Word: mormon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...when Joseph Fielding Smith died at the age of 95, command of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints passed to a relative youngster. The new president, Harold Bingham Lee, was only 73-the youngest man to assume the mantle of "prophet, seer and revelator" for the Mormons since 1918. (Smith took office at 93.) Since his accession, both outsiders and members have wondered just how much innovation Harold Lee would bring to the rich, rapidly growing but still monolithic Mormon Church...
...Idaho grade school principal at the age of 17 and a onetime city commissioner in Salt Lake City, Lee has spent most of his adult life in the Mormon bureaucracy. Lately he has represented the church's interests as a member of the board of such companies as the Union Pacific Railroad. By all accounts a skillful administrator, he began streamlining various Mormon enterprises as first counselor during the brief rule of Joseph Fielding Smith. Says an associate: "Lee has a genius for organization. The church runs like a great beautiful computer, clicking away. Everything is in its place...
...Harold Lee who organized and ran the church's vast and efficient welfare system from 1937 to 1959. He now wants to expand the scope of Mormon welfare to include more rehabilitation programs for alcoholics, drug abusers and ex-convicts. The church remains tightly mum about most expenditures, but one sign of prosperity is a new 30-story, $30 million world headquarters recently erected behind the temple. By Mormon policy, all buildings are paid for as they are built...
BLACKS. To many outsiders the most urgent problem for Mormons is the fact that blacks of African ancestry are still denied entrance into the broad Mormon "priesthood," the full-fledged membership to which all other adult Mormon males are entitled.* In Utah, where less than 1% of the population is black, the issue does not seem so pressing. There are, however, 240 black Mormons in the area of Salt Lake City, many of whom are chafing at their second-class status. Some were converted before they learned that they could not become priests. Charges Darius Gray, 26: "I didn...
...eternal plan, American blacks have been assured, they will some day be given the right to become Mormon priests. Although there is no sign that the day is imminent, Harold Lee, the "revelator," could theoretically receive the word from God any time. Meanwhile, he advises blacks to become Mormons anyway. Even if they cannot attain the highest privileges, he says, they will "get more by baptism into the true church than they would otherwise...