Item Detail
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22809
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1
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0
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English
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Official LDS Anticommunism, 1901-1972 : The Articulation of an LDS Conservative Ideology
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Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University
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Master's thesis
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"The official response of the LDS Church to communism began in the early 1900s as part of the Church's overall effort to prove its patriotism and loyalty within U.S. society. In General Conference, the most official forum of the church, LDS leaders specifically denounced communism's claim to be the ultimate solution to the world's problems, its anarchism, its atheism while incorporating Mormon doctrine to justify their opposition to communism. Yet anticommunism did not obtain its mainstream institutional influence in the church until the LDS First Presidency issued its 1936 statement warning members and all U.S. citizens of communism. The 1936 statement set the stage for an LDS critique of not only communism, but also socialism and other leftist ideologies, a development only hinted to in General Conferences prior to 1936. This became one of the most defining characteristics of official LDS anticommunism. The LDS opposition to the political left(and therefore preference of the political right) became more evident in official LDS anticommunism at mid-century that focused upon the internal threat of communism in the U.S. The 1940s and 1950s saw a large increase in both the urgency and specificity of references to the internal threat in conference talks and official statements of LDS leaders. But instead of backing away from their fear of the internal threat in the late 1950s and 1960s along with the national mainstream, some LDS leaders maintained and even increased their conference warnings of this danger. This illustrated the persistence of traditional LDS anticommunist rhetoric and the influence of rightwing groups that kept such rhetoric alive in the 1960s. The John Birch society in particular was able to capitalize on the rightist rhetoric of official LDS anticommunism (with the help of individual LDS leaders and members) in order to promote their organization among LDS members. LDS anticommunism also gave justification to the rise of Cleon Skousen's Freemen's Society, a Mormon group that mirrored much of the Birch society. The anti-left, right-slanted anticommunism of church leaders provided an anticommunism that the right wing (beginning in the 1960s) could identify with and claim as their own." [Author's abstract]