60 years ago today - Jan 7, 1960

(7th-8th) First Presidency decides that Bruce R. McConkie's book, Mormon Doctrine, "must not be re-published, as it is full of errors and misstatements, and it is most unfortunate that it has received such wide circulation." They are exasperated that McConkie and his publisher released the book without pre-publication publicity or notifying the First Presidency. Even his father-in-law, senior apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, "did not know anything about it until it was published." This is McConkie's way to avoid repetition of Presidency's stopping his pre-announced book, Sound Doctrine, three years earlier. A committee of two apostles (Mark E. Peterson and Marion G. Romney) reports that McConkie's Mormon Doctrine contains 1,067 doctrinal errors. For example, page 493 said: "Those who falsely and erroneously suppose that God is progressing in knowledge and gaining new truths cannot exercise sufficient faith in him to gain salvation until they divest themselves of their false beliefs." However, McConkie is affirming doctrine of omniscience officially condemned by previous First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1865. In announcing their decision to the Twelve on 28 Jan. 1960, the First Presidency says there should be no revised edition of Mormon Doctrine. The Presidency reverses its initial decision on 7 Jan. "that the book should be [officially] repudiated." By 28 Jan. the Presidency decides against requiring McConkie to make a public apology because "it might lessen his influence" as a general authority. In 1966, a year after his father-in-law becomes assistant counselor to the First Presidency, McConkie publishes the second edition of Mormon Doctrine. It corrects only a few of the first edition's "errors" cited by the First Presidency and apostles in 1960. The book becomes a bestseller among Latter-day Saints. McConkie becomes a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles to fill the vacancy which his father-in-law's death creates in 1972.

[The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database ( http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase )]]

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