About that corporation:

There's a myth I keep hearing that lives at the exciting intersection of Mormonism and corporate law. It goes something like this:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't exist.  It has been replaced by a corporation, and it is governed not by its own doctrines but by a corporate charter.

It's false, and I want to explain why.  But first, here's why it matters.

Succession in the Presidency of the Church

One possible area of conflict between LDS Church doctrine and a corporate charter is this: who will be the next President of the LDS Church?  The answer, according to church doctrine, relies on a complicated process involving the presiding councils of the church.  Here are the councils that matter:

Screenshot from the LDS Church website August 16, 2015

The President of the Church is recognized by the LDS Church as the successor to Joseph Smith, and colloquially referred to as "the Prophet."  He and his counselors form the "First Presidency," which is the governing council of the church.  The counselors are traditionally (but not always) selected from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (Q12).  "Quorum," incidentally, is used as a synonym of "council"; a quorum to do business, in the ordinary sense, requires only a majority if circumstances prevent the full council from meeting.  Thus, if the Prophet is disabled, the Quorum of the First Presidency can still take care of the business of the church.

The Twelve Apostles are currently short by two due to recent deaths. Normally, the Q12 has twelve members who are not serving in the First Presidency.  By tradition, the senior member of the Quorum (by length of service in the Quorum, not by age), is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve.  The Q12 is "equal in authority" to the First Presidency, and major questions are considered by the two councils together (sometimes referred to as the Q15).

Upon the death of the President of the Church, the First Presidency is dissolved, and the counselors re-take their places in the Quorum of the Twelve (assuming that they were members of the Q12 in the first place).  The Quorum of the Twelve is then the presiding council of the LDS Church until it reorganizes the First Presidency.  While the Q12 is in charge, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve, as President of the Quorum, is sort of a de facto President of the Church.  In all 15 cases since the death of Joseph Smith, the President of the Quorum has become the new President of the Church when the First Presidency was reorganized.

They all serve for life.  Barring occasional drama such as Apostles being excommunicated (very rare, but there were some difficulties about polygamy), vacancies typically arise only when someone in the Q15 dies.  It all seems a bit mechanical, this combination of scripture and tradition that results in a Prophet being selected entirely based on who has died since his call as an Apostle, forty or so years earlier, but the teaching is that the hand of God is still present in determining who receives that first call, and when to call them home.

The result is that the President of the Church, and the President of the Q12 (who is presumably next in line) are usually very old men.  The accumulated wisdom of age (and many, many years in church service) is respected, but there are also accompanying difficulties.  The Prophet of my youth was too unwell, for many years, to actually speak to the church.

Until recently, the health of both the Prophet and the President of the Twelve didn't look good. President Monson (the current Prophet) is clearly having increasing difficulties, and President Packer (the recently deceased President of the Twelve, and a childhood survivor of polio) appeared incredibly frail, and could barely talk.  It would not have been kind to make President Packer the new Prophet, had President Monson died first.  (Progressive Mormons would also not have welcomed adding all of President Packer's teachings, as an Apostle, to the Teachings of the Prophets curriculum, but that's another story.)

Some of us turn to speculation: how much of the above is dictated by LDS scripture, and how much is tradition only?  I can't find any commandment in the standard works of LDS scripture for members of the Q15 to serve for life, or even for the President of the Twelve to become the new President of the Church.  So, is it possible that we could have emeritus Apostles, or a retired Prophet, and get some young blood into the Q12 without waiting for someone to die? Is it possible for the Quorum of the Twelve, after the death of the Prophet, to reorganize the First Presidency with someone other than the President of the Twelve as the new President of the Church?  Cynics turn to the myth they believe in and say "No -- it doesn't matter what is or isn't in LDS scriptures; it has to be done the way it's always been done because a corporate charter says so."

Corporations Sole

Wait -- why is there a corporate charter involved?  Can't a church select a new president according to its own doctrines? (It can).  There is indeed a corporation involved, though.

In an era where corporations could only really be formed for business purposes, a lot of other associations didn't have a corporate form.  Labor unions, for example, are traditionally unincorporated.  For churches, clergy members traditionally held and managed the property of the church.  However, it's undesirable to have church property pass under a priest's will, when the priest dies.  One solution is the "corporation sole."  It's like a corporation, but with a single office, and no shareholders, directors, or bylaws.  There are still articles of incorporation (i.e., a charter), but they can be very brief. The incumbent, alone, simply is the corporation.  Upon the death of the incumbent, however, property held by the corporation (and not personally by the incumbent) is still held by the corporation, managed according to the articles of incorporation during the interim, and eventually held by the incumbent's successor in office.  It's a convenient way for church property to be held continuously, without regularly going through probate.  Naturally, the corporate charter will include rules for succession (or winding up, if there is no successor).

LDS Corporate Structure

The LDS Church is much bigger than one priest or parish, and has a complicated corporate structure. The church itself used to exist in a corporate form in the United States, but it was dissolved as a result of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, as a penalty for polygamy.  Since then, I don't think the church has had a corporate form in the US, although individual congregations or other organizations may be incorporated in foreign countries that require it.  There are, however, a couple corporations sole associated with the LDS Church: the "Corporation of the President" ("COP"), and the "Corporation of the Presiding Bishop" ("CPB").  I'm not exactly clear on the division, but if Wikipedia is correct, the COP holds money and donations, and the CPB holds real property.  Deseret Management Corporation is a regular corporation that holds the Church's for-profit businesses.  Any number of other corporations (Intellectual Reserve, Inc., for intellectual property; Property Reserve, Inc., for property management, Deseret Book, etc., fall under those three umbrellas)

However, all that property holding by corporations, for the Church, doesn't mean that the Church fails to exist.  The US Supreme Court has described LDS Church structure thus: "The CPB and the COP are religious entities associated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Church), an unincorporated religious association."  Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327 (1987) (emphasis added).  Now, it's not like Supreme Court Justices are necessarily experts in LDS corporate structure, but it was relevant to the case -- you have to know who to sue if you are fired by Deseret Gym.  The Court was briefed by notable Mormon and former Solicitor General Rex Lee, who I don't imagine would risk his credibility by getting the details wrong.

Note that description: the LDS Church is an "unincorporated religious association."  Like a labor union, however, it still exists, and consists of its members, without necessarily having a separate legal existence.  Like any unincorporated association from your neighborhood book club on up, the LDS Church is governed by its own rules and officers, not by a corporate charter.  As Christians are the body of Christ, this makes sense: the body exists in its members, not as some noncorporeal fictional person created by state law.  Of course, all decisions might be made by the people in governing committees, and submitted to the members for a vote that's kind of pro forma, but there are a lot of associations (incorporated or not) that operate like that.

The Corporate Charter

So, the charter for COP has to say something about who the successor is, though, right?  Well, it turns out there's a copy of the charter online.  (I have no idea if that's really genuine, but no reason to believe it's not.  That's the document the believers in this particular myth all seem to point to, and if you were going to fake it to support their point, you could certainly make it support the point more clearly.  If you want a guaranteed genuine copy and don't mind figuring out which document to download from Utah's online repository (go here, and click on "View Filed Documents"), let me know what you find.)

Here's what that charter says about succession:

The title of the person making these articles of incorporation is "President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." He and his successor in office shall be deemed and are hereby created a body politic and corporation sole with perpetual succession, having all the powers and rights and authority in these articles specified or provided for by law. But in the event of the death or resignation from office of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or in the event of a vacancy in that office from any cause, the President or Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of said Church, or one of the members of said Quorum thereunto designated by that Quorum, shall, pending the installation of a successor President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, be the corporation sole under these articles....

In plainer English: The successor to the office of President of the Church is the successor for the COP.  In the interim, an Apostle manages (i.e., is) the COP.  There's nothing about serving for life; in fact, it anticipates that the President of the Church may resign.  There's also nothing about the President of the Twelve having to succeed to the office of President of the Church.  Even in the interim between church Presidents, it can be any member of the Q12 who has control of the corporation.

I haven't seen the charter for the CPB, (notably, succession to the office of Presiding Bishop is a lot simpler), but I suspect it's similar -- when one Presiding Bishop leaves, the new Presiding Bishop takes over CPB, and there's someone for continuity's sake in the interim.  Why do I suspect this, sight unseen?  Because the LDS Church employs/retains some pretty good lawyers, who aren't complete idiots! OF COURSE they're going to leave the corporate charters as broad as possible!  They don't want to get in the way of the Church!

Even if the charter for the COP said something more about succession to the Presidency of the Church, it wouldn't really be a big deal.  Normally, amending a corporate charter is a big headache: the board of directors has to propose the amendment, and the shareholders have to vote to approve it. (Or something like that.  It's been a while since Business Associations class in law school.)  With a corporation sole, however, there's only the one person.  With no board and no shareholders, it's trivially easy to do anything, including amending your corporate charter.

Now, if you're concerned about corporatism in the LDS Church -- that the Church looks and acts like a faceless bureaucracy -- you'll likely find me sympathetic.  But can we stop repeating the myth that everything is really determined by some corporate charter?  The idea leaves no room for scripture, innovation, inspiration, or revelation.  It's about the most cynical thing a Latter-day Saint could believe about the Church and the work of God in it.

About that stone:

Every so often, something will get me thinking, and I'll have more to say than I want to put in a Facebook post. So, here I am blogging, several years after it's no longer trendy.

Here's something that apparently every Mormon on the internet is talking about: for the first time ever, you can see photographs of a "seer stone" used by Joseph Smith. (Surprisingly, lots of people at church today hadn't heard about it at all -- it turns out my internet bubble isn't a representative sample).



This week's news from the Joseph Smith Papers Project would be noteworthy without the pictures of the stone: in a historic collaboration between the LDS Church and the Community of Christ, one of the earliest manuscripts of the Book of Mormon is now available in print, soon to be online. However, the hundreds of pages of manuscript are (at least for now) totally overshadowed by these few photographs. It's nothing we've ever seen before. The Salt Lake Tribune has more background about the project (and the stone), and the LDS Church has a new article about the stone and its relevance to the Book of Mormon.

Reactions vary. I've heard everything from "The Church lied and hid this, and made me believe it was an anti-Mormon lie" to "I've always known about the stone, and aren't these pictures fantastic!" Joseph Smith's practice of obtaining revelation from God by looking into this stone leads Richard Bushman to compare it to an iPad; less LDS-friendly sources compare it to a Magic 8 Ball. In the same article, Bushman suggests that the stone troubles us because it "crosses a boundary ... between religion and superstition": it brings pre-Enlightenment folk magic into a religious tradition that more closely resembles post-Enlightenment Protestantism. In the end, Bushman rather likes the stone, and doesn't much care to insist that God acts in ways that are reputable by Enlightenment standards.

I share the sentiment: I love the connection to old traditions, even if we now regard them as odd, and I believe God can inspire Joseph Smith, or anyone else, in any way God pleases. However, I also think it's important to acknowledge that the stone can be troubling for a lot of other reasons, beyond mere discomfort with superstition. I'm immensely pleased that this historic and sacred artifact can be seen and better understood, but I'm also a bit uneasy about its new prominence. Here are some of the things I think we're going to have to deal with:

Vastly Different Historical Backgrounds

Put me in the "I've always known about this" camp. I mean, I wasn't born knowing it, and I grew up with the standard story Mormon kids and new converts learn. Short version: Joseph Smith saw an angel, who told him where to dig up an ancient, sacred record of an American people, engraved in an unknown language on gold plates. With the plates was the "Urim and Thummim": not the contents of Aaron the High Priest's breastplate from the Bible, but two stones, set in "silver bows," and fastened to a breastplate, prepared for the purposes of translating the record. (The less respectful term is "magic spectacles.") Joseph translated a portion of the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim (specifically, by looking in it or through it), and dictated his translation to a series of scribes (mainly Oliver Cowdery), resulting in the Book of Mormon. The plates and the interpreters were returned to the angel, and Joseph's later revelations did not require a similar physical intermediary. Honestly, it's not any weirder than a burning bush and stone tablets, when you grow up with it.

The more complicated version is that Joseph used at least one other seer stone in producing the Book of Mormon, often putting it into a hat to block off light. Joseph never said much about this other than that he translated "by the gift and power of God", but others close to him report that he saw words, characters, proper names, or whole sentences in the stone. I honestly can't remember the first time I saw this version, or in what context. I devoured a fair amount of literature about Mormonism (for and against) as a teenager, and I don't remember if I saw this in a hostile source and thought they got it wrong, or if I saw it in a church source, or what. I'm pretty sure that I had heard about it by the time I was a 19-year-old missionary myself, even if I wasn't quite sure what to think of it.  Eventually I concluded it didn't matter to me much: rock spectacles, rock in a hat, whatever.

However, not everyone read the same stuff I did (especially the anti-Mormon stuff, which Mormons, in general, are actively discouraged from reading), and a lot of people feel like something was covered up.  As I understand it, Joseph Fielding Smith (longtime church historian, great-nephew of Joseph, and 10th president of the LDS Church) didn't believe the rock had anything to do with the Book of Mormon, and viewed contrary accounts as attacks on faith.  Apparently, we got past that, but he left a big mark on the church.  Plus, the LDS Church I grew up had to deal with incredible growth, without "gathering" new converts to Utah like we used to do -- entire congregations might be led by people who were relatively new converts themselves.  The focus was on "correlation": creating a uniform curriculum (translated into more and more languages), a set of programs, and a structure of oversight, to teach basic principles and ensure that new congregations wouldn't wander.  By the 1970's, there were occasional articles discussing seer stones in church magazines, but if you weren't making sure you read every article, most of what you learned was from the correlated curriculum. Who has time to talk about seer stones in Sunday School, though, when you could talk about faith and repentance, instead?  It's a choice I respect, even though I feel like the correlated curriculum is far too shallow in a lot of ways.

I don't think the church has covered up the stone -- not for a long time, at any rate.  However, the "intro-only" approach to church history hasn't served us well, nor is it useful to pretend that, if you feel betrayed, it's your own fault for not finding out about the stone yourself.  Not everyone is going to look up church history sources on their own, especially when they're kept busy with Sunday and weekday meetings, endless programs, seminary and institute, youth night, missionary work, temple worship, family history work, and more and more and more.  Plus it's natural to feel betrayed if you've been in a church for several years, and you knew there was some pretty weird stuff, but now it turns out that there's some other weird stuff you never knew.  We can do a lot better at getting beyond intro-level in what gets discussed on Sunday, while still keeping our meetings focused on more important principles.

Scrying

Aside from the fact that it can be surprising, it turns out that the rock in the hat is different from the rock spectacles in one important way: it had other uses.  When Joseph Smith was younger, he used a seer stone -- possibly this stone -- to look for buried treasure.  It's not an anti-Mormon lie (anymore); you can read about it in the LDS Church's own account.  Like dowsing, it seems to have been a common enough practice, if lower class; I'd judge it to be about on par with going to a psychic today.  He never had much success, but accusations that he was a con man often come back to this: he was either a fraud, taking money under false pretenses, or he did find some gold (the plates) that rightfully belonged to someone else.

I don't personally think he was a fraud; he probably honestly believed he could do it, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Also, if you honestly believed God could show you things in a stone what wouldn't you try to see?!  Anyone who's prayed for a way out of a financial jam, or to find a set of lost car keys, should be able to understand.  However profane such an activity might be, it ought not to preclude the power of God to use a stone for sacred purposes.  Still, now that the rock in the hat is front and center, the treasure hunting has to be too -- we can't just sweep it under the rug anymore.

Book of Mormon Translation Issues

Other issues that the stone makes us confront have to do with how the Book of Mormon was translated.  A key teaching of the LDS Church about how to experience the Holy Ghost comes from an incident where Oliver Cowdery, Joseph's scribe, wanted to try doing some translating himself, but failed.   From Joseph Smith's (sometimes pointed) revelations, we learn that God apparently would have let him translate, but Oliver is rebuked for taking no thought except to ask God, believing that God would provide a translation.  What he should have done, we learn, is study it out until arriving at some conclusion, then ask if it's right: if it's right, "your bosom shall burn within you," and if it's wrong, "you shall have a stupor of thought."  Anyways, that's how it would have worked for him, if it had worked, but he didn't get a second chance.  Translating was Joseph's calling.

From this, I think we get the idea that Joseph largely interpreted by studying the plates, using the stone interpreters to pray for God to confirm or deny his attempts.  It's also what we learn about the Holy Ghost -- look for a "burning in the bosom" or a "stupor of thought."  The problem is that apparently, Joseph often translated without even looking at the plates.  This makes Oliver more sympathetic; he's no dummy; he's just doing what he's seen Joseph do.  But if that's the case, why did we need to have the plates at all?  And what's with setting up Oliver for failure anyways?  And should we really teach that about the Holy Ghost if it's not, to our knowledge, how any translation definitely happened?  (I don't reject a burning or a stupor as extreme possibilities, but I prefer the advice to Oliver prior to the attempt: you experience the Holy Ghost in your mind and your heart together.)

Also, if Joseph was reading words from a stone, there are literal translation issues.  The Book of Mormon quotes at length from Isaiah, Malachi, and other prophets, and when it does so, it mostly tracks the language of the King James Version of the Bible.  A few words are changed here and there, but I'm told that errors in the translation of the King James Version are also perpetuated in the Book of Mormon.  I prefer to deal with this (and many of Joseph Smith's later revelations) by believing that Joseph got ideas from God, but had to figure out himself how to convey those ideas in English.  If it's an idea from Isaiah, well, the problem of conveying the idea in English is already solved.  This approach is harder to take if Joseph is getting a word-for-word translation from a stone.  (Also, in that case, God may have some grammar problems).  So, I worry: now that the stone is front and center, is "Joseph got every word from God" going to be the only explanation that you can safely talk about at church?

As an Object, a Relic, or the Definition of a Seer

The existence of the stone itself, as a physical object in the church's possession is wonderful, but also a little embarrassing. There are, of course, the hints of superstition -- do we really believe folk magic is real? Also, I feel a bit as if we had announced that we had a splinter from the true cross, or the rod of Aaron.  The provenance of the stone is not really in doubt, but so many such relics are impossible that I haven't really made room in my head for a true one.  Plus, as a sacred relic, I worry about adoration or imitation.  Of course, there are many Mormon relics: if a disadvantage of being a young church is that everyone can dig up your dirt, one advantage is that lots of your historical records and artifacts are still around -- you can go see a lock of Joseph Smith's hair, or Willard Richards' cloak, or John Taylor's watch, or a first edition of the Book of Mormon.  This stone is in a league of it's own, though, if it's the instrument by which the Book of Mormon was translated.  Will there be framed pictures of it in Mormon living rooms?  Will Mormons start looking in stones as a legitimate mode of revelation again?

The church stepped away from that last option a long time ago.  Joseph outgrew it, and Brigham Young never seemed to see it as essential to his own role as a "seer".  Hiram Page claimed to be receiving revelations from a stone, but Joseph shut that down in a hurry.  The key to revelation wasn't having a stone, but being the person appointed by God to do it (which Joseph was, and Hiram Page wasn't).  However, the top leaders of the LDS Church are all believed to be "prophets, seers, and revelators."  "Seer" may mean something different now, but a literalist approach would take the Book of Mormon at it's word: a "seer" is one who is commanded to look into the "interpreters."  I've never understood that as a key part of being one of the Church's modern "seers," but I've also definitely run into people online this week talking about how they always understood that seers generally had seer stones(!).  Well, now that there is a stone, and we all know about it, are fundamentalist-leaning Mormons (not the polygamists, I mean going back to fundamentals before that) going to insist that seers ought to use it, while cynics say we've lost the gift to do so?

(There's a similar divide between fundamental types who insist that of course Jesus Christ has personally appeared to all of those top leaders -- it's part of being a "special witness" -- and cynics who insist that that's what they want us to think, and we've all been duped.  I'm pretty sure neither is the case. Some LDS Apostles have been pretty frank about the whole idea.  Anyways, I'd hate to see the same craziness again, over seer stones.)

In the end, I feel a bit like I might feel if if there was a second coming of Paul.  I mean, that would be pretty miraculous and all, but would he want to be in charge of things?  I'd really like to not revive the whole "women keep silent in church and cover your heads" thing -- we're past that, I hope. Similarly, Joseph's seer stone is a fascinating part of the Mormon past that I'm glad to know more about, but I hope it doesn't become a significant part of the Mormon future.