Should Women “Hold” the Priesthood?

 

In an August 2026 Salt Lake Tribune article,¹ Jana Riess asks why so many younger women are leaving the LDS Church. She cites her own research with Benjamin Knoll, as well as a BYU Studies article, Ryan Burge’s 2025 Spiritual Seismology Survey, and Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, which all agree that younger Latter-day Saint women are leaving the Church at a faster pace than their older female coreligionists and their male counterparts. Riess’s research suggests that there are three reasons for this increased exodus: politics, purity culture, and powerlessness.

Younger women tend to be more politically liberal than older women or men of all ages and may not feel comfortable in a Church that has a general conservative bias. They also may be disaffiliating, says Riess, as “a backlash against the extreme sexual ‘purity culture’ that was taught when many young Latter-day Saint women were teens.” It is the third factor, however, that I wish to focus on in this post. Riess points to “a growing disconnect between the power young women experience now in most aspects of their lives compared to the powerlessness many report feeling at church. In the church, women cannot hold the priesthood, bless or pass the sacrament, baptize a convert or make policy decisions. . . . Because in a church that does not permit women to help create the policy decisions that affect them, some feel there’s only one way to be heard: voting with their feet.”

Although some Church leaders have tried to smooth over this disconnect by insisting that women do indeed share in the priesthood, these explanations ring hollow when women cannot “hold” the priesthood, be ordained to priesthood offices, perform most ordinances, or participate in councils where policy and doctrinal decisions are made. A woman in today’s Church, for instance, cannot become a bishop or stake president or Apostle. Why not? There is not, to my knowledge, a revelation from the Lord that specifically says only men can “hold” the priesthood, and certain passages in the New Testament suggest that some women in the ancient Church held offices we would today consider priesthood offices. The most common answer to this question usually boils the reasons down to tradition. In the modern Church, only men have occupied priesthood offices, therefore this practice should continue.

But are there good arguments for perhaps rethinking tradition? I believe there are. In three past issues of Dialogue,² I addressed questions surrounding priesthood and presented such arguments, often obliquely or buried in footnotes, primarily because as editorial director of BYU Studies I felt I had to be cautious. But now that I am retired and free from such concerns, I feel compelled to make these arguments candidly and unapologetically. I do this not to make waves or to criticize Church leaders. I do it in the spirit of offering Church leaders a rationale (or several) for making a drastic change to Church policy that would, I believe, increase the faith and retention of members, both female and male.

I will present two arguments—one historical/linguistic and one logical/theological—to support the idea that women should be able to “hold” the priesthood and be ordained to priesthood offices in the LDS Church.

 

What Is Priesthood?

The standard LDS definition of priesthood is “the power and authority that God gives to man to act in all things necessary for the salvation of God’s children.”³ What most members (and likely many leaders) of the Church do not realize is that this definition is uniquely LDS and is not even scriptural. Priesthood as a form of abstract authority does not appear in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, and it begins to coalesce in the revelations given to Joseph Smith only after about 1834. In the earliest days of the Restoration, priesthood was understood exactly as the surrounding Christian churches understood it, and that definition still persists in all other churches today.

If you look in almost any English dictionary, you will find two definitions for the word priesthood, such as these taken from the dictionary I have at my desk: “1: the office, dignity, or character of a priest[;]  2: the whole body of priests.”⁴ Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary gives similar definitions that would have been common during Joseph Smith’s lifetime: “the office or character of a priest” and “the order of men set apart for sacred offices; the order composed of priests.”⁵ In other words, priesthood is either the condition of being a priest or a group of priests. These definitions are in keeping with other words that use the suffix -hood. Motherhood, for instance, is the condition of being a mother. A neighborhood is a group of neighbors. The LDS definition of priesthood, by contrast, does not make linguistic sense. We would never say, “She holds the motherhood” or “She exercises her motherhood.”

Interestingly, the LDS definition of priesthood as abstract authority does appear in the four-inch-thick Webster’s unabridged dictionary I had access to at BYU Studies. It lists a third definition: “the authority to speak and administer in the name of Deity given in the Mormon Church by ordination; also the body of those so ordained including those of the Aaronic as well as the Melchizedek orders.”⁶ The existence of this unique LDS definition explains why, when non–Latter-day Saints refer to the former priesthood ban, they use terminology like this, from a 2012 Atlantic article: “Blacks could not be priests.”⁷ People of other faiths or no faith at all would never say, “Blacks could not hold the priesthood.” Such a construction would make no sense to them.

Some scholars have attempted to expand the definition of priesthood used by Latter-day Saints. For instance, Casey Griffiths and Scott Woodward interviewed Church historian Lisa Olsen Tait in a series on their Church History Matters podcast.⁸ In these podcasts, they brought up the idea that since women are permitted to participate in performing temple ordinances, they must hold some sort of priesthood authority. If this is true, we should ask why women can perform ordinances in the temple but not outside of it. Griffiths, Woodward, and Tait seem to agree that there is a special sort of temple priesthood. But women’s participation in temple ordinances for some reason still does not grant them the authority to baptize, to hold office, or to preside in priesthood quorums. Because this “temple priesthood’ is rather nebulous and raises more questions than it answers, in this post I will focus instead on the accepted and more restrictive definition of priesthood used in the Church outside of temple walls.

The standard LDS definition of priesthood is certainly not an ancient concept. It does not appear in the Bible. And the word priesthood appears only eight times in the Book of Mormon, all of them in the book of Alma and all of them referring to the condition of being a high priest. For instance, Alma₂ delivered the judgment seat to Nephihah and confined himself “wholly to the high priesthood” (Alma 4:20), in other words, to the office of high priest over the church. Indeed, priesthood was not an important concept in the Book of Mormon, although authority certainly was.

The traditional usage of priesthood is also ubiquitous in the early documentary history of the modern Church. In the earliest records, priesthood refers to the office of priest, and high priesthood refers to the office of high priest. In a meeting held on October 25, 1831, for example, both Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon spoke of elders having the privilege of being ordained to the high priesthood, or being ordained high priests. The high priesthood was not an overarching authority that included the office of elder. It was simply the state of being a high priest. As Joseph’s concept of authority expanded, and as he needed to share authority with others, priesthood evolved into something more encompassing than just the condition of being a priest. It eventually became a form of authority that was divided into a lesser and a higher priesthood, each including several additional offices (such as deacon, bishop, elder, and Apostle).

So, what does this historical and linguistic development of the concept of priesthood have to do with women “holding” this priesthood? To put it as simply as possible, if priesthood as authority granted by God to humans is not an ancient concept but is a modern development that did not even exist when the Book of Mormon was translated or when the Church was organized, then we cannot look to ancient records to shed any light on why this authority might be withheld from women. And if there is no revelation to Joseph Smith stating that only men may receive this authority by ordination, then the only argument we have for denying such ordinations to woman is tradition.

But even tradition leaves a window cracked open. In the third meeting of the Nauvoo Relief Society, Joseph Smith spoke to those gathered together. According to the meeting minutes, Joseph said “that the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuou[s] and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day— as in Paul’s day— that it is the privilege of each member to live long and enjoy health.”⁹

Joseph loved to share authority with others, as long as he could stand at the pinnacle, and so he apparently wanted to pattern the Relief Society after the ancient priesthood, as he understood it, making the women “a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day.” In the temple today, men and women are told that someday they will be “kings and queens, priests and priestesses.” What is a priest? It is an office created to perform the work of God. If so, then what is a priestess? It seems obvious that it is the female counterpart to the office of priest. So, if women are promised in the temple that they will someday become priestesses, why not now? Why only in the hereafter? Why will a form of equality reign in the eternities that is denied us now? Is this really God’s will, or is it perhaps just social custom, tradition?

It appears from the linguistic history of the word priesthood in early Mormonism that Joseph recognized scriptural offices, such as priest, bishop, apostle, and deacon, but he needed a way to organize them. So, he gradually altered the meaning of the term priesthood and expanded it from its traditional meaning of the state of being a priest so that it eventually became a vessel that could contain all the offices mentioned in scripture. He then divided it so that a lesser priesthood vessel contained the offices of deacon, teacher, priest, and bishop and a higher priesthood contained the offices of elder, seventy, high priest, patriarch, and apostle.

The point, though, regarding women is that since this evolution of the meaning of priesthood is a modern phenomenon, we cannot look to ancient patterns to determine the exact shape and parameters of this authority we today call priesthood. And in Joseph Smith’s revelations, nowhere do we find a specific prohibition against women “holding” this priesthood.

Greg Prince very cautiously addresses this issue. He writes, “Smith never explicitly confirmed or denied the possibility of women assuming a role equal to that of men at all levels of church ministry and administration. However, in the course of his ministry women gradually began to do things which today are generally associated with priesthood.”¹⁰ He adds, “There is no record that Smith ever stated or implied that women would eventually be ordained to the same priesthood as men. Neither, however, did he indicate that such ordination was not possible. There is abundant evidence, both from Smith and from other contemporary church leaders, that a trend of gradual ecclesiastical empowerment of women was anticipated, though perhaps not to full parity with men. Most statements suggesting increased female empowerment carried caveats.”¹¹ Prince concludes, “In summary, no definitive evidence exists indicating that Smith intended to ordain women to the same priesthood as men. Nor did he proscribe such a possibility.”¹²

It is altogether possible that Joseph’s reluctance to grant full and equal authority to women may have been the consequence not of his own beliefs and understanding of God’s power but instead of the societal constraints under which he lived, for women in the 1830s and 1840s were in many ways legally and societally subservient to the men they married and were related to. In many ways, Joseph was pushing against those limitations through his sharing of authority with women. Since the legal and societal constraints of coverture no longer exist in our day, at least in theory, perhaps they should no longer constrain the thinking of Church leaders in the twenty-first century. We might well ask what Joseph would do if he were alive today.

The Source of God’s Authority

In my article titled The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence, I explore the rather audacious question of why God can exercise authority over us. I point out that in Joseph’s early writings, God is assumed to have created the spirits of men and women (see, for instance, 2 Nephi 2:14 and Moses 3:4–7; 6:36, 51). But in 1833, Joseph received a revelation that introduced the idea of uncreated intelligence (D&C 93:24). And in 1839, he began teaching that individual spirits were not created but have always existed: “The Spirit of Man is not a created being; it existed from Eternity & will exist to eternity. Anything created cannot be eternal.”¹³ This doctrine appeared on several different occasions (August 1839, February 1840, January 1841, March 1841, April 1842, and April 1844 [the King Follett Discourse]).

This shift in a significant doctrine raises an important question. If God created our spirits, then obviously he has every right to exercise authority over us. But if he did not—if we always existed as sentient beings—what gives God the right to exercise authority over us? My answer to this question, I believe, had not been suggested previously, but here it is: “If, as Joseph boldly declared, we are eternal beings whose minds or intelligence could not be created, and if, as the account of Abraham suggests, God came down in the beginning among a group of already existing beings, then we were, in a very real sense, self-existent and independent, and God, no matter how much more intelligent or perfect he was, would have had no right to dictate to us how we were to exist. To put it in modern terms, he did not conduct a hostile takeover of our eternal spirits or intelligences. No, this is not how God would behave. More consistent with the pattern he has established in all his dealings with us, he likely entered into a covenant relationship with his future children. Seeing his glory and intelligence when he ‘came down,’ we naturally desired to become like him, so we accepted his offer to become our Father, and he promised to place us in a ‘sphere,’ or repeated spheres (see D&C 93:30), where we could progress, where he would institute laws that would enable us to advance.”¹⁴

So, if we ask the question in a slightly different way, we might say, what is the source of God’s authority over us? And the answer would be that he has authority over us because we consented to it. In other words, God’s authority over us originated with us. Why is this insight important to the question of granting women the priesthood? The answer, which was ancillary to the main point of my previous article and was therefore buried in a footnote, is central to the main thrust of this post: “If 100 percent of us consented to give our Father authority over us, why should we think it is somehow appropriate that he then share that authority again with only half of us?”¹⁵ If priesthood, as we have come to define it, is authority God shares with us to do his work (which is also our work), why should we assume that only half of us can receive and exercise that authority? If men and women truly are equal in the sight of heaven, it makes no sense for women to be excluded from an authority that they actually granted our Heavenly Father. That would be eternally unfair.

While details about the nature of marital and family relations in the celestial glory have not been revealed, according to the quasi-scriptural “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” we are all children of “heavenly parents,” not just a Heavenly Father. Further, while in this life “fathers are to preside over their families” and “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children,” “fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”¹⁶ How partners can be equal when one presides over the other is apparently an eternal mystery, but we must assume that if earthly parents are to be equal, then heavenly parents must be also. Can they be equals, though, when one holds authority that the other does not? We know precious little about a Heavenly Mother, but if she is indeed an equal to our Heavenly Father, we must assume she also holds authority over her children, an authority that we granted her.

 

Conclusions

Today we see a concerning exodus of members from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially among younger women. One primary cause of this lopsided disaffiliation is the unequal status of male and female members. No amount of rationalization or dancing around the issue can prevent many women in the Church from feeling both inferior and limited in their participation. The Church has made a few concessions, such as allowing women to speak and pray in worship services, to act as witnesses to ordinances, to function in leadership roles in missions, and, most recently, to serve as Sunday School presidents and counselors. But the fact remains that women cannot “hold” the priesthood or be ordained to priesthood offices.

The question Church leaders must wrestle with is whether these limitations are divinely appointed or are merely tradition. This post has presented two arguments in support of the latter proposition. Indeed, the second argument insists that God’s authority ought not be restricted to only half of his children because that authority came from all of his children in the first place. This is an audacious claim, but I believe it is both logically and theologically sound, if we accept Joseph Smith’s later teachings. If we do not, then where do we draw the line? Before he determined that priesthood is an abstract authority or afterward? When looking at the doctrine of priesthood and the related doctrine of premortal existence, we must acknowledge that Joseph’s theology was not consistent from the start. It developed over time. And if so, we perhaps ought to ask where his theology would have landed if he had lived another twenty or forty years. I suspect that if he had, he would have increasingly shared priesthood authority with women. This appears to be the direction he was headed.

We cannot know what Joseph would have done, but current Church leaders can certainly take a lesson from President Spencer W. Kimball, who wrestled in prayer over the priesthood ban that prevented Black men and boys from participating fully in that priesthood. An even larger ban is still in effect. What would heaven’s answer be to a similar plea? We cannot know unless we ask.

___________________

1. Jana Riess, “Why Are So Many Young Women Leaving the LDS Church?” Salt Lake Tribune, August 5, 2026, https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/08/05/why-are-so-many-young-women/.

2. See Roger Terry, “The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 49, no. 3 (2016): 109–44; Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 51, no. 1 (2018): 1–37; and Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, Quorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 51, no. 2 (2018): 1–40.

3. “Priesthood,” Topics and Questions, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/priesthood?lang=eng.

4. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1993), s.v. “priesthood.”

5. American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 ed., s.v. “priesthood (n.),” accessed September 22, 2026, http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/priesthood.

6. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1993), s.v. “priesthood.”

7. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, “How (George) Romney Championed Civil Rights and Challenged His Church,” The Atlantic, Aug. 13, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/how-george-romney-championedcivil-rights-and-challenged-his-church/261073.

8. See, for instance, “How Are Women Connected to the Priesthood?” episode 1 of Women and Priesthood Series, Church History Matters Podcast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GO1lsQ1vBw.

9. “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Third Meeting of the Relief Society,” March 30 [31], 1842, Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, p. 22, Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2026, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book/45.

10. Gregory A. Prince, Power from On High (Salt Lake City: Signature Books,” 1995), 201.

11. Prince, Power from On High, 204–5.

12. Prince, Power from On High, 208.

13. Discourse, between circa 26 June and circa 4 August 1839–A, as Reported by William Clayton, p. 13, Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 18, 2026, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-between-circa-26-june-and-circa-4-august-1839-a-as-reported-by-william-clayton/3?highlight=The%20Spirit%20of%20Man%20is%20not%20a%20created%20being;%20it%20existed%20from%20Eternity.

14. Terry, “Source of God’s Authority,” 135.

15. Terry, “Source of God’s Authority,” 138, fn. 65.

16. The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng, emphasis added.

The Tax Gap, the GOP, and Billionaires

 

In my last post, I included a chart showing where the federal debt would be if Congress had not enacted the Bush and Trump tax cuts. Long story short, we would have a very manageable debt burden. Today, I want to focus on a related issue, namely, the underfunding of the IRS and how much money that is costing you and me.

On September 16, 2026, the New York Times ran an article by Andrew Duehren, a reporter who covers tax policy and the IRS, in which he explains that the Trump administration has held up publication of an annual Internal Revenue Service estimate of unpaid taxes, “a delay that could mask the fiscal cost of the steep decline in the agency’s ability to audit the rich.”

Nothing new here. The Trump administration has withheld several reports on statistics that reflect unfavorably on its policies, if you can call them that. Duehren points out that the tax gap estimate has been released sporadically over the years, but during the Biden administration, the IRS started releasing it annually at the request of members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.

The most recent report, for the year 2022, estimated that roughly $700 billion in owed taxes went uncollected, although it figured about $90 billion would eventually be paid. That’s a pretty big chunk of change, even when the annual deficit for that year exceeded $1.4 trillion. In fact, it’s almost half of the deficit.

Duehren explains that income with third-party verification, like wages, is almost always paid. The tax gap between what is owed and what it actually collected results largely from self-reported income, such as business profits. No surprise there. So, what we have is the ordinary worker in America paying an honest tax, while many business owners, including the president, are tax cheats. (And Trump has recently tried to arrange a deal with the DOJ in which he and his family will never be audited by the IRS. Gee, I wonder why.) To compound the problem, the Trump administration has slashed about a quarter of the IRS workforce, so the agency no longer has the staff to audit many of these tax cheats. This move goes hand-in-glove with Trump’s repeated pardoning of criminals convicted of fraud, usually exempting them from having to repay the victims they defrauded. The result is the same: the wealthy cheat the system, and the ordinary citizen is harmed.

The tax gap number is, of course, a shot in the dark, because it’s hard for the IRS to count income that hasn’t been reported, but the tax gap estimate comes from past audits that are then extrapolated for the most recent year. Not an exact science, but we can be sure that the number is very large. “For a time,” says Duehren, “there was bipartisan interest in giving the I.R.S. more resources to narrow the tax gap, since doing so generates more tax revenue for the government without having to raise taxes.” You would think that the Republicans would be all in favor of getting revenue without raising taxes. But “that changed after Democrats approved an additional $80 billion for the I.R.S. in 2022.” Republicans started attacking the agency and clawed back much of that $80 billion. “Republicans didn’t like that it really points the finger at the wealthy as being the problem,” said Barry Johnson, who was chief data and analytics officer at the I.R.S.

And this points to the heart of the problem. The GOP would love to get more money for the country without raising taxes, but not if that means auditing billionaires and business owners. Anyone who thinks the Republican Party of today represents the little guy in America should just follow the money. We’ve had three massive and unnecessary tax cuts that benefited primarily the wealthy, and now the GOP has slashed funding for the only government agency that actually brings in more revenue than it spends.

When the Democrats are in control, the Republicans scream about the debt. But when they are in charge, they do everything in their power to put more money in the hands of the wealthy, even if it means ballooning the debt to unheard-of levels. We just shot past $40 trillion, but do we hear Republicans offering to reverse their Big Ugly Billionaire Bill Act (BUBBA)? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

A Couple of Charts

 

Bobby Kogan and Jared Bernstein, a couple of economists at the Center for American Progress, published a study about the national debt that included a chart I’ve been wanting someone to create for some time now. It shows where our national debt is compared with where it would be without the Bush and Trump tax cuts. Here’s the chart.

This data shows clearly that our massive debt, which just passed $40 trillion and is now more than 100 percent of GDP, is pretty much a function of Republican tax cuts. The original chart is interactive, so you can see what the numbers are for any given year. For instance, the debt for 2026 is projected to be 102.5 percent of GDP. Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts that benefited primarily the wealthy, the debt would have been 60.43 percent of GDP. Quite manageable. The chart projects debt with and without the tax cuts through 2055. In that year, the national debt is projected to be 187.55 percent of GDP. Without the tax cuts, that figure drops to 47.85 percent of GDP.

Of course, these numbers are projections, based on a slew of assumptions, but that is how economics works. This reminds me of one of my favorite economist jokes. It seems a physicist, an engineer, and an economist were stranded on a desert island. On the beach, they found a can of tuna that had washed ashore. The physicist suggested they could build a fire, and the heat would cause the tuna to expand and explode the can. The engineer proposed that he could calculate the stresses on the can and arrange the three of them in the correct places around the fire to catch the tuna as it came flying out of the can. The engineer said, “Wait a minute. First, let’s assume we had a can opener.” My other favorite economist joke is that economists are people who work with numbers who don’t have the personality to be accountants. I have an economist friend who would take umbrage with the second joke. He is, after all, a cartoonist in his spare time. I’m not sure he would find the first joke funny.

Anyway, I’m assuming that Kogan and Bernstein used a lot of data and made the best projections they could, given the large number of factors involved. What we can be sure of is that the debt would definitely be much smaller if Republican congresses had not enacted the two tax cuts (and the extension of the Trump tax cuts in last year’s Big Ugly Billionaire Bill Act, or BUBBA). We are in a debt crisis not, as Republicans insist, because we are spending too much on things like Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, but because we gave the wealthy two massive tax cuts and shrunk our revenue stream significantly. And if Congress had not enacted the Reagan tax cuts, we would probably be sitting on a surplus rather than a ballooning debt.

The other chart I came across recently is an Economist/YouGov poll showing Donald Trump’s approval rating on several issues from January 26, 2025, through August 10, 2026. Apparently, not many Americans agree with Donald that we are in a “Golden Age.” Here’s the chart.

Of course, if you listen to Donald, this is all just fake news. I guess we’ll see in November. A surprising poll came out yesterday, though, in deep-red Arkansas. A Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas) poll shows Democratic Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner now leading Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who is seeking a third term. Shoffner is a sixth-generation farmer who closed her farming operation last year because of the economic crisis facing Arkansas farmers. The damage caused by trade wars and higher diesel and fertilizer costs are making it very difficult for farmers. Shoffner said she has met voters across Arkansas who backed Trump in recent elections, but who now feel betrayed by what is happening to their communities. Yes, all fake news.

BUBBA

 

Last week, I read an article in the Salt Lake Tribune reprinted from the New York Times about how hospitals across the country are seeing more and more uninsured patients in their emergency rooms and clinics. Some reported an increase of about 20 percent. Many hospital executives attributed this trend to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 2025 that provided trillions of dollars in tax cuts and paid for a portion of them with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and a few other items, including cuts to clean-energy initiatives. Democrats warned of the impact this bill would have on millions of Americans, but the Republicans didn’t care. They passed this bill without a single Democratic vote. I prefer to call this legislation the Big Ugly Billionaire Bill Act, or BUBBA. And BUBBA is everything the Democrats warned it would be.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the bill, as written, would provide tax cuts (that benefit primarily the wealthy) of $5.36 trillion. To help pay for these cuts, BUBBA slashes health-care payments by $1.1 trillion and SNAP (or food stamps) benefits by $200 billion. Another $540 billion is saved by phasing out tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles. BUBBA also increased defense spending by $173 billion (maybe they were anticipating the war in Iran?) and immigration and border spending by $176 billion. The overall effect of BUBBA, as written, is projected to be an increase in the debt of $4.11 trillion. If the Republicans get their way, though, and make the provisions in BUBBA permanent, the overall effect will be an increase in the debt of $5.52 trillion.

In addition to passing BUBBA, the Republicans also refused to extend health insurance subsidies that took effect during the COVID pandemic. Their refusal is expected to cause between 3.6 and 4 million Americans to lose their health insurance. In total, financial hardship is expected to cause over 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance. The increase in uninsured people visiting emergency rooms is simply proof that the Republican attack on health care is succeeding. All this while more and more wealth migrates into the pockets of people who don’t need any more money but can’t seem to get enough. They buy politicians and avoid paying taxes, so our ballooning federal debt just expands faster and faster.

When the Democrats are in power, the Republicans scream and holler about the debt. But when they are in power, they do everything in their power to increase it at a far swifter clip than the Democrats ever manage. The hypocrisy here is too extreme to adequately describe with words. Basically, the Republicans got what they have always wanted: as much money as possible going to the wealthy, and millions of Americans priced out of health insurance.

We. Are. The. Only. Country. On. Earth. That. Does. This! Every other advanced country and most underdeveloped countries provide health care to all of their citizens, and even to noncitizens. And they do it for half of what we pay and get better health results. When my oldest son was serving a mission in Germany, his appendix ruptured, and he spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, half of that time in the ICU after undergoing surgery to remove the appendix and treat the infection that had spread throughout his abdomen. While still recuperating, he was assigned to the mission office after his release from the hospital, and so he got to see the bill that Missionary Medical ended up paying. It was so much less than my outpatient hernia surgery in America that my eyes almost popped out of my head. Yes, he (or the Church) benefited from Germany’s “socialized” medicine, even though he was not a German citizen.

We are also the only country where citizens regularly declare bankruptcy because of medical bills. According to Forbes, “7.4 percent of U.S. residents experience catastrophic healthcare expenses annually. . . . Further, estimates suggest that inability to afford costs of medical care contributes to at least 530,000 personal bankruptcy filings annually.”¹ Why do we put up with such a brutal and uncivilized health-care system? There is only one answer: the Republican Party.

Oh, we have plenty of money to give tax breaks to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and to spend hundreds of billions on an ill-advised war in Iran that Trump’s ego won’t let him pull out of. But we don’t have enough to give food to starving children or basic health care to the working class. What kind of sick society are we? What kind of Christians are the Evangelicals and Mormons who keep voting for this benighted party? And now that the Republicans are learning that their policies are extremely unpopular and are seeing a potential calamity in November, they are resurrecting the old idiotic Communist scare from the 1950s. Joseph McCarthy would be proud.

The damage being done by the Republican Party, not just to our constitutional republic but also to millions of individual lives, will not be easy to undo. Some things may never get fixed. And what do I hear from my Mormon friends and neighbors? Well, most of them are so uninformed they don’t have a clue about what is happening in their own country. So, they keep voting Republican, because, well, abortion and gay marriage, you know, and now they can toss in trans men participating in women’s sports. As a former member of our ward once said in our high priests group, “Well, what other issues are there?” I could have strangled him. But he was my friend and a good, faithful Latter-day Saint who hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the world he lives in.

Now, here’s a sad fact. Guess who else is abysmally uninformed? Donald Trump. He has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear and who are afraid to tell him the truth. This ranges from unflattering poll numbers to the actual inventory figures of America’s missiles. He even has a cute little shadow named Natalie Harp (aka the “human printer”) who follows him everywhere he goes and feeds him positive news stories about himself, often carrying a portable printer to provide physical copies on the spot. Trump doesn’t read much else, ignoring briefings and serious news sources. His diet is primarily Truth Social and Fox News. So, we have to wonder what he really understands about the world and the complex circumstances his whimsical decisions affect. He lives in a bubble of his own making that keeps him from seeing the real damage he is causing.

Well, back to where I started. BUBBA is doing exactly what BUBBA was designed to do, and millions of Americans (including many Latter-day Saints) are losing their health insurance and the food they need to be productive citizens, and the Republican politicians are cheering and lying about it all. I just hope that in November, Trump’s incompetence will obstruct his intentions, and we will have a free and fair election. If so, maybe we can start to turn this country around. But I’m not holding my breath. The Constitution is hanging by that proverbial thread, and the Mormons, led by Senator Mike Lee, are rushing forward with scissors.

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1. Joshua P. Cohen, “Increasing Burdens of Medical Debt and Bankruptcy Are Uniquely American,” Forbes, April 5, 2026, https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2026/04/05/increasing-burdens-of-medical-debt-and-bankruptcy-are-uniquely-american/.

Book of Mormon Questions #13 (Sermons)

 To see the context for this and other questions in this series, please see the introduction, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. 

What about the Sermons in the Book of Mormon?

The Book of Mormon is many things. It is a religious history of (primarily) the Nephite people (with a lot of war chapters thrown in). But a significant number of pages are also devoted to sermons delivered by various prophets. In this regard, the book is very different from the Old Testament. There is some preaching in the Old Testament. For instance, some scholars have viewed the entire book of Deuteronomy as a series of three sermons: (1) Chapters 1–4 focus on a historical review and a subsequent exhortation; (2) chapters 4–26 call the people to covenant loyalty, expound the covenant law, and explain covenant renewal; and (3) chapters 27–30 lay out possible blessings and curses for Israel, and end with a concluding challenge.¹ Also, Joshua’s farewell address in Joshua 23–24 addresses the nation at Shechem, recounts God’s faithfulness and challenges the people to choose whom they will serve. Some scholars also consider Solomon’s dedicatory prayer at the temple and Ezra’s reading of the law in Nehemiah 8 as sermons. But when compared with, say, Jacob’s sermon in 2 Nephi 6–10; King Benjamin’s farewell address (Mosiah 2–5); Abinadi’s preaching to King Noah and his priests (Mosiah 13–15); Alma’s sermons in Zarahemla (Alma 5), Gideon (Alma 7), Ammonihah (Alma 9, 12, 13), and Antionum (to the Zoramites, Alma 32–33); or Samuel the Lamanite’s preaching from the city wall in Helaman 13–15, there are significant differences. These Book of Mormon sermons are basically well-prepared theological treatises, most dealing with the life and atonement of Jesus.

In this regard, they are more similar to sermons of Stephen or Peter or Paul in the book of Acts, but there are also significant differences. The New Testament preachers are speaking after Jesus’s death and resurrection and are witnesses of his life and mission. The Book of Mormon preachers mentioned above are speaking before Jesus was ever born and are laying out fairly involved theological arguments addressing doctrines that would take centuries to coalesce in the Old World. In this respect, the Book of Mormon prophets were far more advanced in their theology than their later New Testament counterparts. Indeed, as I’ve explored elsewhere,² atonement theology in the Book of Mormon reflects explanations that developed many centuries after the New Testament accounts were written.

As I discussed in question #5 of this series, “there are doctrines in the Book of Mormon that are taught explicitly, and there are doctrines that can be inferred from events described in the narrative. Sometimes these explicit and implicit doctrines do not square with each other.” I then gave three examples. Most of these explicit doctrines are taught in sermons or sermon-like preaching, while the implicit doctrines show up in the narrative history. I raised the question, based on Royal Skousen’s critical text work, whether these formal, explicit doctrines are the result of the Book of Mormon translation being what Skousen calls “a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one.” I then asked whether these explicit doctrines were perhaps added by the translator, whoever that was, and were not on the plates. This is very possible and makes sense when considered in conjunction with another question I raised earlier.

In question #9 of this series, about the ubiquity of scriptures in the Book of Mormon, I explained the difficulty of writing and the low level of literacy in the ancient world. Writing materials were very expensive, and, as a result, the ability to read and write was rare. By some scholarly estimates, literacy in ancient Israel was as low as 3 percent, but perhaps as high as 7.7 percent. But in the Book of Mormon, we have several lengthy and rather complex theological sermons, which raises obvious questions. Who, for instance, recorded these sermons? And what did that person write with and on? We have almost no evidence of writing methods or materials in the Book of Mormon, except for engraving on plates, and this was a tedious process used (we can assume) exclusively by historians who were recording events and dialogue long after the fact on a medium intended to preserve the text for centuries. But we have no evidence in the book for what medium people such as captain Moroni used to write epistles to his enemy or to the chief judge.

Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse provides a lesson in caution regarding our assumptions about Book of Mormon sermons. There were no shorthand takers in Nauvoo like George Watt, who later recorded many of the sermons of Church leaders in Utah, and even Watt’s shorthand notes were later expanded into a final publishable text. For the King Follett sermon, by contrast, we have four different long-hand accounts of Joseph’s speech, and they are varyingly incomplete and quite different from each other with some overlap. Several ambitious scholars (or Church leaders such as Joseph Fielding Smith) have taken these four long-hand records and created amalgamations, but the final product of their efforts do not agree on a single final text. Consequently, we really have no idea what, exactly, Joseph Smith said on that memorable April day.

Most Book of Mormon sermons did not occur in a setting like Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse. Perhaps someone was taking notes, but more likely either a listener or the speaker himself wrote down from memory what he said in the days or weeks after the address. We know, for instance, that Alma hid from King Noah’s servants and “being concealed for many days did write all the words which Abinadi had spoken” (Mosiah 17:4). Abinadi, of course, quoted a fair chunk of Old Testament text in his preaching to King Noah and his priests, so we must ask if Alma had that record with him in hiding or if he added those details later, perhaps in Zarahemla, where he would have had access to the brass plates of Laban. Nevertheless, we are told that Alma recorded “all the words of Abinadi,” or at least what he could remember of them, and we know how unreliable memory is.

Alma’s son Alma gave many sermons in different Nephite cities. He apparently did not have a scribe with him, so he must have tried to record later, as accurately as he could, the words he (and sometimes Amulek) had spoken to these various audiences. And he had much to distract him from simply going home and writing this down while it was all fresh in his mind. For instance, he was locked up in prison for several days, was tortured, and then witnessed the burning of those who believed his words.

I think we must assume that, at best, what we have in the Book of Mormon is a later reminiscence of the sermons that were given. None of these were like today’s general conference talks that are written in advance and then spoken in a formal televised presentation. (And I know from being involved in postconference Monday morning editing sessions at Church magazines that the written talks have to be reconciled with what is actually spoken from the pulpit. We called these discrepancies “pulpit changes.” Some were from bad teleprompter reading, but some were very intentional. Maybe I’ll do a post on this experience sometime.) The Book of Mormon sermons were also not like Brigham Young’s extemporaneous speeches that were recorded in Pitman shorthand by George Watt, then later expanded and massaged into final form, and (we assume) approved and perhaps edited by Brigham. They were not even like Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse, where four separate scribes took long-hand notes that were later amalgamated into an approximation of what Joseph had spoken. So, we must ask, how close are the Book of Mormon sermons and preaching to what was actually spoken by the prophet in question? Probably not very.

And of course there is the possibility that these sermons, as Royal’s work shows is very possible, were simply added later by the translator, whoever that was. One thing I’m quite sure of is that Joseph Smith did not simply cook up these sermons in his head and dictate them to his scribes. Joseph may have been bright, but his language skills were nowhere advanced enough to pull that off. The complexity of the Book of Mormon text is far beyond Joseph’s meager abilities at that young age. That explanation, which many skeptics have employed, is really just a lazy attempt at explaining away a very complex book.

So, what are we to make of these rather sophisticated theological sermons that we find regularly in the Book of Mormon? I tend to lean toward the theory that they were added by whoever concocted the final English text that was revealed to Joseph through the infamous stone in the hat. And how that happened is another question altogether.

__________________

1. See Pastor Nicoletti, “From Mountain to Mission,” Presbyterian Church, September 5, 2021, https://www.faithtacoma.org/deuteronomy-nicoletti/from-mountain-to-mission-deuteronomy-11-8.

2. Roger Terry, “Getting the Cosmology Right,” Dialogue 54, no. 4 (2021): 71–98.

A Father’s Day Tribute to Orvil Terry

 

On this Father’s Day, my thoughts have turned, of course, to my father, and I thought it would be appropriate to share a couple of pieces from his funeral program. He died at age 97, on September 15, 2022, and the funeral was held on September 23 in his ward’s meetinghouse in North Ogden, even though I had brought him to an assisted living center in Provo after he fell and broke his hip in May 2020, so I could look after him. We wanted the funeral to be at his ward’s meetinghouse for two reasons: first, because it was completed when he was bishop, and, second, because he had so many dear friends in that ward, whom he had cared for in so many ways, and who loved him dearly and missed him. Because he had only two children, my sister, Jolene, and I were the main speakers, but I wanted his friends to learn a little something about his early life, so I abridged the first part of his personal history and had my oldest son read it. I also felt there was something for us today to learn from his growing up in the Great Depression and his years serving in World War II. What follows, then, is Dad’s description of his early life followed by my remarks.

Orvil Terry, Early Life Sketch

Because no one alive today remembers Orvil Terry’s early life, and because he tells it so well in his personal history, we decided to let Orvil tell his own story today. This account is excerpted from the personal history he wrote in 2014.

My mother, Eunetta Elliker, was born November 30, 1887, at Cedar City, Iron County, Utah. It was primarily from her that I learned to work hard. This she did throughout her life, partly of necessity. With a large family, and very little of the world’s goods, due mostly to losing everything during the Great Depression of the 1930s, she was forced to do many things just to help provide meager necessities for the family. During that time, dad could not find employment, except for a period with the WPA (Work Projects of America).

As a result, mother, in addition to caring for the family, which included scrubbing clothes by hand on a washboard, used to do such things as bake and sell donuts door to door, pick all kinds of fruit, berries, and vegetables, taking her pay and the children’s pay in kind to provide much of the food needs of the family. It was during those early years I learned, at her side, that work is a necessary part of life.

There were 10 of us born to my parents:

Eunetta May

Jennie Louella

Frances Pearl

Pheby Idella

Amos Franklin

Ivena Ann

Irene Vilate

Orvil Kay

Verda Louise

Louis Vee

My first memories of childhood start at age 5 when we lived in Lehi, Utah County. It was there that I have my first remembrance of Christmas. One of the older children must have received a sleigh, as my sister Vilate and I were taking turns going over a head gate in the creek across the street onto the ice about 3 feet below. On what turned out to be my last turn, the ice broke, and I ended up downstream a few feet under the ice. Vilate called for help and my brother Amos came and fished me out.

We then moved into an old frame house on the west edge of Santaquin. There I attended the 3^rd and 4^th grades. One day in the fall, dad made a wooden barrel full of sauerkraut, which he put behind the house. How delicious it tasted when we were permitted to dip out an icy hand full & eat straight from the barrel. Hard times and scarce food can make one learn to enjoy many things. That’s no doubt why, all my life, I have found almost every kind of food pleasant to the taste and have enjoyed trying new things.

From Santaquin, we packed up to move into a rental in Lehi, only to find when we got there that the owner had rented it to another party. There we were, all our goods on a vehicle and no place to live. Dad had to turn to his brother, Thomas, who lived in Payson. He let us move into part of his house, where we lived until the spring of 1937, when we moved into our home in Enterprise.

Shortly before leaving Payson, I acquired a medium-sized black dog, which became my constant companion during leisure hours over the next couple of years. One day, he jumped off the back of dad’s truck when another dog came out barking. He landed in front of the rear wheels, was run over and killed. For me, it was like losing a member of the family. I have not since become really attached to another animal.

By the time we moved to Enterprise, the Depression was ending. Since few people there had much, and I was only 12 years old, I never really felt the hardship or felt deprived, as I might have had I been a few years older during those difficult years. I do recall, however, the embarrassment of not being able, as a teenager, to afford a five-cent candy bar when my friends occasionally bought one. Sometimes, I pretended not to like candy, while at the same time wanting one so much I could hardly stand it. Usually, one of my friends would offer to buy me one, but mostly my pride would not let me accept. The few times I did accept their offer, I ate the bar so slowly, savoring each bite that they thought I didn’t care for candy.

My few years at Enterprise were so pleasant and carefree that I still think of it as home, though I have no desire to return there to live.

An exceptionally large crop of pine nuts in the fall of 1936 made it possible for us to purchase an old frame home on the west end of Main Street in Enterprise. Dad, mother, Frances, Amos, and a friend of Amos’s, went into the hills west and northwest of Enterprise where they camped for about two months, until the weather forced them to leave the hills. During that time the family members picked up about 4 tons of pine nuts, which dad spent the winter selling. They sold for 25 cents per pound roasted or 15 cents in bulk unroasted. That money made it possible to purchase the home on a half-acre lot and a 1934 Ford pickup.

Much of my leisure time, during those teenage years, was spent with a 22-caliber rifle and my dog, wandering the fields and washes hunting rabbits. The favorite swimming hole for us boys was a waist deep pool southeast of town in the irrigation canal. We swam in the nude. I doubt that any of us knew what a swimming suit was and couldn’t have afforded one had we known. One day, after stripping for a swim, I did a backward dive into the canal, only to find that someone had thrown big rocks into the bottom of the pool. I hit the top of my head on one and might have drowned, except that a friend pulled me out.

At 16, I bought my first car, a 1928 Chevrolet, which cost me $25.00. The radiator leaked so much that I had to carry considerable water to make a trip of 50 miles or so. About 5 miles was all the car would go without starting to boil. My friends and I had some good times in the old clunker, and the freedom it gave us.

In the middle of [the 11^th grade], I quit and went to Las Vegas, Nevada, to work. My uncle John Elliker, in one of his less rational moments, had suggested I come to Las Vegas where job opportunities were plentiful. Thus, I arrived, unexpected, on his doorstep one afternoon. It must have been a shock to him and his family, but he was kind enough to put me up, feed me, and help me find a job with a motel construction company. Then, I went to work at Henderson, Nevada, where a magnesium plant was being constructed. I worked first as a laborer on a landscape crew (the only job I was ever fired from), then in a sheet metal shop, from there to the lumber yard unloading lumber from freight cars. Work in the lumber yard was one of the most physically draining experiences of my life. Imagine, in the heat of a Las Vegas summer, breaking open a railroad car filled to within 2 feet of the roof with lumber, sliding in on your stomach, and starting to push the boards out, while someone on the ground stacked them. In a few minutes the person in the car would be soaked with sweat. We ate salt pills regularly to keep from being overcome by heat stroke.

After going home for a few weeks, I went back to Las Vegas and worked as a machinist draw filer in the machine shop at the same plant. I should have stayed with that job. It paid exceptionally well and the building was air conditioned. Oh, the foolishness of restless youth. It was the job in the machine shop that made it possible for me to pay off my parent’s debts and buy mother her first electric washing machine. 

I left Las Vegas about November of 1942 and went to Salt Lake City, where I worked for Nelson Ricks Creamery, which company supplied eggs, butter, cheese, and other products to the military bases in the Salt Lake and Ogden areas. In May of 1943, restless to return home, I quit my job. In doing so, the company threatened to turn me in to the draft board. To which I foolishly said go ahead. Since the company was considered necessary to the defense effort, I was exempt from the draft, and might have remained so for some time, perhaps even the remainder of the war. But being young and foolish, I quit and went home. In 2 weeks, I received my notice to report to Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City for induction into the military.

I reported on June 12, 1943, and was immediately sent to Camp Roberts, California, for basic training. In addition to the regular training designed to break one’s independent spirit and make a person completely subject to authority, I was trained on the 105 mm howitzer, learning to load and fire at targets out on the firing range. One of our regular activities was to run an obstacle course of 2 or 3 miles over rough terrain and along dry, sandy river bottoms. I saw the benefits of not smoking as week after week nonsmokers, mostly LDS fellows, consistently finished the course well ahead of those who smoked.

From Camp Roberts, I was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for what is known as line training. There I was assigned to the Flash Section of the 288^th Artillery Observation Battalion. I was also assigned to drive a Jeep to chauffeur one of the officers on our regular field exercises. This duty carried over to Europe, where I drove a Weapons Carrier pulling a trailer, during the remainder of the war.

My training at Fort Riley was to prepare me to be a Geodetic Computer. This skill was later used to compute, by triangulation, the location of enemy troops or other military targets. Observation posts were set up along the front lines, where each post would call in a reading on an enemy target. We would then compute the location and call down artillery fire on that area.

In September of 1944, we shipped to England. In November, we sailed to La Havre, France. On December 19, 1944, we drove through Belgium into Luxembourg toward the front at the German border. While moving up that night, with headlights on, our convoy was strafed by a German plane. Lights were immediately extinguished and we all scattered into nearby ditches. Fortunately, we suffered no casualties and lost only 2 trucks.

We hadn’t gone far into Luxembourg when we learned of the German breakthrough, which began the Battle of the Bulge. Our first official act of combat was to retreat into Belgium, where we remained until the Germans were pushed back into Germany. After a couple of weeks, we moved up through Luxembourg to the border overlooking opposing hills where the Germans had constructed pillboxes, tank traps, and other defenses to help protect against an enemy invasion.

After a few exciting times on the border, the artillery and air pounding of German defenses began, which lasted for three days. Then the ground war was launched into Germany. Being a highly mechanized outfit, with many jeeps and trucks for transporting personnel and equipment, we moved right behind the armored units and infantry. We were instructed to move toward southern Germany. We crossed the Danube River, went through Munich, and were a few miles south of there when Germany surrendered. From there we were sent to a bombed-out tank ordnance depot a few miles east of Nuremberg, where I spent the next 10 months on occupation duty.

In March of 1946, I was transferred from Germany to Fort Douglas, Utah, where I received my honorable release from the service. At the time I held the rank of Staff Sergeant.

During my time in the service, I came to realize just how lacking my education was and determined to return to school with the intent of becoming a little more educated. Having heard of the federal high school equivalency test, I signed up, passed, and was able to get my diploma from Dixie High in the spring of 1947. By then, I had enrolled in Dixie Junior College and completed 1 year of class work. I started out majoring in mathematics but graduated in the spring of 1948 with an Associate Degree in accounting. That fall I enrolled at the University of Utah, graduating in the fall of 1950 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. As a result of my army service, I was able to get my education under the G. I. Bill. I also worked to help with the expense of living.

During my first year at Dixie, I made a decision which has had a serious effect on the rest of my life. I have wished many times that my decision had been different. But then, perhaps the entire course of my life might have been altered. Would I have met and married Arlene? Would I have had the same children and grandchildren? It is probably best to let the past stand and hope that what has happened was meant to be.

Anyway, I learned from a neighbor that the bishop in Enterprise was planning to call me on a mission. Having been away for nearly 3 years and having just begun my education, I had no desire to leave home for another 2 years. I had always been taught to never refuse a call to serve in the Church. So I reasoned, quite foolishly, that if I quit paying tithing and attending meetings I would not be called. My reasoning was accurate. I did not receive the call and spent 4 years of complete inactivity as a result. Because of this action, I have always felt lacking in my spiritual development and convictions. I believe the experience of a mission would have strengthened me in ways where I have since felt lacking and would have given me confidence in myself which I have always felt as a weakness. 

It was not until I started courting Arlene that I became active again. I knew that if I was to develop a lasting relationship with her, I had better change the direction of my life. Those first few Sundays of attendance were really difficult. I felt so out of place. I have since had a greater understanding of those who are inactive and who are investigating the church and are somewhat reluctant to commit to becoming active or to baptism.

On July 5, 1950, I went to work for Arlene’s dad, Karl S. Storey, CPA. My starting salary was   $185.00 per month for a 44- hour week. When I married Arlene the following June, he gave me a raise to $225.00 per month. (That sly old fox knew she was going to be high maintenance.)

Arlene no doubt has her own version of our courtship and marriage, but I believe mine is, if not more accurate, somewhat more entertaining. I contend that her father came down to the University of Utah seeking a prospective husband for his spinster daughter. After all, she was nearing 21 years of age with no real prospects of marriage, at least not in the near future.

Had I not been so innocent and naive, I would have been alerted by the nature of the job interview. No questions were asked relating to my accounting skills. He seemed only interested in my religion, my attitude toward temple marriage, and whether or not I was seriously involved with anyone.

I have often referred to ours as a “shotgun marriage,” because I had to sell my shotgun to afford our honeymoon trip to Washington and Oregon. This action would not have been needed had I not been deceived about Arlene’s financial situation. I was led to believe she had money, which turned out to be three $25.00 war bonds, which had some years yet to maturity, so they weren’t really worth $25.00. I feel it necessary to mention that the first night of our marriage was spent at a second-rate motel called the Shady Lane in Tremonton, Utah. We hadn’t made any arrangements ahead, and this was the only visible motel we saw that night. The next morning, however, as we left town, we spotted a very modern motel just a block off Main Street. Next time we get married, we’ll do more advance planning.

Now that I’ve had my fun, perhaps it’s time to get serious. My marriage to Arlene, our many years together and the children she bore for us have been the real joys and satisfaction of my life. Could I do it over, I would without hesitation make the same choices. Ours has been a very comfortable and satisfying relationship. I love Arlene dearly.

After our marriage on June 12, 1951, we lived in an apartment on 25^th Street in Ogden, across the street from Lester Park. In the fall, we moved to a small rental unit on Mt. Ogden Drive, about half a block north of Weber State College. While there, Jolene was born [in 1954]. What a joy she has been to us.

I took the summer of 1952 off work and returned to school at the University of Utah, in order to prepare myself better for the CPA exam scheduled for that fall. I sat for the CPA exam that fall and passed, getting my certificate the next spring. One hundred ten took the exam, with 2 of us passing on the first sitting. I must admit, however, that I barely scored enough on the accounting theory section to pass. I was then accepted as a 45% partner in my father-in-law’s firm. As it turned out, this promotion resulted in a reduction in my earnings.

My 4 plus years in public accounting turned out to be disappointing and not the type of experience I had anticipated while in college. In fact, over the approximately 40 years of my working life, I have wished many times that I had trained to work in some other field. The physical part of accounting was enjoyable. I found working the problems and applying them to business transactions both challenging and enjoyable, but having to deal with the conflicts of interest between management, government, and regulatory officials was mostly unpleasant.

After leaving public accounting, I spent a year with Coombs & Company, a penny stock brokerage business. The company went broke when the uranium stock market collapsed. I then went to work for Western Mortgage Loan Corporation, where I was employed for about 32 years. Most of that time was spent as Treasurer and manager of the Loan Servicing and Accounting Departments. 

Orvil’s personal history goes on for many pages and many years, but others will talk about the rest of his life.

 

Remarks by Roger Terry

First, I need to apologize to Dad’s neighbors for taking him away from them, but I really didn’t see any other option. I know you missed him, but many of you called and visited over the past two years and almost four months, and I want you to know he was well cared for. For the first six months, I couldn’t visit him because of Covid restrictions [except through a window, talking on cell phones], but after he fell in his room on Thanksgiving night 2020 and broke his second hip, he went into kidney failure, and they told me he had only a week or two to live. At that point, they let me start making end-of-life visits, and when his kidneys started working again and he recovered, I just kept on visiting, and I visited him every day for over 21 months with the exception of a couple of weeks when I was out of town. Those 21 months were both difficult and rewarding [he was bedridden the whole time], but we are happy that he has finally been able to rejoin Mom and other loved ones who have been patiently waiting for his body to wear out.

There’s a lot we can learn from Dad’s account of his early years.

1. Life was hard, but simple pleasures were to be relished, even ice-cold sauerkraut.

2. Work was a big part of his life. If my math is right, he started working full time at age 16.

3. He made some mistakes and rash decisions, but in the end, he was satisfied with the way his life turned out.

4. His parents didn’t provide for him very well, but he was a good son. I had heard the story before that he bought his mother a washing machine with his pay in Las Vegas, but I never knew until I read his personal history that he also paid off his parents’ debts. That tells you something about who he was. And he did this as a 17-year-old. Orvil Terry was not just a good son; he was a good father, a good grandfather, a good friend, and, most of all, a good husband. Since he fell in May 2020 and broke his hip, it has been my privilege to help take care of him and manage his affairs. My only desire was to follow his example and be a good son.

When I edited the life sketch, I left the part in about him wishing he’d studied something other than accounting. In spite of that, he worked for 32 years at Western Mortgage Loan for a boss he didn’t particularly care for. He commented on this decision: “Looking back over my years at Western Mortgage,” he wrote, “I think about things such as the pressure, my dislike for supervising people, being out of harmony with the business operating policies of the ownership, and looking forward to the day when I could leave and do something else. It raises such questions as: Why did I stay under these conditions? Was it the financial security? Was it family pressure to remain in the area? Fear of beginning over and not being able to find work with equal pay? Perhaps a bit of each of these questions was the reason. Regardless, I put in more than 30 years with the company. They treated me fairly and paid me what I was worth. Knowing what I know now, I would likely choose a different path could I travel life’s road again.”

Personally, I think he stayed those 32 years primarily because he remembered not having enough to eat as a child and didn’t want his family to experience that. Toward the end of his career, he took over his father-in-law’s cherry orchard, bought a piece of land next to it, and planted a peach orchard. Some of you might remember his orchards. They also provided a glimpse into who he was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another orchard without a single weed. The trees were expertly pruned. It was a labor of love, but it was a lot of hard work. Imagine a senior citizen pruning hundreds of trees all through the winter every year. After eight years, he finally sold the orchards because, as he put it, this was way too much work for someone his age. He and Mom also wanted to do some traveling. And I suspect that all that orchard work may have been interfering with his golf.

My dad was, without question, the hardest worker I have ever known. Nobody else even comes close. If you wanted a job done and done well, you would ask Orvil Terry. I remember, when I was young, the evenings he would spend in the basement doing other people’s taxes, all this after working a full day at Western Mortgage. Later in my life, when we were raising the level of our backyard, I ordered a couple of dump truck loads of topsoil that needed to be moved by wheelbarrow from the street to backyard. I was going to get to this after work, but Dad came down to help, and by the time I got home, he had already moved half of it by himself, at age 75. When he was 81, we had a tree that was getting too big. Dad said he and Ray had all the equipment and they knew what they were doing, so they would take it down for us. Sheri and I were at a funeral that Saturday morning, and by the time I got home, the 81-year-old and his young 73-year-old sidekick had the whole tree down except for one branch that was reaching straight up to heaven. And there was Ray, legs wrapped around that last branch, hacking away with a handsaw. I’m sure those of you who were Orvil’s neighbors could tell many stories like this.

But Dad didn’t work all the time. He also knew how to enjoy himself. First and foremost, he loved golf. He played until he was 88. He once told me he wanted to sink a 50-foot putt and drop dead on the green. That would have been easier than the long, drawn-out demise he eventually suffered. I reminded him of that wish a few months after he broke his hip, and he told me that not even his hole-in-one worked. And it was a strange hole-in-one. No one saw it. His foursome was teeing off to an elevated green. He knew he’d hit it well, but when they reached the green, they couldn’t see his ball. So they looked in the hole, and there it was.

Dad also loved to travel and loved to drive through beautiful country. I remember long road trips to the national parks in Alberta, Canada; the Oregon coast; Vancouver Island; California; the Colorado Rockies; and the national parks of southern Utah. After Jolene and I left home, he and mom took many trips, including Hawaii and a memorable excursion to Alaska with Ray and Donna Coleman. They also had a timeshare, which took them to some interesting places, and they sometimes invited our family to join them. San Diego was one of their favorite destinations, and after they passed the timeshare along to us, it has become one of our favorites as well.

One of Dad’s best qualities was his generosity. He loved to give away vegetables from his garden, raspberries from the plants that he let grow among the oak trees, and fruit from his trees. He gave his physical labor to his friends and neighbors. And after Mom died, he lived for the little kids in the neighborhood. They would come and visit him, and he would give them ice cream treats and popsicles. After he broke his hip and had to move out of his house, I think this was the hardest thing for him. He felt he was useless. He couldn’t serve or give anymore. But the staff at the assisted living center where he stayed spoke about his kindness. He was one of the easy residents. He kept his sweet disposition to the very end, even when some days he couldn’t remember his own name.

One of the ironies of his life shows up in the first paragraphs of his personal history: “It seems a considerable part of my life has been spent in finding excuses for not writing a personal history, or getting involved in genealogical work. Neither has really appealed to me. And yet, with some very colorful ancestry, it would seem more natural to be excited to learn of and write about them. Perhaps my lack of interest in these activities stems from a rather independent spirit, coupled with a generally shallow interest in, and concern for, most people.

“General acceptance and a few friends have always been important to me, but I have not been one to seek recognition, or to cultivate many friends. I don’t particularly look at myself as a ‘loner,’ yet, for most of my life, I have done many things alone, where others would more often than not have sought companionship. I think this part of my character might denote a bit of selfishness—an unwillingness to commit the time and effort required to cultivate and maintain more than a very few close relationships.”

I find this rather humorous, because I know very few people with as many friends as he had. And I know they were very important to him. The drive-by birthday party the ward threw for him when he turned 95 a couple of years ago was a testament to that. [I’ll add here that because of Covid restrictions, they couldn’t throw him a regular party, so they decorated their cars, sat him in a chair in the front yard, and drove by slowly, waving and honking horns. There must have been at least 70 cars. My family and I and my sister were there that day and were amazed at how much his neighbors loved him. He had served them for years, and they wanted to thank him.]

In spite of what some of you may think, Orvil Terry was not perfect, as he well knew. One thing that Sue Oostyen and I talked about recently is that he was very good at serving others but not good at all at letting others serve him. And maybe this is the answer to the question of why such a good man had to waste away and linger for so long. Maybe it was so that he could learn to receive service and so that some people, like me, could try to balance the scales of our relationship with him. But he was imperfect in other ways as well. In a church that prizes dazzling teachers and gives accolades to men and women who hold one leadership position after another, my dad was never very comfortable teaching, and after serving as a bishop over fifty years ago, he was quite content to serve more than 30 years as finance clerk.

When I returned from my mission, young, immature, and star-struck by a mission president who was an overpowering speaker, I am ashamed to confess that I was a bit underwhelmed by my dad. But as the years passed and I matured a bit, I came to understand that Dad was the most Christlike man I knew. And he did it in all the quiet ways that really matter. Many of you know this much better than I do, because you were on the receiving end of his service.

As he lay in bed for the past 21 months, wondering when he could go be with Arlene again, I would sometimes tease him that the reason he was still here is that they probably couldn’t figure out what to do with him on the other side. Maybe they don’t have any trees to prune or leaves to rake. If all they do is sit in meetings and preach to each other, that wouldn’t be his idea of heaven anyway, and it isn’t mine either.

But I trust that the heaven he has gone to will be to his liking. Arlene will be there, and his granddaughter Karla [who died of cancer at age 8], and all his siblings, and many friends who have preceded him in death. I’m sure he is happy, and who knows? Maybe they’ll even find a few trees for him to prune.

Thanks, Dad, for the wonderful example you gave us, for your quiet love, your patience, and your generosity. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Catching Up on Some Reading (and Writing and Other Stuff)

 

A couple of months ago, I was having lunch with my old colleagues at BYU Studies, and one of them asked me what I was reading. When I told them, they suggested I might find something a little more uplifting. I generally read at least three books at a time (sometimes as many as eight), and one of them I often read only while shaving in the morning, so it takes me some time to get through that book. For the past many months, my shaving book has been Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. The two other main books I was reading at the time were Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown’s Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

For some reason, in all the years I’d spent in Mormon studies, I had never read Compton’s masterful account of the lives of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, so I decided it was about time. I have a complicated personal relationship with polygamy. I am not a fan of it and have a hard time believing it was inspired, but I am also descended from two second wives, one on either side of my ancestry. So, I suppose, without polygamy, I wouldn’t even be here to write about it. I have read other books on plural marriage and have edited articles about it, so I know a fair bit about the Principle, but Compton’s book was eye-opening in some regards, mostly about how difficult polygamy was for many of those who lived it. Compton’s title is perfect. Most of Joseph’s wives, who ended up married for time to Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, or some other prominent Church leader, were often very lonely and lived difficult lives, often in poverty.

If you haven’t read In Sacred Loneliness, I highly recommend it. There is a good deal of tangential history in these accounts too, especially about the trek west to Utah and the early years of struggle in the Great Basin. It made me think often about my own pioneer ancestors and what they endured for their faith.

I am still in the middle of Vengeance Is Mine, and it is as depressing and disheartening as I expected. When Rick Turley and his two coauthors (Glen Leonard and Ron Walker) of the predecessor to this book approached BYU Studies with the request that we publish two sets of documents about the massacre that they had discovered in the Church’s archives, it was my lot to participate in the editing and publishing of those documents in a book titled Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris Collections. It was a sobering and depressing experience.

One set of documents came from interviews conducted by Church historian Andrew Jenson in the 1890s. In 1892, Jenson was invited by the Church president to travel to southern Utah and gather historical information about the Mountain Meadows Massacre before all the participants and witnesses had died. Jenson gathered an impressive amount of information, but it took a toll on him. He wrote upon returning to Salt Lake City, “It has been an unpleasant business. The information that I received made me suffer mentally and deprived me of my sleep at nights; and I felt tired and fatigued, both mentally and physically when I returned home.” I understand. Editing his accounts had a somewhat similar effect on me.

The other collection of documents came from David H. Morris, a St. George attorney and judge who had family ties to the massacre and who knew some who had a role in the killing. Some of these people swore affidavits before him when he was a notary public. He also asked “old-timers” privately about the massacre and took notes. When he died, his foster daughter, Helen, along with his other children, went through his papers, which, I should add, Juanita Brooks tried for years in vain to gain access to. After finding the massacre-related documents and seeking legal advice from Helen’s husband’s cousin, who was an attorney, the family decided to personally deliver them to the First Presidency, and so Helen dropped them off at Church headquarters. And there, like Andrew Jenson’s interview notes, the Morris collection vanished into the archives, until they were unearthed decades later by Turley and company.

The massacre was, of course, one of the ugliest episodes in Church history and is fully recounted in the first of Turley’s books. Vengeance Is Mine, on the other hand, is mostly about the aftermath, which I’m just getting to. All very uplifting material, but the Church is determined to air out this dirty laundry, and it is an important piece of history. I know Rick Turley and had some interaction with him regarding the documents book. I also used to work with his coauthor, Barbara, when we were editors at Church magazines. So, I have a personal interest in this volume.

The third book on my recent reading list is Flowers for Algernon, which I read when I was young and wanted to read again because I remembered how well written it was. It’s the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally handicapped man (in the 1966 book, he is referred to as a “moron”) who undergoes experimental brain surgery to increases his intelligence. The surgery, which had been tested on mice—in particular, one named Algernon—is wildly successful, turning Charlie into a genius. But things start to go haywire when Algernon regresses and then dies. Charlie does some frantic research and figures out that a flaw in the process will have a similar effect on him. The story ends with him gradually returning to his original level of intelligence. It’s a tragic tale and was the inspiration for the 1968 movie Charly, for which Cliff Robertson won a Best Actor Oscar.

After I finished Flowers for Algernon, I needed something a little more upbeat, so I downloaded the ebook version of another book I had read as a youth but couldn’t remember much about except that I really liked it. This is Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a fascinating look at a possible future (and tragic? destiny) of humanity. I had read a lot of Clarke’s work earlier in life when I was more a science fiction fan than I am now, and I had forgotten just how good a writer he was.

Now, however, I’m on to other books, including Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy and John Grisham’s latest, The Widow, which is apparently his first who-dunnit. I’m also intermittently wading my way through DK’s The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, a summary of the ideas of more than 100 of the greatest thinkers in philosophy. It’s surprisingly well written and is the most pain-free way I can think of to augment my very meager understanding of the field of philosophy.

My wife and I also recently attended the 2026 Mormon History Association conference in Las Vegas, and I came away from the sessions with at least two books I need to read. Then, last evening, as we were picking peas in the garden, we were listening to a Salt Lake Tribune “Mormonland” podcast in which they were interviewing Richard Hanks, son of Marion D. Hanks. Richard has written a biography of his father, who was several decades ahead of his time in many ways. So, another book to add to my growing list. I wish I were a faster reader, but I’m not. I’m actually a very fast editor, but I read very slowly. I don’t quite understand how that works. Maybe I just edit as I read. I’m also a very fast writer. Whatever.

My book reading often gets pushed aside by my attempts to keep up to date on what’s happening in the world. I’m a news junky, and I’ve often said (truthfully) that I will have a lot more free time once Trump exits the political scene. He is a major and dangerous distraction in our world. And he’s getting worse as his mental capacity noticeably declines and as his craving for power, wealth, and attention spins out of control.

My reading also gets backseated quite often by my writing habit, but that has actually been paying off. In addition to the ebook I just released titled Saving America from the Wealthy: Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone (see my last post) and the occasional op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, I have also had five varied pieces accepted this year for publication. BYU Studies printed in its latest issue a poem I concocted (I’m not really a poet), and they are supposedly publishing an article early next year in which I tackle some problems with the accounts of a vision purportedly experienced in 1913 by a young BYU grad named Alfred Kelly. The vision was popularized in a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland when he was BYU president. Dialogue has also agreed to publish in its next few issues a piece of short fiction, a book review, and a personal essay. So, five different genres . . . or seven if you count the ebook and the op-eds. Variety is the spice of life, they say.

Well, that’s it. Retirement is turning out to be a lot busier than I had imagined. And I haven’t even mentioned morning basketball, yard work, grandkids’ sporting events, and cooking dinner (I promised my wife that after I retired I’d take over dinner prep). I sometimes wonder how I ever found time to work.