Prophet, Seer and Innovator

He was 77 when he became president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--by Mormon definition, their "prophet, seer and revelator." That was well past the age when many Protestant church leaders retire, even past the recommended retirement age (75) that Pope Paul VI has set down for Roman Catholic bishops. But when he died last week of acute heart congestion at the age of 96, even his final years of feebleness could not dim the conviction that David O. McKay had done more in his 19-year tenure to change the image and direction of the Mormon Church than any president since Brigham Young himself.

Reviewing his life in 1968, McKay suggested that his greatest achievement was to have made the church a worldwide organization. During his presidency, the Mormon rolls expanded from just over 1,000,000 to 2,815,000. He opened five new Temples: in Oakland, Los Angeles, New Zealand, Switzerland and London. The Temples --not to be confused with lower-ranking Mormon meeting houses--enabled Europeans for the first time to perform the sacred Mormon Temple rites, such as "endowment" (a vow to live church principles) or "sealing" of marriages "for time and eternity," without traveling to North America. Missions grew from 43 to 89. Mormon dioceses, called "stakes," grew from 191 to 496. Conversions in foreign countries soared. There were 5,000 Mormons in the British Isles the year before McKay took office; there are 78,000 today. In New Zealand, the Mormons can now claim 8% of the country's Maori population.

Global Thinking. David Oman McKay was the grandson of Scottish and Welsh immigrants, Mormon converts, who settled in Utah in the mid-19th century. Born near Ogden on a farm that he maintained until his death, McKay followed his father, a farmer-teacher, into education. But a turn as a church missionary in Scotland involved him ever after in church affairs, and by 1906, at the age of 32, he was called to membership in the Council of the Twelve Apostles, the church's governing body.

McKay had to wait 45 years before he acceded to the presidency; seniority among the Apostles has been a traditional criterion for presidential selection. In the meantime, he addressed himself assiduously to church work, rising daily at 4 a.m. for a period of contemplation before striding over to the church offices. A 13-month, 63,000-mile tour of mission territories in the late 1920s set the pattern of his global thinking; terms as Counselor to two successive Mormon presidents, Heber J. Grant and George Albert Smith, brought him more and more into top-level decisions. When Smith died in 1951, McKay became ninth president of the church and, according to Mormon theology, the only man on earth who can be "the living oracle of God."

Affable Image. It was not McKay's style to rely on his unique position as the source of church revelation. He used his power with clear authority, but he was even better known for his gentleness and good humor. Tall and strong-voiced, his amiable face framed by a shock of flowing white hair, McKay was an affable new image of Mormonism to a world that had previously seen the Mormon leaders as dour, dark-suited figures. He was perhaps the first Mormon president to treat non-Mormons as generously as members of his own faith.

He could, when he wanted to, act decisively to defeat a bill he disapproved of in the Utah legislature--like liquor-by-the-drink. But he could also be winningly tolerant of such lingering bad habits of converts as smoking or coffee drinking. Indeed, say apologists, it may have been McKay's distaste for controversy and his willingness to tolerate the ingrained attitudes of others that prevented him from changing the Mormon thinking toward priesthood for Negroes. Shortly before McKay's death, a Mormon professor, Sterling M. McMurrin. said that McKay had told him in 1954 that the church's prohibition against Negroes was not a doctrine but a practice, and could therefore be changed. Yet perhaps because he realized the task was too great for his diminishing energies, McKay never, made the move himself.

Stern Authoritarian. Nor does any change seem likely to come in the near future. Joseph Fielding Smith, 93. the senior Apostle and presiding officer of the Council of the Twelve, has been chosen to succeed McKay as president. Smith is the son of the sixth Mormon president, Joseph F. Smith, and grandson of Hyrum Smith, a brother of the Mormon founder, Prophet Joseph Smith. He is a straightforward but humorless man harking back to the old Mormon image, a stern authoritarian who is not likely to tolerate minor faults in his fellow churchmen or to encourage change. His attitude towards Negroes is perhaps best typified by his remark several years ago that "Darkies are wonderful people."

Yet the Mormons and "gentiles" who crowded Salt Lake City's Mormon Tabernacle for McKay's final rites last week had come not to ponder the future but to honor the past. The man they mourned had already changed his church considerably. In his own generous, enthusiastic way, McKay had expanded his church's horizons and involvement far beyond the abilities of any successor to contract them. If he had not completely destroyed Mormon exclusivism, he had certainly tempered it with his own remarkable vision of a much wider, friendlier world.

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