Here’s a new story in connection with an old argument:

Most Keepa readers are no doubt familiar with the line “When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done” – it is sometimes used by Church members to silence discussion; it is probably more often used by some to taunt Church members as unthinking followers marching in blind obedience to direction by Church leaders.

Probably many know the origin of this statement as a ward teachers’ (i.e., home teachers’) message printed in the Improvement Era of June 1945. I’ve posted the entire text of that message on a back page, if you want to review it. If you already know that old message, then you may also be familiar with the query of a Unitarian minister regarding it, and George Albert Smith’s assurance that “the Church gives to every man his free agency, and admonishes him always to use the reason and good judgment with which God has blessed him.” (Steve Peck once posted the full text of the correspondence between minister and prophet on another blog, here.)

As far as I can recall, that exchange is the only contemporary (1945) discussion of that message that I had ever seen.

Until this morning.

Here’s the new story, and one I think is even better than the exchange with the minister, because it indicates the reaction of a faithful member of the Church, trying his best to understand that message, but finding it, in his word, “bewildering.”

Benjamin Orson Goddard (1917-1999) – he went by Orson – was a Salt Lake boy who was called into the Navy during World War II. In some ways, that military service set the entire path of his life – he worked in accounting, disbursing millions of dollars in payments; then he made his career working in the Church’s financial department, retiring in 1983. More importantly, he grew in leadership skill among his fellow LDS servicemen, organizing conferences, leading priesthood discussions, dedicating graves, keeping LDS men in touch with each other. He served as a missionary in Australia before the war, and later, with his wife, he served multiple temple missions from the Salt Lake Valley to New Zealand.

Orson was stationed at Manila, in the Philippines, in the months after the end of the war. That delayed the delivery of his June 1945 issue of the Improvement Era; he didn’t get it until October … and he read the ward teachers’ message. It bothered him, deeply.

He didn’t accept that message. Thinking was not alien to the gospel. … But in rejecting that message, he wondered, was he in fact guilty of the very “sin” it spoke of? Did he put his own judgment above that of the Brethren, and had he lost the spirit?

Orson thought back over the things he had done in recent months to be the best Latter-day Saint he could be, and to render service to his fellow Saints. He fasted and prayed, trying to discern whether there had been any lessening in his devotion to the gospel due to whatever “thinking” might be in opposition to the content of that teachers’ message. And he wrote to a family friend, apostle John A. Widtsoe, for advice.

After indicating some of the ways he was trying to serve the Lord, Orson wrote,

I’m not bragging and I’m not complaining. I know that I am indebted to the Lord a thousand fold. Each thing I do in the nature of service increases my indebtedness to Him because the blessings of satisfaction and appreciation equal far more than my contribution. I don’t think of myself as building a great personal reward in the future at the cost of every day pleasures, etc.

In spite of the above I would have to employ undue rationalization to avoid being branded far along the road to apostasy by the Ward Teacher’s Message for June 1945.

I am conscious of numerous apostate movements within the church and quite aware that the faith of many Latter-day Saints isn’t very great and that I am subject to error along with all the other weak ones.

Since having read the June Ward Teacher’s message I have fasted and prayed over the matter and frankly my attitude doesn’t seem to have altered. I love what I know of the Gospel more than all else. Yet without distorting the content of the message I remain in a precarious position.

What, this good young man asked, should he do?

Elder Widtsoe wrote back immediately:

The June ward Teachers’ message, to which you refer, was most unfortunately worded. The meaning, as it stands, is not in harmony with the spirit of the Church. We urge every person who comes into the Church to learn to understand the gospel, so that he can stand upon his own feet. He must think about the principles presented. Thinking is an important part of the life of people who come into the Church; and after we are in, we must continue the same way, to use our powers in learning and practicing the principles of the gospel.

The man who wrote the Ward Teachers’ message, of course, had in mind that once the Church, through a bishop, stake president, or general authorities, decides on a course of official action, we must conform to it, else there would be nothing but chaos in the Church. But even though we conform, we have the right, and should exercise the right, to think through the proposed procedure. Otherwise, we shall be very indifferent and helpless in the cause.

Remember always that the Church is made up of certain fundamental principles, which are everlastingly eternal, unchangeable. But in the operation of the daily tasks of the Church, many secondary or tertiary regulations are set up, which must be in harmony ultimately with the fundamental principles, but which are expected to change with the changing day or with increasing knowledge or with a more perfect understanding of the purposes of the Lord. Many members of the Church fail to understand this difference and therefore suffer ship-wreck.

Be at ease in your mind, therefore, that you are not an apostate or in the process of becoming one if you question the message of which you speak. Read into it a large meaning, and be merciful to the person (who, by the way, is unknown to me) who made the unfortunate wording.

I hope that this little statement will help you in your bewilderment. Write me again if I have not made myself or the subject clear.

There is no way to know how many Church members who read that ward teachers’ message questioned it – rejected it, even. But, as Orson Goddard’s letter proves, the Unitarian minister wasn’t the only one who found it disturbing, and George Albert Smith’s response was in no way a public relations ploy. John A. Widtsoe’s letter, in complete harmony with President Smith’s – and with its nice little additional discussion of what we might today call “the difference between doctrine and policy” – is a witness that “the thinking has been done” was not the position or intention of Church leaders.

UPDATE: Orson Goddard’s response to John A. Widtsoe’s letter:  “I appreciate and am satisfied with your statement concerning the June Ward Teacher’s message. Thank you.”