From the 1856 diary of Utah schoolteacher Isaiah Mark Coombs:
I told a little girl, 6 years old, that I intended shaving my whiskers off soon. “Oh, yes,” said she, “but you’ll let them grow again when you go on a mission.”
I wonder if the little thing’s words won’t prove prophetic.
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1856 — the Church was very different then in many ways.
It has been my understanding for many years that in the 19th century Mormon missionaries were generally expected to have facial hair.
Precisely what makes this funny, Kent. 🙂
Here’s an interesting tidbit, for what it’s worth — and it may just be an outlier. A few months ago, I was asked to meet with the president of one of the ‘Provo Utah Married Students’ (PUMS) stakes (which have, as far as I can tell, replaced all the “BYU Married Students” stakes — probably because UVU now has a student body comparable in size to BYU). I was told up front that the calling would be either as a bishop or as a stake high council member. I thought, ‘Well, there goes my beard’, which I’ve had for 27 years (including during service in two different bishoprics).
So, I show up for my interview with the stake president — and the first thing I see is that the stake clerk has a beard. As do two of the existing members of the stake high council. I’m interviewed, then a few days later a call to the stake high council is extended (which I accept). “Well,” I think, “they must be more tolerate of facial hair on high council members. Good thing I wasn’t called as a bishop.”
Except that my first sacrament meeting speaking assignment takes me to the only ward in our stake that doesn’t meet in our stake building — and the bishop has a beard. I haven’t seen a bishop with a beard for at least 30 years (an artist I knew growing up in San Diego who was called as a YSA bishop).
The last place I’d expect to find bearded bishops and high council members would be in a married students stake in Provo, Utah, but there you have it. Furthermore, this isn’t something that the stake president is doing on the sly; we had our stake conference last month with a visiting general authority (a member of the 1st Quorum of the 70), and most of the high council members and bishops (with our wives) had dinner with him between the priesthood leadership and adult sessions of conference on Saturday, and most of the high council (with wives) sat on the stand with him on Sunday.
The times, they are a changin’.
That rumbling you hear is countless past administrators rolling over in their graves.
When I was bishop about 12 years ago, fully half the bishops in our stake, including me, had mustaches. Suburban Seattle, though, which is what makes bfwebster’s story all that more remarkable. Now if they would just let us be veil workers at the temple with facial hair…..
I’m waiting for a mission call as a living history actor-an old Welshman pulling a handcart, hopefully not at Martin’s Cove.
The world’s standards change, but the Lord’s Standards, they are Eternal.
It is not against church policy for bishops to have facial hair. When my current bishop was called, he had been in the previous bishopric and had a mustache and slight beard, but shaved after he was called to be bishop. I asked him if the stake president made him shave and he said no. I asked the stake president if there was such a policy and he said no, it was fine if a bishop had facial hair.
#7 FTW