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Quinn, D. Michael

The Mormon Hierarchy : Extensions of Power

Salt Lake City

Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates

1997

"The Mormon church today is led by an elite group of older men, nearly three-quarters of whom are related to current or past general church authorities. This dynastic hierarchy meets in private; neither its minutes nor the church’s finances are available for public review. Members are reassured by public relations spokesmen that all is well and that harmony prevails among these brethren. But by interviewing former church aides, examining hundreds of diaries, and drawing from his own past experience as an insider within the Latter-day Saint historical department, D. Michael Quinn presents a fuller view. His extensive research documents how the governing apostles, seventies, and presiding bishops are likely to be at loggerheads, as much as united. These strong-willed, independent men–like directors of a large corporation or supreme court justices–lobby among their colleagues, forge alliances, out-maneuver opponents, and broker compromises.

"There is more: clandestine political activities, investigative and punitive actions by church security forces, personal “loans” from church coffers (later written off as bad debts), and other privileged power-vested activities. Quinn considers the changing role and attitude of the leadership toward visionary experiences, the momentous events which have shaped quorum protocol and doctrine, and day-to-day bureaucratic intrigue from the time of Brigham Young to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

"The hierarchy seems at root well-intentioned and even at times aggressive in fulfilling its stated responsibility, which is to expedite the Second Coming. Where they have become convinced that God has spoken, they have set aside personal differences, offered unqualified support, and spoken with a unified voice. This potential for change, when coupled with the tempering effect of competing viewpoints, is something Quinn finds encouraging about Mormonism. But one should not assume that these men are infallible or work in anything approaching uninterrupted unanimity." [Publisher]

Administrative history, financial
Priesthood
Internal conflict, 20th century
Ecclesiastical offices, First Presidency
Social and cultural history
Benson, Ezra Taft
Prosopography
Elites
Ecclesiastical offices, Quorums of the Seventy
Administrative history
Ecclesiastical offices, Patriarch to the Church
Utah, politics, 19th century
Ecclesiastical offices, Presiding Bishopric
Ecclesiastical offices, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Equal Rights Amendment
Church finances
Church-state relations, 19th-20th centuries
Bureaucracy

A Foreign Kingdom : Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890
A Forty-Year View : Dialogue and the Sober Lessons of History
A Frontier Life : Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary
A History of Dialogue, Part Two : Struggle Toward Maturity, 1971-1982
A House Full of Females : Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870
All Abraham's Children : Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage
Amasa Mason Lyman, Mormon Apostle and Apostate : A Study in Dedication
Another Good Man : Anthony W. Ivins and the Defeat of Reed Smoot
A Peculiar People : Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America
A Politically Peculiar People : How Mormons Moved into and Then out of the Political Mainstream
A Tale of Two Religions: RLDS and LDS Responses to the Civil Rights Movement
At Sword's Point, Part 1 : A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858
A Uniform and Common Recollection : Joseph Smith's Legacy, Polygamy, and the Creation of Mormon Public Memory, 1852-2002
A Widow's Tale : The 1884-1896 Diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney
A Winter with the Mormons : The 1852 Letters of Jotham Goodell
B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena
Blood of the Prophets : Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
Breaching the Wall: Ezra Taft Benson on Church and State
Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith
Brigham Young : Pioneer Prophet
Building the Kingdom : A History of Mormons in America
Church Unity and the Challenge of Cultural Diversity : A View from across the Sahara
Confidence Amid Change : The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951-1970
Contemporary Mormon Religiosity and the Legacy of "Gathering"
Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions of Latter-day Saints in American Political Culture
David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism
Death to Seducers! Examples of Latter-day Saint-led Extralegal Justice in Historical Context
Defending Zion : George Q. Cannon and the California Mormon Newspaper Wars of 1856-1857
DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn
Doing the Works of Abraham : Mormon Polygamy―Its Origin, Practice, and Demise
Dream Mines and Religious Identity in Twentieth-Century Utah : Insights from the Norman C. Pierce Papers
Early Mormon Marriage, Family, and Networks of Kinship : Begets and horizontal Genealogy in the Case of the Later Cutlerites at Nauvoo
Ecclesiastical Polity and the Challenge of Homosexulity : Two Cases of Divergence within the Mormon Tradition
Excavating Early Mormon History : The 1878 History Fact-Finding Mission of Apostles Joseph F. Smith and Orson Pratt
Exceptionally Queer : Mormon Peculiarity and US Exceptionalism
Ex-Mormon Narratives and Pastoral Apologetics
Extracting Social Scientific Models from Mormon History
Ezra Taft Benson Meets Nikita Khrushchev, 1959: Memory Embellished
Ezra Taft Benson Meets Nikita Krushchev, 1959 : Memory Embellished
Faith and Politics in the Public Sphere : The Gülen Movement and the Mormon Church
Faithful and Fearless : Major Howard Egan : Early Mormonism and the Pioneering of the American West
Finally Statehood! Utah's Struggles, 1849-1896
Forgotten Kingdom : The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896
From Prayer to Visitation : Reexamining Lorenzo Snow's Vision of Jesus Christ in the Salt Lake Temple
From Sodomy to Sympathy : LDS Elites' Discursive Construction of Homosexuality Over Time
George Q. Cannon's Economic Strategy in the 1890s Depression
Gettysburg to Great Salt Lake : George R. Maxwell, Civil War Hero and Federal Marshal among the Mormons
Glorious in Persecution : Joseph Smith, American Prophet, 1839–1844
God and Country : Politics in Utah
God and the People : Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism
Harold B. Lee and Mormonism's Black Priesthood and Temple Ban
Health, Medicine, and Power in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, 1869-1945
History May Be Searched in Vain : A Military History of the Mormon Battalion
"I am not and never have been a polygamist" : Reed Smoot's Speech before the United States Senate
Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific
In defence of Gods people if Need bee : Brigham Young Hampton
Inheriting the 'Great Apostasy' : The Evolution of Mormon Views on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents
Ireland to Utah : Odyssey of the William Black and Jane Johnston Family
Isaac Russell : Mormon Muckraker and Secret Defender of the Church
John Willard Young, Brigham Young, and the Development of Presidential Succession in the LDS Church
Joseph F. Merrill : Latter-day Saint Commissioner of Education, 1928-1933
Joseph F. Smith: Reflections on the Man and His Times
Joseph Smith's Ambiguous Legacy : Gender, Race, and Ethnicity as Dynamics for Schism Within Mormonism after 1844
Joseph Smith's Personal Polygamy
Joseph Smith's Polygamy
Keeping Company with Wilford Woodruff
Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism
Law and Order in Winter Quarters
LDS Church Presidency Years
LDS Church Presidency Years, 1985-1994
LDS 'Headquarters Culture' and the Rest of Mormonism : Past and Present
Liberty and Order : The Mormon Struggle with American Capitalism
Lions, Brothers, and the Idea of an Indian Nation : The Mexican Revolution in the Minds of Anthony W. Ivins and Rey L. Pratt, 1910-1917
Loyal Opposition : Ernest L. Wilkinson's Role in Founding the BYU Law School
Martin Luther King, Civil Rights, and Perceptions of of a "Communist Conspiracy"
Meaning and Authority in Mormon Ritual
Missionaries to the Mormons: NOW's ERA Missionary Project
Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism : The Generations After the Manifesto
More Wives than One : Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910
Mormon cinema : Origins to 1956
Mormon Europeans or European Mormons? : An "Afro-European" View on Religious Colonization
Mormon Hermeneutics: Five Approaches to the Bible by the LDS Church
Mormon History
Mormonism and American Politics (Religion, Culture, and Public Life)
Mormonism and Violence : The Battles of Zion
Mormonism and White Supremacy : American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence
Mormonism at the Crossroads of Philosophy and Theology
Mormonism in the Methodist Marketplace : James Covel and the Historical Background of Doctrine and Covenants 39-40
Mormonism's Raveling and Unraveling of a Geopolitical Thread
Mormon Membership Trends in Europe among People of Color : Present and Future Studies
Mormon Parallels : A Bibliographic Source
Mormons and Lineage : The Complicated History of Blacks and Patriarchal Blessings, 1830-2018
Mormons and Race
Mormons and the State
Mormon Studies as an Academic Discipline
Moroni and the Swastika : Mormons in Nazi Germany
National Culture, Personality, and Theocracy in the Early Mormon Culture of Violence
Of Church and State : Ecclesiastical Politics and the 1922 Salt Lake County Sheriff's Election
Out of Obscurity : Mormonism Since 1945
Ox in the Mire? : The Legal and Cultural War over Utah's Sunday Closing Laws
Playing with Shadows : Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West
Potomac Fever : Continuing Quest for the U. S. Presidency
Potomac Fever: Continuing Quest for the U.S. Presidency
Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power : Salt Lake City, 1847-1918
Religion, Politics, and Sugar : The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921
'Remember Me in My Affliction' : Louisa Beaman and Eliza R. Snow Letters, 1849
Restless Pilgrim : Andrew Jenson's Quest for Latter-day Saint History
Revisiting Thomas F. O'Dea's The Mormons : Contemporary Perspectives
Reviving the Millennial Kingdom : Mormons, Morrisites, and Massacre
Robert J. Dwyer and the Writing of Utah History
Robert Newton Baskin and the Making of Modern Utah
Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-century Americans : A Mormon Example
"Scandalous Film" : The Campaign to Suppress Anti-Mormon Motion Pictures, 1911-12
Scattering of the Saints : Schism within Mormonism
Scottish Shepherd : The Life and Times of John Murray Murdoch, Utah Pioneer
S. Dilworth Young of the First Quorum of Seventy
Separation of Prophet and State? The 1914 Reelection of Senator Reed Smoot
Sesquicentennial Relief Society Forum
Setting the Record Straight
Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport :
Intellectual journeys of a Mormon academic
Standing Apart : Mormon Historical Consciousness And The Concept Of Apostasy
Storming the Nation : The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries
Succession by Seniority : The Development of Procedural Precedents, in the LDS Church
Summing Up : Problems and Prospects for a Global Church in the Twenty-first Century
Tensions in David O. Mckay's First Presidencies
Terrible Revolution : Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
The Aiken Party Executions and the Utah War 1857-1858
The Aiken Party Executions and the Utah War, 1857-1858
The Bible and the Latter-day Saint Tradition (book)
The church family in nineteenth-century America : Mormonism and the public private divide
The Civil War Years in Utah : The Kingdom of God and the Territory that did not Fight
The Cold War and the Invention of Free Agency
The Cold War and the Invention of Free Agency
The Culture of Obedience and Politics of Stealth : Mormon Mobilization against ERA and Same-Sex Marriage
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism
The History of LDS Temple Admission Standards
The Infallibility Trap : The Sacralisation of Religious Authority
The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin
The Morley Settlement in Illinois, 1839-1846 : Tribe and Clan in a Nauvoo Mormon Community
The Mormon Church and Blacks : A Documentary History
The Mormon Hierarchy and the MX
The Mormon History Association's Tanner Lectures : The First Twenty Years
The Mormon Image in the American Mind : Fifty Years of Public Perception
The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis : "An Example for His More Whiter Brethren to Follow"
The Mormon Rebellion : America's First Civil War, 1857-1858
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Mormonism
The Persistence of Mormon Plural Marriage
The Politics of American Religious Identity : The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
The Powell Expedition : New Discoveries about John Wesley Powell's 1869 River Journey
The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963
The Rise of Mormonism
The Tragic Matter of Louie Wells and John Q. Cannon
Thomas F. O'Dea : The New Spirit and Science of Mormon Studies
Thomas L. Kane and the Mormon Problem in National Politics
Thunder From the Right : Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics
Transgression in the Latter-day Saint Community : The Cases of Albert Carrington, Richard R. Lyman, and Joseph F. Smith Part 2 : Richard R. Lyman
Transgression in the LDS Community : The Cases of Albert Carrington, Richard R. Lyman, and Joseph F. Smith : Part 3 : Joseph F. Smith
"Twice-told Tale" : Telling Two Histories of Mormon-Black Relations During the 2012 Presidential Election
Us-Them Tribalism and Early Mormonsim
Utah in the Twentieth Century
Vernacular Mormonism : The Development of Latter-Day Saint Apocalyptic (1830-1930)
Vestige of Zion : Mormonism in Utah
Watchman on the Tower : Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right
We Gather Together
When Race, Religion and Sport Collide : Black Athletes at BYU and Beyond
'When the People Speak' : Mormons and the 1954 Redistricting Campaign in Utah
Where Mormonism Meets Biblical Christianity Face to Face : An A to Z Doctrinal Comparative between Mormonism and Biblical Christianity
Wilford Woodruff's Vision of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence
"You Nasty Apostates, Clear Out" : Reasons for Disaffection in the Late 1850s