ON POSSIBLE RECONCILIATION WITH THE RLDS CHURCH 2416 "I" St, N.W. Washington, D.C. December 26, 1989 Elder Russell Nelson Council of the Twelve Church Office Building Dear Elder Nelson: It was almost a year ago that my wife Lola and I had the privilege of meeting you at your home when you invited visiting Stake Presidents to bring their hosts with them to your reception. President Daniel Pichot of the Paris, France Stake, whom I'd served simultaneously as High Councilman and Stake Executive Secretary was staying with as at my mother-in-law's home in Holladay. So among the General Authorities, I feel that I know you well enough to put forward some thinking which has occurred to me, certainly not in any attempt to "steady the ark", but merely to give you the benefit of my thirty years as a professional diplomat -- as I see you assuming more and more the role of a Church ambassador to Eastern Europe. There has been a schism between us and the RLDS Church for something approaching a hundred and forty years. Initially this occurred because of Emma Smith's ambivalence and ultimate refusal to accept polygamy; and, hence, her decision not to accompany the Saints on their move West. During the administration of President Joseph Fielding Smith, tentative steps were taken to heal the inter-familial breach. And since that time the efforts of the Mormon Historical Society have succeeded in bringing together in some degree some of the more thoughtful members of our two groups on a continuing basis. Lola and I have been assigned to Mexico for the past three years where I have served in a Bishopric and on a High Council, becoming more familiar with the history of the Church in Mexico than before. You will perhaps remember the Conference episode in Mexico. A group of Mexican priesthood holders petitioned the General Authorities -- in a somewhat presumptuous manner -- to name a Mexican as Mission President, and others as Branch and District Presidents. After several years of unsuccessful efforts on the part of Church leaders to bring these self-appointed leaders into line, several thousand were excommunicated and followed their own path for some twenty years. Eventually the breach was healed when Heber J. Grant (or it may have been George Albert Smith -- memory fails), was sent to look into the matter. His solution was to find that the excommunications had been hasty and inappropriate. And by ratification all priesthood offices and blessing were restored, not only to those who'd been excommunicated, but those they'd subsequently ordained. While visiting my sister and her husband in Nauvoo last summer, where they are serving a mission at the Visitors Center, we heard all sorts of rumors that part of the RLDS membership was so avid for acceptance by the World Council of Churches that they were prepared to renounce the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon , and change their name to something lime The World Church of Jesus Christ for Peace . With the end of the Smith hierarchy in the RLDS church and the acceptance by most of its leadership of the fact that the Prophet Joseph Smith did indeed both preach and practice plural marriage (plus the adoption by our Church of the long-time practice of the RLDS to time-limit certain General Authority appointments), it seems the makings might exist for us to exercise a little creative diplomacy to end the estrangement and bring some 700,000 new converts from among the substantial residuum of RLDS who still feel attached to their heritage into the Church in time to greet the new Century. When one reviews at least some of the excommunications which followed the death of the Prophet, I think a pretty good case can be made that they were every bit as hasty and unnecessary as those of the Mexican Conventionalists. With enough goodwill and prayerful consideration, it might be found possible to ratify the priesthood of many, if not all, current priesthood holders in the RLDS church, obviating the need for one party or the other to claim unilateral victory. You will have observed how President Bush has exercised restraint on the political side regarding the victory over Marxism, leaving Mr. Gorbachev a fig leaf to cover his abandonment of Leninist doctrine. Second, one must always pay attention to the ego-needs of power holders. While there has been a rapid and wholesale replacement of the power structure in Eastern Europe, leaders, while under popular pressure for change, still succeeded in naming some of their successors. During several periods of LDS Church history, we have had more than twelve apostles -- and frequently more than two Counselors in the First Presidency. Seems to me we could take advantage of the RLDS practice of time-limited appointments, even for their apostles, to absorb their Seventy into our Second Quorum, adding their apostles as additional time-limited members of our apostolate (they'd all be gone in a matter of five or six years), while picking up the presidency as additional counselors in the First Presidency (again time-limited). Maybe none of this makes sense to you, but during my lifetime I've had a number of RLDS acquaintances whom I've found as interested in our doctrinal and organizational progress since the separation as that of any East European in the Common Market or capitalist economics. And the evolution in Mormon relations, while less revolutionary, has been almost as impressive in its own way as the progress in East/West political relations. With the enormous breakthrough in the possibility of preaching the gospel now in Eastern Europe (and perhaps in the not too distant future even in the Soviet Union and China), I simply thought we shouldn't overlook the possibility of picking up a half million or so new members from those already essentially converted to our doctrines -- if not to the details of our organizational usages. With best wishes for the New Year, I remain, Sincerely,