Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark

by D. Michael Quinn

 J. Reuben Clark was all of these prior to his call to the LDS First Presidency. As a counselor to three church presidents—Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, and David O. McKay—he served longer than any other member of this high church council. Already controversial before he assumed his church duties, his blunt, independent style created even more ripples at LDS headquarters. Still, his impact, intellectually and administratively, was immense. His most important legacy may well be the professionalization of church government; where apostles previously met and decided issues based mostly on their collective years of experience, Clark drew from his secular training to introduce outside research, position papers, and extended discussion, all of which, for better or for worse, added to the administrative bureaucracy. In this impressive study of the “elder statesman,” as reporters labeled Clark, D. Michael Quinn considers what it meant for a Latter-day Saint to attain such national and international stature, although Quinn never loses sight of Reuben’s very human qualities either. This fresh, intimate approach presents Clark on his own terms and draws readers into Clark’s world in the context of the larger society of his time and place. From the dust Life is never quite what is portrayed in inspirational books about famous people’s experiences. One aspect that is rarely told about President Clark’s life is his near-embrace of atheism in the 1920s. This period of his intellectual development is interesting and informative and ultimately as inspirational as Clark’s conclusion that belief may be irrational but is essential. If nothing else, one admires the future church leader’s rigor and honesty in exploring the fringes of faith. One also admires his biographer for the even-handed, frank treatment of the subject. Clark’s commitment to a successful career similarly came at a sacrifice in other areas of his life. He chose work over family whenever the option presented itself. Two issues that stand at the forefront of Clark’s headstrong manner are his views on pacifism and race. Both were significant to his overall world view and have much to say about the complexity of the issues and about the fallibility of human judgment. For most of his life, Clark was a military enthusiast. He served as the assistant Judge Advocate General during World War I and earned the Distinguished Service Medal. But he changed his mind and thereafter became known as fiercely anti-war. When the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Clark accused his nation of barbarism and said that it had forfeited its right ever again to speak with moral authority in the world. That he also distrusted American propaganda and was sympathetic to National Socialism may come as a surprise to some readers. Similarly, readers may shudder to learn of Clark’s views on race. He was partly responsible for the LDS Hospital’s segregation of the blood of “whites” and “Negroes,” his logic being that since anyone with as little as “one drop” of African blood was ineligible for LDS priesthood ordination, a transfusion from a black donor to a white recipient would render the latter incapable of exercising priesthood authority. Such a racist view—in part a reflection of the time—is tempered by the disclosure that Clark was one of the first among the church leadership to advocate steps toward giving blacks the priesthood. Other ideological quandaries and soul-searching on Clark’s part could be enumerated, but suffice it to say that anyone who picks up this volume will live Reuben’s life with him. One may not ultimately understand why Clark said or did what he did in every instance, but there is a palpable sense of a life lived—with all the quirks and ironies that real lives are made of.  Elder Statesman  speaks to larger issues, but the spotlight remains on the man himself; readers are left to draw their own conclusions about whether Clark was a hero or villain in any given circumstance.

Genres: Biography, Mormonism, Religion, Nonfiction, History

672 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quinn’s biography offers unique insights into the character, attitudes, opinions, and quirks of President Clark, which insights paint a vivid picture not only of Clark but of Church administration during his 28 year tenure as a member of the First Presidency. This portrait is both interesting and instructional, in terms of illuminating the modes of shifting opinions among Church leaders, intra-quorum politicking and bloc-formation, and in terms of offering a multi-faceted perspective of Clark’s humanity. Not only does Quinn familiarize us with Clark’s indomitable yet humble spirit and his fierce loyalty to God and His prophet on the earth, but we also learn of Clark’s mortal foibles, prejudices, and nagging weaknesses. In light of all of this, Clark is man worthy of the utmost respect and admiration. His allegiance to God trumped all of his worldly ambitions, and his were powerful and, at certain points, very much within reach. He mastered his pride perhaps more fully and grandly than any other prominent Church leader, as demonstrated when he magnanimously announced in general conference his own demotion from first to second counselor in the First Presidency after 18 years of service as first counselor. Publicly, he never flinched in a position which would have easily crushed lesser men.



In spite of Quinn’s skillfully humanistic portrayal of Clark, Quinn clearly inserted various unnecessary quotations, facts, and themes that added little to our picture of Clark; they in fact seemed bitter barbs intended to subtly cast doubt or at least an unfavorable light on the Church, its policies, and its leaders. Quinn claims in the book’s introduction that his only goal is to impartially present information and permit readers to draw their own conclusions. This may truly be Quinn’s motive, but certain themes – Clark’s racial attitudes or the Church’s wrestle with post-Manifesto polygamy, for instance – could have been presented just as effectively without a few of Clark’s or other leaders’ more egregious quotes. Alternatively, Clark could have been well represented without any mention of these issues at all. True, they provide additional angles from which to view him, but I doubt that they are essential to understanding his life and character.



Quinn claims that this biography is the original draft of what became his 1983 Church-sanctioned biographical volume on Clark’s years of Church service, from which draft the First Presidency removed various sections, quotes, and comments. It is no surprise to me that Church leaders felt it prudent to do so; much of what Quinn includes here in the name of academic and historical rigor is simply inappropriate in a biography aimed at members of the Mormon Church. Issues such as Clark’s flirtation with atheism, his sometimes fanatical opposition to Communism and war, his attitudes of race and segregation, and the overall human methods with which Church leaders undertake decision-making could easily rattle readers’ faith. Church leaders are perfectly within their rights and responsibilities to ensure that Church-sanctioned material buttresses, not undermines, faith. Quinn’s work is not intended to bolster faith, yet it could easily do so without compromising the academic scrupulousness he so cherishes.

[Lowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a sucker for raw LDS Church History. Hagiographical biographies are heartwarming, but do little for me personally (I'm looking at you, Heidi Swinton's Monson biography). I want to understand to the maximum extent possible the nuts and bolts of what made these men consciously develop into who they became.

D. Michael Quinn's history with the LDS Church is tumultuous in a variety of ways. This book neither reflects that nor does anything to resolve it. Quinn clearly admires and reveres J. Reuben Clark, and effectively demonstrates that who he was is the sole product of the age in which he lived.

Solid, thorough, and satisfying.

[Alan Thacker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive biography of a man who served in the LDS First Presidency longer than any other man and made important contributions to the church during the 1930’s – 1950’s.

[Korance · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inside look into the workings of the leaders of the church during the Depression era, World War 2 and the Cold War from the point of view of one of its major movers. Likely J Rueben Clark's greatest strength and contribution to the church and other organizations like the US Gov and large corporations he worked with was his ability to resolve large amounts of bureaucratic information into focused actionable recommendations. This skill largely came from his habit developed in law school of avoiding parties to reading and sift information late into the night alone in his study. Rather than read or take in information for enjoyment he consistently focused his studies on the pressing battle at hand.
This personal trait was amplified into the church as a body through his resistance to a modern critical view of the Bible and doctrine to prevent what he saw as the same pattern that the early church had followed of diluting and mixing the gospel message with contemporary pagan or Greek or other philosophies of the time. He also helped navigating the church leadership though other major challenges such as helping with the creation of the church welfare system to supplement and compete with government welfare during the great depression, separating church leadership and political influences, pursuing peaceful moral aims amidst the violence of WW2 and standing against immoral communist influences while keeping political neutrality. In each of these and other challenges he was able to navigate a fine line of loyalty to the church leader while helping to avoid potential public missteps.
The author may have strayed into too much detail about some side plots like the health of church leaders and went a little out of his way to point out certain hypocrisies while missing some detail in more important events. The book was organized in a bit of an unorthodox way, giving the overview chronologically in the first half then going through by topic in the second half rather than weaving the relevant topics as they came up chronologically as would have seemed more intuitive to me. Interestingly from the author's own story he later struggled with some of the same policies President Clark instituted regarding church education. Some of those policies and their surrounding questions are still relevant in current church education and in the direction of educated Christianity as a whole today such as how much to apply reason and modern critical research methods to topics of faith. In his critiques of Clark, however the author didn't completely diminish the character of a leader who largely left behind professional prestige for a generally less self centered church service. This sacrifice was actually rewarded with greater outside recognition which President Clark obediently and steadfastly used to make even greater contributions to a surprisingly accelerated growth of the modern church.

[Sterling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 18th book of my U.S history series (which has a fair amount of U.S. Mormon history in it). J. Reuben Clark was a counselor to three Mormon prophets in the course of his life and according to D. Michael Quinn at the time that he wrote this book that was the record for being a counselor in the “First Presidency” of the LDS Church. I assume that record still stands but I’m not certain. This is the second book I’ve read from Quinn and it only makes me want to finish all of his books though they are all extremely hefty and take hours and days to get through.

These reviews are more for fun than anything serious so to give a lengthy description of all the great details from this work would merely deter me from this project in the first place. So I’m just going to throw out a few thoughts. The first 180 pages are very nice for the reader who just wants to get a sense of Clark’s life, from pg. 180-420 are about Clark’s viewpoints on different topics (and there are so many pages of footnotes after that like all of Quinn’s works). The most fascinating chapter for me in the latter section was about the different people and ethnicities of the world, Chapter 10. It was here I learned very convincingly that Clark was a borderline anti-Semite. He masked a lot of what he said about Jews quite deftly so he protected himself and he wasn’t really an anomaly for the era he lived in. Many people had misunderstanding and prejudice about Jews at that time. Certainly he was a compassionate man. He also promoted a “preparatory priesthood” program for blacks which in some ways pushed forward the eventual allowance of Mormon priesthood for those of African descent. So I don’t want to paint him as a racist. This was just a bit of history from his life that troubled me and therefore intrigued me a great deal.

Another bit I want to mention was how much Clark despised FDR, the New Deal, and any sort of aid coming from the government. Actually FDR and Clark went to law school together and I wonder if they had tension at that time too. There were many more connections of Clark to important government figures and to the wider diplomatic world that were also fascinating to learn about. I wholeheartedly recommend this book as the premier biography to read about the Mormon Church for the Great Depression and WWII era. I doubt there is a better or more thorough one.

[David Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't exactly a faith builder. Interesting insights about J. Reuben Clark. The stories in the book show that Clark was human and had his shortcomings. He came a long way with his beliefs and testimony. He struggled with his church assignment, yet when he was converted he was true.

[Richard Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography which treats a churchman like a mortal, emphasizing personal strengths and flaws without being judgmental. Recommend it to others interested in Mormon biography.