Review
======
Title: Wilford Woodruff’s Witness: The Development of Temple Doctrine
Author: Jennifer Ann Mackley
Publisher: High Desert Publishing. (2014)
Genre: History
Year Published: 2014
Number of Pages: 441
Binding: Softcover (also available in hardcover — see http://www.amazon.com/Wilford-Woodruffs-Witness-Development-Doctrine/dp/B00LK59WV2/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421783936&sr=1-2&keywords=wilford+woodruff%27s+witness)
ISBN13: 978-0615835327
Price: $24.95 (softcover)
Reviewed by Melvin C. Johnson for the Association for Mormon Letters
Jennifer Mackley’s *Wilford Woodruff’s Witness: The Development of Temple Doctrine* (2014) has produced a timely and worthy study of Wilford Woodruff and his interaction with the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their doctrinal and practical development. He served as a church general authority for almost sixty years, more than half of it as assistant historian and historian of the LDS Church. As the fourth President of the Latter-day Saints (1889-1898), he fashioned a bridge over the chasm of 19th-century Rocky Mountain Pioneer Mormonism, which permitted a path for the membership and its church into Modern America’s new century. Woodruff’s public suspension of the performance of plural marriage saved the temporal church from the ravages that would have followed government seizures of its sacred properties.
The author is an active LDS member, an attorney, and very inquisitive about her faith and its personalities. Her study was inspired by Woodruff’s account of his vision he recounted that he had received in the St. George Temple. He believed many of the founders of the United States appeared to him seeking proxy LDS baptism and other ordinances that, according to LDS doctrine, have eternal consequences. That inspiration propelled her innate inquisitiveness to explore further his life and his relationship with LDS temples, rites, and rituals. Many years of serious investigation in all matters Woodruffian led to this book.
I believe that Mackley must be formidable in her legal practice if the organization and writing skill of this book is any reflection. She organizes an immense amount of statistics, events, numbers, and peoples covering almost nine full decades. She then presents a compelling history, at times personally intense, of Wilford Woodruff and the Restoration with its myriad events and people.
Mackley uses Woodruff’s words wherever possible. I appreciate that she uses as few of her own so that the reader sees as if s/he is looking over Woodruff’s shoulder from his view of the world. Woodruff is allowed to tell his own story. This is not a third-person impartial history of the man. She believes that Woodruff was God’s prophet. As insightful as the book may be, one quickly realizes Mackley has faithfully written a specifically-tailored biography of a faithful man whom she greatly admires. She accepts the narratives of Woodruff and is not critical of her subject and their shared faith life.
For instance, she fails to explore in any significant way Woodruff’s active willingness and permission to continue the active practice of post-Manifesto plural marriage despite his proclamation in 1890 supposedly suspending it. Couples, in fact, were married immediately after the Manifesto, who had been given permission before its issue, as were a very few couples who moved to Mexico. Plural marriages approved by General Authorities (about 60 to 70% of whom participated in the practice with Woodruff’s awareness) continued after 1890 until his death in 1898 and beyond.[1]
Temple doctrine apparently had developed under Woodruff that, at the very least, such marriages could be performed outside of Latter Day sacred precincts. Mackley, however, does not discuss Temple Doctrine as much as Temple Practices. The examination of doctrinal development is not philosophical so much as historical. I think she conveys a feeling of being uncomfortable at times with speaking about “sacred” matters, thus her conversation eludes possible meanings and reasons for rites and rituals. I would advise the discerning reader to keep handy a well-thumbed copy of Anderson’s *Development Of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000.*[2]
Mackley also does not seriously probe the links between Masonry and the LDS endowment. She makes a brief two-page (69-71) comment about the subject. Because Woodruff himself does not comment on parallels between Masonry and the endowment, she feels no need to elaborate, leaving the reader wanting more. Without a doubt, she protects her subject and his faith. If she had stopped there, I would not be as enthusiastic as I am about the work. What she does do that significantly enhances the book for the reader, as just one example, is to provide more than a dozen references to Volume 2 of “Wilford Woodruff’s Journal” where he does comment on Masonry. Check the end notes carefully for valuable veins of information to mine.
The large and inclusive body of end notes permits the discriminating reader and researcher and scholar to pursue issues of interest further. Five appendices supplement the delightful set of end notes that are nearly worth the admission price themselves. They are described by the titles: “Temple Ordinance Chronology,” “Wilford Woodruff’s Children,” “Wilford Woodruff’s Wives,” “Timeline of Wilford Woodruff’s Life,” and “Wilford Woodruff’s Incidents and Accidents.” The last lists more than forty serious or potentially serious incidents that imperiled his life involving a variety of illnesses, accidents, and injuries that would have done in eight or ten other men in a lifetime. The list indicts the cruel material nature of Woodruff’s contemporary cultural infrastructure. We get an insight into Woodruff of perhaps a not very coordinated, possibly unaware or narrow-viewed man who took risks. Finally, the Appendix testifies to an apostle who needed as many guardian angels as those who warded his fellow apostle Paul of the New Testament.
Reading the work was pleasurable for me, not a remark that I can easily make for all those who write in our field. An example follows:
“Wilford often shared his feelings of joy in the privilege of completing ordinances for over four thousand of his own family members as well as many others. It was a blessing and privilege he believed ‘the fullness and glory of which we will never know until the veil is opened.’ 999 He expected that the unions that would occur on the other side of the veil would be happy ones unless the Saints ignored or neglected the responsibilities to their own deceased family members. Using himself as an example, he asked: ‘How would I feel, after living as long as I have, with the privilege as I have had of going into these temples, to go into the spirit world without having done this work.’ 1000 He did not want to meet his progenitors and have one say, ‘You held in your hand the power to go forth and redeem me, and you have not done it.’ 1001 He did not want the Saints t face that prospect either.” (294-295)
Her narrative is easily delivered and easy to follow.
This is not the definitive Wilford Woodruff or Development of Temple Doctrine book. In the meantime, however, Mackley has done very well, and her work will fill the slot on the book shelf. Buy one for yourself and give copies as gifts for your friends because this is a serious book for serious scholars of Mormonism.