Date of Award
2024
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Religion, PhD
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Matthew Bowman
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Tammi J. Schneider
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Patrick Mason
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Thomas B Spackman
Keywords
creationism, evolution, George McCready Price, Joseph Fielding Smith, Latter-day Saints, Mormonism
Subject Categories
American Studies | History of Religion | Religion
Abstract
At the beginning of the twentieth century, leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took a wary but open position regarding the burgeoning science of evolution. By the end of the century, Latter-day Saints had effectively become old-earth creationists. Through implicit hermeneutical framing and explicit statements, Church-published interpretive materials created a strong perception of a Church orthodoxy; scripture might allow for an old earth, but nothing died before the fall of Adam c. 4000 BC. Such a time frame ruled out the possibility of the evolution of plants, animals, and humans, and attributed the formation of fossils of dinosaurs and humanoids to recent causes. Particularly since this shift in attitude and position runs counter to the historical trend of increasing scientific evidence and acceptance for evolution throughout the century— including among highly trained scientists at Church-sponsored Brigham Young University— what factors account for this change?
Based on extensive archival research, interviews, and family materials, I argue that this shift represents the triumph of a particular hermeneutic, promoted heavily by a prominent Church leader, Joseph Fielding Smith. Three key assumptions drove Smith’s consistent views: 1) Concordism, the idea that scripture contains scientific facts and should be understood as recounting the natural history of the earth. 2) Plain reading, the idea that scripture’s original meaning is available to any reader, without recourse to extra-scriptural information, contexts, or expertise; God’s truths had been expressed in timeless, transhistorical ways. 3) Inerrancy, or a particular LDS form of it, in which scripture’s inspiration entailed its absolute correctness. From these three interpretive assumptions flowed Smith’s consistent teaching of a young earth and the Satanic falsehood of evolution.
Smith’s ecclesiastical peers did not share his assumptions or his positions, and so Smith recruited the authority of science. An early adopter of the arguments of Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price, Smith contended that true science had to begin with scripture as its primary data point. These arguments took place during a time of transition for the concept of “science,” as well as its relationship to “religion.” By the early 1930s, the highest body of Church leadership had rejected Smith’s paradigm and positions, and moreover, had invited several science PhDs into its Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one level below the First Presidency. None of the internal arguments from more senior ecclesiastical authority or the combination of scientific and ecclesiastical authority (i.e., Apostles with PhDs) shifted Smith from his positions.
1954 marked a major turning point. By that year, Smith had become one of the senior Church leaders, and highly respected for his scriptural knowledge. All the scientists in the Quorum had died, and replacement Apostles had been raised on Smith’s preaching. A new Church President was reluctant to impose his own views. These and other factors allowed Smith to publish Man, His Origin and Destiny; not merely publish, but impose it upon Church-employed teachers as scriptural truth and Church orthodoxy, and present it to the public without dissent from other Church leaders. Drawing heavily upon Price and others, Smith argued that the scientific consensus of an old earth and evolution were false, but scripture and Price’s true science proved a young earth. The President of the Church strongly disagreed but refused to take any public action. Consequently, Smith’s book with the positions and paradigms rejected by the First Presidency in 1931 gained significant backing among local Church leaders, professional and lay teachers, and even a few LDS scientists.
By the 1970s, Smith’s positions had received broad and forceful public support and amplification from younger Apostles, such as his son-in-law Bruce R. McConkie, and become common thinking among Church education employees, particularly among BYU’s Religion professors. Price and his now large school of thought among Protestants had significant intellectual capture among this group of Religion teachers. BYU scientists and historians who discovered the breadth of Church thought earlier in the century found that historical data ineffective in changing the minds of those who accepted Smith’s implicit hermeneutical construction of scripture and interpretation.
Two significant publications pushed out Smith’s hermeneutics and positions internationally with Church imprimatur. Both were largely produced by BYU religion professors and Church education employees who tended to read scripture through Smith’s lenses. First, a new edition of LDS scriptures included various study aids for the first time, including chapter headings and a Bible Dictionary. These implicitly modeled Smith’s hermeneutics, but bluntly stated in multiple places that no death occurred before 4000 BC, effectively ruling out evolution. Second, a manual of Old Testament interpretation— effectively a commentary of sorts— aimed at college students amplified Smith again, citing Church authorities very selectively on the question of creation and evolution. Adventists of Price’s creationist school of thought were favorably cited, as well as catastrophist Immanuel Velikovsky. These two publications, translated and distributed internationally, reflected Smith’s hermeneutics, thus steering Latter-day Saints into an old-earth creationist position as a historical Church orthodoxy and scriptural truth.
ISBN
9798346862772
Recommended Citation
Spackman, Thomas Benjamin. (2024). “The Scientist is Wrong”: Joseph Fielding Smith, George McCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the Twentieth Century. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 921. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/921.
