Their names are lost to history.
Sometime in 1890, or possibly 1889, a father – probably in one of the Weber County communities in northern Utah – quizzed his 11-year-old daughter on some gospel principles. What should she do, he asked, to get a remission of her sins? The little girl replied “I go to the Sunday School and partake of the Sacrament.”
The father was aghast. Upon questioning his daughter further and learning that she was practically quoting the catechism she had been taught in Sunday School, the father went to his ward officials to complain about the dangerous and false doctrines spreading among the people. It’s likely that stake officials were brought into the controversy. Someone appealed to Richard Ballantyne, the man who had inaugurated Latter-day Saint Sunday Schools in Utah 40 years early.
The father argued that partaking of the Sacrament had no part in the remission of sins. The teacher protested that she was teaching true doctrine, and produced “a card” – one of those printed leaflets of questions and answers produced at regular intervals by the editor and staff of the Juvenile Instructor, which were collected by teachers and ward officers to serve as reference guides in those decades before the Church began producing lesson manuals. There it was, the teacher defended herself, pointing to her card:
What blessings are promised if we partake of this Sacrament worthily?
to which the answer was given:
That our sins will be forgiven, and that the Lord’s Spirit will always be with us.
Heretical! some asserted. “That they may always have his spirit to be with them” is one of the petitions found in the Sacramental prayers, but there is nothing in any latter-day scripture about the Sacrament bringing absolution for sin. That was a heresy of the papacy, not a doctrine of the Restoration!
Now wait a minute, others said. What about what King Benjamin said? Although those prayers don’t specifically mention a forgiveness of sin, scripture does state that “always retain[ing] in remembrance, the greatness of God” and “walking guiltless before God” will result in “retaining a remission of your sins from day to day” (Mosiah 4:11, 26) – and “remember[ing] him, and keep[ing] his commandments which he hath given them” are also important petitions of the sacramental prayers. There is a practical connection between the Sacrament and sinlessness, even if it isn’t explicit.
False! some said. The first step on the road to apostasy and the adoption of corrupt doctrines from false churches!
True! some said. To deny this doctrine is to deny the faith!
Calm down! others advised. We take your point, but you’re making too much of it. This is a simplified guide to complex doctrines for small children. They will learn the nuances as they continue on in Sunday School.
But the controversy continued to rage. Local men carried the battle to George Q. Cannon (apostle at the time, and both former and future counselor in the First Presidency), and editor of the Juvenile Instructor and its offending “card.” The “brethren have called my attention to a doctrine that is causing much discussion and ill-feeling in places. It is concerning the blessings that are promised to the Saints if they partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper worthily.”
Pres. Cannon investigated and confirmed that the card with the question-and-answer in question had been printed at the offices of the Juvenile Instructor. I find it fascinating, and an indication of his own position in the controversy, that Pres. Cannon took care to point out that this card had been written by elders in his office, and the work had all been done during Pres. Cannon’s absence in Washington attending to his duties as Utah’s non-voting delegate to the US Congress. He was not to blame, in other words.
Pres. Cannon acknowledged that the direct mechanism for remission of sins was repentance followed by baptism. “The ordinance of baptism is instituted in the Church as the door by which the penitent sinner can enter into the Church and obtain the forgiveness of his sins. If he submits to this ordinance in the proper spirit and according to the requirements of the Lord, all his sins, unless he has been guilty of murder, are forgiven.”
But imperfect men continued to sin, even after baptism. How then to obtain forgiveness of those post-baptismal sins? “Forgiveness is obtained by confessing to the Lord, repenting of their sins, and obtaining from Him the fulfillment of His promise to all who are truly penitent.”
Then Cannon attempted to reconcile the Yes-it-does / No-it-doesn’t claims of the disputing parties in this instance.
On the Sabbath day we assemble together to partake of the Lord’s Supper. We are commanded not to partake of that ordinance unworthily; that is, we should eat and drink with a spirit of penitence in our hearts in remembrance of the Lord, and witness unto Him that we are willing to take Upon us the name of the Son and keep His commandments. If we have sinned publicly, we should, before we partake of that ordinance, confess publicly and obtain the forgiveness of the Church, as well as the forgiveness of the Lord. If our wrong-doing be against the Lord alone, then we should humble ourselves before Him in secret and confess to him; and all this before we partake of the Sacrament. Can there be a doubt in anyone’s mind that, under those circumstances, if the Sacrament be partaken of in the right spirit, the Saints do not obtain the forgiveness of their sins? Certainly they do.
Cannon turned to the question of doctrinal disputes, not limited to the one at hand, with this caution:
“In my experience I have frequently found it the case that disputes among Elders are more due to difference of language and expression than from any real difference upon points of doctrine. Whenever men give way to the spirit of controversy in this Church, they darken the mind of the Spirit of God, and both sides are apt to express themselves improperly.”
The card in question would no longer be circulated, he said, “as it has, no doubt, had the effect to make a wrong impression and to mislead.”
Bloggers and Facebookers are really, really good at this sort of thing, aren’t we? We can split hairs and talk past each other with the best of them. On the bright side, that’s our heritage, and our tradition. Mormons have done that for a long time. Our generation’s contribution to the tradition is speeding up the process by going digital. But that’s a difference of degree, not of kind.
Be careful playing with that fire.
Thanks for sharing this. I agree that the past has quite a bit of commonality to the present. Thankfully, for the most part, we get past it and, hopefully, learn in the process.
Thanks, David. It’s fun for me to notice the similarities between eras, whether they’re especially flattering or not — people are people!
Cannon’s matter-of-fact tone referencing public confession leads me to believe there has been significant drift on this aspect of repentance in the century or so since he made that remark. I wish I knew more on the topic.
Yeah … I don’t know much from a doctrinal point of view, TOClark, but I can say from an anecdotal point of view that public confession could be horrifically misused, and I’m grateful it is gone.
Anecdote:
My great aunt, age 17, was seduced by a married man twice her age. He confessed before his priesthood quorum, a relatively small group of high priests. Aunt M, however, who did not have a quorum, was required to confess before the entire congregation: men, women, children, of all ages, in a public sacrament meeting. She was brave enough to do it. My grandmother, M’s sister, kept my mother and her siblings home from sacrament meeting that day. Nothing like that should ever have been called for.
[Edit: For perspective, I should note that this happened in the 1920s.]
My understanding is that we confess to those we’ve offended or injured. When the sin is serious enough it damages the reputation of the church, I’m glad modern sensibilities direct penitent to confess privately to the bishop, rather than the entire congregation. I can’t imagine the stigma such a public confession would entail.
Again, yeah. I would gladly read an article that traced the whys and hows of that change in our procedures.
I have sat through a couple of confessionimonies–someone in testimony meeting deciding to make a public confession. I hope it did the confessor some good, because it was just horribly uncomfortable for the rest of us. We were all looking for a hole to crawl into.
In 1979 or 1980 – just before the advent of block meetings – I recall a public confession arranged by the bishop in sacrament meeting for a young adult woman. All the youth (including myself) were excused from the room, so I don’t know any of the details. I remember it only because there were Priests placed at the doors to keep them closed, and presumably to keep us out. I’ve never seen the like since.
Witnessed a public confession in a sacrament meeting as an eleven ear old back in the 60s. Apostasy was the charge, and excommunication the result. Publicly announced, with children and all present. So that practice had not completely vanished some 40 years after your great aunt’s experience. Raised a lot of questions for an eleven year old that no one wanted to give me answers for. The good news is that the public confessor made his way back into full membership after a year. Another party in the same apostasy incident did not confess, never came back, and started his own polygamous sect in Ogden in the 80s.
But I digress. Splitting hairs is one of those “gospel hobbies” that we’ve all been warned about, and do it anyway.
We had a person in our ward who argued that there was no such thing as the ‘gift of the Holy Ghost’ because a true gift is given without any strings attached, but that we have to do certain things to have the companionship of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, it is not a gift. He was very distressed that other ward members kept referring to it that way, even after he had explained it to them.
Sigh.
Fascinating tidbit of history. Cannon’s quote holds very true at times. I’ve seen a little too much of it due to my Internet junky habits.
Edward Kimball’s “Confession in LDS Doctrine and Practice” (BYU Studies 36:2, 1996) is probably the best available source for the history of public confessions. More detailed study would be welcome.
Thanks for that citation, Niklas.
I wonder, somewhat idly and speculatively, where this lands on the timeline of the rhetorical conflation of the ordinances of sacrament and baptism (to the extent that for quite a while it’s been unremarkable to refer to the sacrament as a “renewal of baptismal covenants”). It sounds like the card from the Juvenile Instructor was at least heading in that direction, and the individual who objected was not on board with that.