This Greg Prince interview is a throwback to 2017, and for the first time the entire conversation is available in one piece. On September 27, 2017, historian Greg Prince was in Salt Lake City to deliver the Sterling McMurrin Lecture at the Salt Lake City Public Library, and before his talk he sat down with me for a long and candid conversation. We originally released it in seven parts.
Don’t miss our other conversations with Greg: https://gospeltangents.com/people/greg-prince
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Full Greg Prince Interview
Greg is a biomedical researcher by profession, but he is also one of the most careful historians in Mormon studies. He wrote Power From on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (1995), David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (2005), and Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History (2016). When we talked, he was finishing the book that became Gay Rights and the Mormon Church (2019).
LDS Church and its Gay Members
We start with that research. Greg explains that the word “homosexuality” first appeared in the Church’s General Handbook of Instructions in 1968, the year before the Stonewall riots. From there he traces how policy developed over the next half century. We also discuss the November 2015 policy on children of gay parents. Greg says members of the Quorum of the Twelve told him they learned of it only two days before it leaked to the public. He argues that denying an infant a name and a blessing is a punishment, whatever the intent. The Church reversed that policy in 2019, after this conversation was recorded.
Four Leadership Vacuums
Greg co-wrote an article in Dialogue titled “Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism.” He describes four periods when a church president’s health left a gap at the top: David O. McKay in the late 1960s, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, and, at the time we spoke, Thomas S. Monson. Greg believes major decisions were made by others during each of these periods, and he explains why he calls it “not ideal governance.” President Monson died a few months after this interview, in January 2018.
Priesthood, Word of Wisdom, & a Pepsi man
We also dig into the early development of priesthood offices, and how Joseph Smith’s understanding of authority grew over time. Greg offers a naturalistic reading of the Word of Wisdom, which he sees as reflecting the temperance ideas of 1833. He describes it as moving through three phases, from loosely observed advice to a requirement. Along the way he tells one of my favorite stories: a theater publicist was told President McKay drank Coca-Cola, but one of McKay’s secretaries remembered a refrigerator shelf full of Pepsi. Finally, we look at when and why the Church began ordaining young men to the Aaronic Priesthood, a practice Greg traces to the early 1900s.
Hear it all in one place!
These conversations first ran as seven separate episodes. This release puts the whole interview together in the order we recorded it, so you can hear how one topic led to the next. It’s a rare chance to spend more than an hour and a half with a historian who has spent decades in the archives.
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Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
Sources:
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:56 History of LDS Policy Toward Gays
20:41 The 4 LDS Leadership Vacuums: What Happened?
33:38 Ailing Church Leaders: “Not Ideal Governance”
50:13 Early LDS Priesthood: Similar to Ancient Christianity?
1:08:44 Naturalistic Explanation for Word of Wisdom?
1:24:30 When Did LDS Start Ordaining Youth?
1:32:25 “There Is Nothing in LDS Policy That Justifies Whacking Infants”
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