While some Church doctrines and practices may come as clear mandates from heaven (I’m looking at you, Ten Commandments), others come in response to prayerful requests (the Word of Wisdom, say), and still others develop as we try to understand the word of God (what does it mean to “Honor thy father and thy mother” today?) or respond to events of our time (what is marriage post-Obergefell? should misbehavior by missionaries in some corner of the world affect rules for missionaries world wide?) We don’t often hear the names or know the stories behind all our practices, especially as those stories fade into the past and the practices become habitual.

I have run across one story, though, that may have played a role in the development of one important Mormon behavior, though. It may not be the only reason for this aspect of who we are, but it is at least one of those reasons.

Charles Roseberry Rogers was born in Pima, Arizona, in 1888, the son of a bishop who died just after Charles’ 18th birthday. Charles was the oldest child left at home, and left school to work in the mines to help provide for his father’s two widows and the youngest of his father’s 20 children. Perhaps because of his mother’s need of his services at home, Charles had turned 24 before he was called on his first mission, to the Northern States. That call, he said, “was a complete surprise to me, as no one had discussed it with me” prior to issuing the call.

Elder Rogers traveled in a party of 13 young men from Salt Lake City to Chicago. He arrived there in the summer of 1913, just as the Mission was organizing a “country tour” where missionaries were sent out from headquarters to walk through the rural parts of northern Illinois, distributing tracts and visiting small towns that otherwise would not see missionaries during the year. There were only 12 established elders assigned to make that circuit, though, so Elder Rogers was left behind in Chicago. Except for a 10-day assignment to distribute tracts near the new chapel and mission headquarters being built at Logan Square in north-central Chicago, Elder Rogers spent the first months of his mission as a laborer. He wore work clothes most of the time, cleaning up the construction site, digging and landscaping, and driving a horse-drawn wagon back and forth between the new and old mission headquarters, freighting furniture and office supplies to the new location.

Once the chapel was dedicated, Elder Rogers expect to be sent out into the field, but he was not. As the rare young elder with bookkeeping, typing, and shorthand experience, he served for more than a year as mission secretary and bookkeeper. Then at last he was sent from Chicago and assigned to Milwaukee, Wisconsin – but still not as a missionary. Milwaukee was the site of a large branch of German-speaking Saints, one of the main Mormon gathering areas of the mission. Many of the Saints there received at least part of their income from working in the commercial bakery of Christopher Leonard Rueckert, the branch president. President Rueckert had died in the summer of 1914; the bakery, so important to so many of the Saints, was struggling, and Elder Rogers was sent to help out. Still no real missionary experience.

Then, after having served about 18 months of his mission without really working as a missionary, Elder Rogers was appointed as president of the Wisconsin Conference, with responsibilities for about 45 elders and 800 Saints, some in healthy branches like Milwaukee, and the rest scattered throughout the State. He was about to get all the experience an elder could reasonably undertake.

Elder Rogers went tracting with the elders for two weeks through rural Wisconsin, traveling without purse or scrip. He struggled to communicate with his branch in Milwaukee, which was made up almost entirely of German immigrants – but he received some important help from elders who had been pulled out of German at the outbreak of World War I, who came to Milwaukee to finish their missions. One of his missionaries died of appendicitis, and Elder Rogers dressed the body and made arrangements for his return home. He experienced the gift of tongues when he confirmed one newly baptized member, speaking in German – or at least that’s what she said afterwards; he was not aware at the time that he was speaking a tongue he otherwise did not know.

One of Elder Rogers’ early challenges is really the point of this post. When he arrived in Milwaukee, he found a large contingent of active young people in the branch. These young branch members worked hard during the week, and they had few social contacts outside the Church. The young people organized occasional dances, to which only LDS members were invited and where LDS standards were maintained. They also loved tennis passionately, and had organized a tennis club. They played matches against each other, and had become so good that they wanted to enter their LDS team in the local tennis association and play against other Milwaukee clubs.

And that was the problem.

The other tennis clubs played their matches on Sundays. The young people consulted their branch president about the propriety of playing tennis on Sunday, as well as attending their church meetings. They really, really wanted to play tennis competitively – so much so, that some of them said they would join other, non-LDS clubs, if they had to.

Elder – now President – Rogers, struggled with the answer. “I cannot make up my mind that it is right to allow them to play tennis on Sunday,” he wrote to German E. Ellsworth, his mission president, “but I would like to have your opinion in this regard.”

Perhaps the culture Presidents Rogers and Ellsworth had grown up in, in the largely Mormon communities of the West, took it for granted that Latter-day Saints did this, but not that, as a matter of keeping the Sabbath day holy. But they were both stymied by this instance. Do we tell the young people not to play tennis on the Sabbath? If we do, will we drive them away from us and into the arms of non-LDS companions?

I do not know with certainty that this is the first time such a question came up in the Church, but I think it very well may be, because of what followed: President Ellsworth wrote to an apostle he knew well, to ask for advice. But even that apostle did not feel comfortable giving advice on his own – there was no well-established precedent for the apostle to cite. He wrote back to President Ellsworth:

The subject is of such importance that I decided to submit it to the council of the First Presidency and Twelve. We all feel that it would be wrong to give the sanction of the Church to tennis games or other sports as Sabbath indulgences. The possibility of offending some of our young people in the Branch to which you refer, as elsewhere, by rigid enforcement of rules for Sabbath observance, and particularly where the environment and the prevailing habits of the people generally are conducive to Sunday recreation and sports, is fully recognized. Great care, patience, and wisdom, such as the spirit of your calling will afford, are necessary in your dealing with this particular case. We feel that the advisable course for you to pursue is to make it very plain that the Church cannot sanction games and pleasure seeking pursuits on Sunday; but to refrain from rigidly enforced discipline unless individual members became recalcitrant to counsel and kind admonition. Every effort should be made to avoid an open issue in the case whereby either conference authorities or the young people would prevail or be defeated.

The decision passed down through channels, from the Council to the apostle to the mission president to the district president. President Rogers, inexperienced in some ways but fully qualified in others, counseled with the young Milwaukee Saints with all the tact he could muster. He emphasized the purpose of the Sabbath, reasoned with the young people, tried not to be so authoritarian that it would create hard feelings, and eventually won most of the young people over to the idea – apparently new, but now established as a Mormon practice by agreement of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve – that organized sports belonged to the other six days of the week, but not to the Sabbath.

–oooOooo–

The obvious course for discussion is, “But what about [insert athlete’s name here]? He plays professional [insert sport here] on Sunday.” It’s fine if you want to talk about that issue, or any other, but let’s keep it general, please, and not point fingers at any particular athlete or sport. Thanks.

Photos:

Charles Roseberry Rogers (but obviously some years after his 27-month mission in the Northern States, 1913-15)
Rueckert Bakery in Milwaukee, which assisted so many Milwaukee Saints during the lifetime and branch presidency of Christopher Leonard Rueckert