship for the church. That didn’t work well. In Nauvoo this principle was revised: church members were expected to give one-tenth of all their possessions to the church, then one-tenth of their annual “increase” as well. Persons with no property were expected to tithe their time and work for the church one day in ten. In Nauvoo this work was often devoted to construction on the temple.
In the early Utah decades tithing was often paid “in kind,” including produce, grain, and livestock. Cash tithes might be paid in U.S. currency, scrip, or gold dust. Mormon institutions were also expected to pay a 10 percent tithe on their earnings. Complicated in-kind tithes, combined with necessary community and welfare needs, sometimes expressed what was something of a barter economy. A Saint might turn up at the tithing office with a cow in tow and get clothes and scrip in change.
Brigham Young was concerned that in practice tithing “surplus” was often nothing more valuable than animals ready for the glue factory: “Some were disposed to do right with their surplus property, and once in a while you would find a man who had a cow which he considered surplus but generally she was of the class that would kick a person’s hat off, or eyes out, or the wolves had eaten off her teats. You would once in a while find a man who had a horse that he considered surplus, but at the same time he had the ring-bone, was broken-winded, spavined in both legs, and had the pole evil at one end of the neck and a fistula at the other, and both knees sprung.”
In-kind tithes were not abolished until 1908, by which time Utah’s commerce had clearly merged with the nation’s and maintained no pretense of being the self-sufficient economy of a theocratic enclave within the United States. Today, of course, tithing continues as a necessary standard for members in good standing.
Mormon generosity was evident in a Chronicle of Philanthropy analysis of 1997 tax data for households of $50,000 income and up. The Salt Lake City-Ogden metropolitan region ranked first in charitable giving, with those who itemized contributing nearly 15 percent of “discretionary income” after exclusion of basic living costs and taxes to church or charity. The runner-up was Michigan’s devoutly Protestant Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland region. And fourteen Utah and Idaho counties were ranked in the top twenty. On the other hand, United Way reported Utah number forty-eight among the states in per capita giving to secular charities.
More intimate and unusual than tithing, one very personal aspect of Mormon life is the wearing of temple garments. Some religious material items in other faiths are meant to be on view to the public as well as to remind the wearer of religious commitment. For centuries Christians have worn crosses of many kinds. Evangelical Protestant teenagers promoted a fad of wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?), a parallel to the fashion among Mormon youngsters for wearing a ring with CTR (Choose the Right) as a visible reminder of piety. Special religious clothes are found in other religions, of course: Orthodox Jews wear their yarmulkes and fringed tzitzit; Mennonite women wear their little white prayer caps. Mormons wear sacred underwear.
These temple garments are different from other religious-wear items. The Saint wears them next to the skin, unseen by the outside observer. They are bestowed on the day of one’s endowment ceremony at the temple, usually as a young adult, and are to be worn at all times thereafter. Originally they were like coverall union suits; gradually they became skimpier in deference to modern fashion, though the women’s version (scoop neck, cap sleeves, bloomer-length panties) requires, fairly modest outer clothes. They can be removed as necessary for participation in sports. When they are worn out, the sacred insignias are supposed to be cut off for ritual disposal, and what is left is considered an ordinary rag.
The meaning of the garments varies from wearer to wearer. Some invest the garments with protective power, and there are many folktales in Mormon tradition about their effect as a type of spiritual amulet. Others regard them as a private reminder of their commitment to a holy life. For all Saints the garments are a strong link of loyalty to their believing community.
A Mormon’s diet, money, even his clothes, are affected by membership in the church. Members are asked not to work or study on Sunday, and also to shun tattoos and body piercing except for a single pair of earrings allowed for females. But most important of all are the church’s claims on moral choices and time. The church stands uncompromisingly for chastity and moral responsibility. Mormon young people do not date before age sixteen. Saints are to refrain from acquiring debt and from gambling, including state-run lotteries, to shun pornography and cursing, and to be good citizens in the secular community. Social science studies cited by the church show that members reap rewards from these behaviors: they tend to be happier in their family lives and marriages, less likely to indulge in sexually or socially deviant behavior, and far less likely to be involved in any kind of substance abuse than average Americans. By keeping God’s covenants, Mormons believe God promises them they will be a “peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (Exodus 19:5). God wants to “purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14).
The time commitment for a Mormon begins at the local ward. Each Sunday is devoted to a three-hour bloc of sacrament, testimony meetings, and lesson classes for all ages. The sexes are segregated for an hour of this in priesthood and auxiliary meetings. During the week there may be extracurricular activities: a Relief Society meeting with a professional family therapist as speaker, approved by the bishop, or a potluck dinner; a stake choir rehearsal for teenagers. The official ward youth program for Mormon boys is Boy Scouts; legions of Eagle Scouts are turned out each year. Ward, stake, and regional levels encourage a wide variety of social opportunities for believers of all ages, including theatrical projects, youth orchestras, athletic competitions, choirs, mini-trek campouts, square dances, and devotional or cultural “Fireside” evening talks by visiting scholars or General Authorities.
But no church events are scheduled on Monday evenings. That is sacred time. Monday is Family Home Evening. This is a central program in the church design. Going radically against America’s culture of latchkeys and serial dinners, Mormons are directed to shut out the world and gather with the nuclear family one night a week for devotionals and instruction, following standard church manuals, as well as for sharing wholesome secular activities. The authorities first directed the observance in 1915 but had to reinforce the idea with follow-up pronouncements in 1946, 1961, and 1964, perhaps an indication that it was something of a hard sell. In 1970 Monday was mandated as the church-wide Family Home Evening; temples were locked and ward activities prohibited. In 2002 the church asked public schools and other entities serving large LDS constituencies to avoid Monday night events.
Family Home Evening with Paul and Melanie Prestwich in their modest apartment in Bayonne, New Jersey, is probably typical for a family with young children. After a dinner of their favorite homemade pizza, three little Prestwich boys—eight-year-old Kieffer, four-year-old Bowen, and two-year-old Sam—sprawl on the floor and sofa while Daddy presents a lesson on Daniel and the lion’s den. Kieffer knows most of the answers. Melanie, a convert from Catholicism, holds the long-awaited newborn daughter, Elizabeth, during lesson time.
During prayer time the toddler Sam is coached to pray, his childish soprano following Paul’s lead phrase by phrase, “We thank thee—for the prophet—the church leaders—we pray for the Spirit—to help us choose the right.”
After lesson time comes fun time. Grandmother Anne Prestwich, visiting from Colorado to help with the new baby, helps the boys decorate lion cookies with icing. They get to eat the cookies, too. And soon, after a little more small-boy romping, it is time for bed.
The church supplies lesson manuals and guidelines, but members are free to vary their lessons and activities—and if necessary, the actual day—to suit the needs and interests of their own families. Wards make an effort to bring together individual members without families nearby to form social and spiritual groups as a kind of substitute relationship network.
As the Prestwich children grow, they will follow the usual steps of church activities, but their four high school years will involve a major commitment of time unique in religious education. Each morning, five days a week for four years, they will rise before dawn to attend intensive catechism classes before their regular school day begins. They will study the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and other Mormon scriptures, and church doctrine and history. They will be expected to develop a lifelong habit of writing personal journals on their lives and spiritual growth. The boys will be taught to plan and save for a two-year mission commitment, two years given to the church before they finish college.
The children will learn to value the heritage represented by their church’s unique history, and they will probably visit sites such as Hill Cumorah and Nauvoo; perhaps they will participate in a short enactment of the trek or devote a family vacation to cast participation in one of the big church pageants. They will be taught to participate as good citizens in the secular world, to work hard in school, in business, and in professional life, and to treat the “setting apart” for any church call as a privilege and command. They will hear exhortations on chastity and advice on the importance of thrift and avoiding debt; they will be expected to keep the Word of Wisdom and not to gamble; they will be taught to respond to the needs of their neighbor as well as those of their church.
It’s a tall order, all that. But for the most part, it works.