Title: Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right
Author: Matthew L. Harris
Publisher: University of Utah Press
Genre: Biography
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 233
ISBN: 9781607817574
Reviewed by Erik Champenois
As a teenager I came across Ezra Taft Benson’s 1960s and 1970s anti-Communist conference talks and to a significant extent due to Benson’s influence I became a right-wing conspiracy theorist for a few years. It wasn’t until my undergraduate college years that I started engaging conservatism and politics more intelligently, eventually becoming more of a progressive than a conservative (though I try to stay open to different perspectives and policy ideas). Reading this book was in some ways a cathartic experience: revisiting the apostle whose extremist worldview had misled me into engaging with the fringes of political and conspiracist (non)thought.
This book is not a complete biography of Ezra Taft Benson but is focused instead on Benson’s right wing politics. The book explains Ezra Taft Benson within the context of his time, both in terms of state and national politics and vis-à-vis the Church. Chapter 1 reviews experiences formative to Benson’s right wing views. First, his experience working with agricultural cooperatives in Idaho and Washington D.C., and his opposition to New Deal agricultural policies that paid farmers to not plant crops and to butcher their livestock (the aim being to drive down prices). And second, the impact of his mission to Europe immediately after World War II, where Benson saw the destruction and poverty that autocratic Nazi and Communist policies had caused Europe. Benson latched on to a common conservative critique of the New Deal and emerging welfare state as one that concentrated too much power in the federal government and might eventually lead to the kind of autocratic governance he had seen ruin Europe.
Chapter 2 covers Benson’s service as Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower, an assignment that followed his calling as Apostle to the Church. As Secretary of Agriculture, Benson sought to loosen price controls and agricultural subsidies, policies that proved unpopular at a time of falling farm prices, severe drought, and a volatile agricultural economy. Prior to his service, Benson received a Priesthood blessing from David O. McKay, blessing him to fight Communism and defend the Constitution. Benson therefore saw it as his calling to fight any policies he saw as leading towards communism, including moderate Republican policies implemented by Eisenhower.
Chapter 3 covers Benson’s involvement in U.S. conspiracy culture in the 1960s, including especially his involvement with the extremist conspiracy group the John Birch Society. This is quite the juicy chapter: covering the disagreements many of the Apostles had with Benson using his church office to spread his political views, the conspiracist thinking that led to a breach of the friendship between Benson and Eisenhower as Benson now suspected Eisenhower of being a (willing or unwilling) agent of the communist conspiracy, Benson’s views against the civil rights movement as being part of the communist conspiracy, and Benson’s pursuit of presidential bids with segregationists Strom Thurmond (with Benson as the presidential candidate) and George Wallace (with Benson as the vice presidential candidate).
Chapter 4 covers the attempts of church leaders to rein Benson in – and Benson’s lack of cooperation. Whereas David O. McKay had softly tried to rein Benson in, he ultimately agreed with many of Benson’s views (though not the more extreme ones) and didn’t try hard to rein him in. Harold B. Lee and Spencer W. Kimball were more active in opposition to Benson – telling him to give nonpolitical sermons, purging Church headquarter employees who were members of the John Birch society, and pushing back both privately and publicly on several of Benson’s statements (such as his quote that it would be very hard to be a liberal Democrat and a good Mormon). Paradoxically, though Benson was himself disobedient to church authorities who tried to rein him in, he gave a talk in 1980 on “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet” that advocated hyper-obedience to church authority (possibly as an announcement of his intentions as the next President once Kimball had passed). Kimball didn’t like this talk and apparently even asked Benson to apologize for it in front of all of the general authorities, a fact little known to members requoting this talk today.
Chapter 5 ends with President Benson’s service as President of the Church and the subsequent remolding of his memory as focused on his conference talks on the Book of Mormon, avoiding pride, and other such topics over and above his politics. Thankfully, Benson himself toned down his politics as President of the Church – perhaps the weight of his calling and the Church’s public image weighed more heavily on him. He didn’t abandon his right wing views however. The chapter also covers attempts by Gordon B. Hinckley – both as Counselor to Benson and as subsequent President of the Church – to moderate the Church’s image politically and to encourage more political plurality in an otherwise very Republican-leaning Church.
In our Trumpist era, where Latter-Day Saints have voted for Trump by higher margins than any other religious group in the United States, it is instructive to see where today’s LDS slant towards both Republican and right wing politics comes from. The historical background is more complex than it all being due to Benson (involving trends in American Christianity as well as politically the influence of J. Reuben Clark). But certainly Ezra Taft Benson was a significant influence in moving the American (and sometimes international) members of the Church further rightward. This book helps explain the personal, professional, and historical reasons for Benson’s political views. While extreme, Benson’s views are intelligible based on a certain strand of politics contemporary to his time. And as much as I disagree with most of Benson’s politics and the inflexibility of his conspiracist worldview, I can’t help but partially admire his dedication to fighting Communism during a very real and dangerous Cold War. Not being a biography of Benson, Harris’ book is an incomplete portrayal of the man – but a must read for anyone interested in the intersection of faith and politics in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.