Description

“Let them sizzle” were the words that LDS Church president David O. McKay said about his counselors, Hugh B. Brown and N. Eldon Tanner, on a fateful day in January 1965. The president lost confidence in his two counselors and vowed that he’d no longer use them. They could “sizzle,” he told his secretary, after McKay and his counselors had a heated argument. But he wouldn’t release them because it would create a public relations crisis in the Church. Instead, McKay quietly pushed them aside and called three additional counselors over the next few years, demonstrating the fragility of serving under an infirm president who, at the age of 91, could be easily manipulated by subordinates. His counselors, along with key members of the Quorum of the Twelve, rushed to fill the leadership void created by McKay’s declining health and feuded over who would run the Church.

Drawing on never-before-seen letters, diaries, and First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve meeting minutes, this paper explores Hugh B. Brown’s response to what he called “the aging crisis of church leadership.” Because of what he witnessed in the McKay administration, he proposed that the Church retire all general authorities at the age of 70. Leaders in the top quorums of the Church, which included the Church president, would be emeritus. Brown also made a detailed and thorough plan to bypass Joseph Fielding Smith as McKay’s successor, believing that he, too, at the age of 90, was in cognitive decline and could be easily manipulated.

Speaker

• Matt Harris