This is a timeline of major events in Mormonism in the 20th century.
1900s
1900
January 25: The U.S. Congress votes to not admit B. H. Roberts, who had been denied a seat since being elected in 1898, because of his practice of polygamy.[1]
January: Reed Smoot, an apostle, is elected by the state legislature to the 58th congress as a U.S. Senator. Controversy over his election arises immediately.
February: Despite allegations and controversy, Reed Smoot is allowed to be seated in the Senate.
March: Reed Smoot takes the senatorial oath and formally becomes a member of the senate.
April 14 - The LDS Church purchases 25 acres in Independence, Missouri, originally part of the 63-acre Temple Lot from 1831. Church leaders intended this to be the site for a temple in Zion, fulfilling a prophecy of Joseph Smith.[10]
April: John W. Taylor resigns from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles due to disagreements with church policy regarding polygamy.
October 28: Matthias F. Cowley follows John W. Taylor and resigns from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles due to disagreements with church policy regarding polygamy.
February 20: After more than two years of hearings, the Smoot Hearings are resolved by a vote. The republican majority overturns objections to his seating. Reed Smoot serves another 26 years.
December 7: Charles W. Nibley becomes the Presiding Bishop and brings financial reforms, including tithing payments only in cash, no longer taking donations in kind.[3]
December 14: Converts in Europe are advised to remain in their home countries instead of gathering to Utah.[11]
April 8: The General Priesthood Committee is created.[3]
October: A financial auditing report is presented at General Conference for the first time.[12]
1909
November: The First Presidency issues an official statement regarding questions concerning the Creation of the earth and the theories of evolution and the origin of man.
LDS Church purchased property in Far West, Missouri, including the former temple lot.[3]
John W. Taylor was excommunicated for violating the Second Manifesto.Publicity for A Victim of the Mormons, which ushered in a number of sensationalist anti-Mormon films.
February 10: Three popular BYU professors appear before church leaders for teaching evolution.[13] After becoming a public controversy, the professors resign later that year. Historian Leonard Arrington called this Mormonism's "first brush with modernism".[14]
March 28: John W. Taylor is excommunicated for performing a plural marriage despite the Second Manifesto issued by church president Joseph F. Smith. With this excommunication, the practice of new polygamous marriages is believed to be finally abolished. Polygamists who were married prior to 1905 continue to remain in good standing with the LDS Church including, but not limited to, the church's president, Joseph F. Smith.
September 16: A photographer threatens to publicly display unauthorized photographs of the interior of the Salt Lake Temple unless the church pays $100,000. Instead president Joseph F. Smith arranges the church to publish a book containing its own such photos.
October: A Victim of the Mormons (Danish: Mormonens Offer) a Danish silent film directed by August Blom is released. The film was controversial for demonizing the Mormon religion, and its box-office success is cited for initiating a decade of anti-Mormon propaganda films in America.
October 26: Stake missionaries are first called, in the Granite Utah Stake.[3]
November 29: The M.I.A. Scouts are created as the first official LDS organization of the Boy Scouts of America.[17]
Publication of Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey. It is his best known novel and played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre. However it contains unflattering portrayals and stereotyping of Mormon polygamists.
Russian Revolution which results in the Soviet Union after a protracted civil war. The region is not opened to missionaries until the early 1990s and travel to there by outsiders becomes more difficult.
May 16: Arrangements are announced for the Relief Society to sell its wheat storage of over 200,000 bushels to the U.S. government, to cover military food shortages near the end of World War I.[19]
December 2: Apostle David O. McKay and Hugh J. Cannon, editor of the Improvement Era, are set apart for a year-long tour of LDS missions and schools across the world.[21] As the most widely traveled general authority,[22] McKay retains a vision for worldwide church growth.[23]
New programs for young adults are created, called M-Men and Gleaners.[3]
Joseph Fielding Smith's Essentials in Church History is published, an influential book of devotional LDS history that remained in print for more than 50 years.[24]
May 6: KZN radio (later KSL) goes on air in Salt Lake City, with LDS Church involvement,[25] and makes a message of Heber J. Grant the first church broadcast.[3]
July 18: In the wake of the Scopes Trial, the First Presidency issues an official statement, an edited version of the 1909 statement, regarding questions about the Creation of the earth, the theory of evolution, and the origin of man.[28][29]
April 21: The LDS Church buys a controlling interest in a Salt Lake City radio station, which it changes from KZN to KSL and still maintains today.[30]
Good Neighbor Policy adopted. The reforms were primarily intended to remove from church literature, sermons, and ceremonies any explicit or implicit suggestion that Latter-day Saints should seek vengeance on the citizens or government of the United States for past persecutions of the church and its members, and in particular for the death of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum.
All LDS Church junior colleges are transferred to their respective states (Utah, Arizona, and Idaho), although Ricks College remains in church ownership.[3]
1932
April 2: A new emphasis is placed on Word of Wisdom observance, especially in tobacco abstinence.[3]
August 22: Gordon B. Hinckley, a newly returned missionary and future LDS Church president, begins works on the church's Radio, Publicity, and Mission Literature Committee.[3]
August 8: J. Reuben Clark calls for church educators to focus on building students' faith in his speech "The Charted Course of the Church in Education", which became a classic text influencing the mission of CES.[34]
November: The Genealogical Society of Utah (now called FamilySearch) begins to microfilm records of genealogical data.[3] This grew into a massive collection from around the world, which is being digitized today.
Local church education boards are replaced by the new General Church Board of Education.[3]
Richard R. Lyman, the most recent apostle of the LDS Church to have been excommunicated.
1940
September 27: Theatrical release of Brigham Young, a Hollywood biopic, featuring Dean Jagger as Brigham Young, and Vincent Price as Joseph Smith. Though the film is commercially unsuccessful, it brings Mormon history to a wider international audience.
April 6: Marion G. Romney is sustained as Church's first Assistant to the Twelve.
April 10: Harold B. Lee is ordained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
May: Hugh B. Brown is called to be the LDS Servicemen's Coordinator.[3]
The Presiding Bishop's office organizes central management of LDS Church membership records.[3]
1942
April: Because of war-time travel restrictions, General Conference was limited to certain priesthood leaders in the Assembly Hall, and not the general public.[12][20]
May: The Improvement Era begins devoting an issue for each General Conference, publishing all the talks.[20]
October: The LDS Servicemen's Committee is created, headed by Apostle Harold B. Lee.[3]
October: Helmuth Hübener, a German Latter-day Saint is the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the infamous Special People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) and executed.[35]
The first time an evening meeting of General Conference is held.[12]
1943
LDS Church apostle Richard R. Lyman was discovered to be cohabitating with a woman other than his legal wife, in a relationship that he defined as a polygamous marriage. Lyman was excommunicated on November 12, 1943 at age 73, on grounds of a violation of the law of chastity, which any practice of post-Second Manifesto polygamy constituted. He was later rebaptized and died in the church. He is the most recent apostle to be excommunicated.
October: The priesthood session of General Conference is held for the first time.[12]
November 3: New LDS Church president George Albert Smith and U.S. president Harry S Truman meet and discuss sending humanitarian supplies to war-torn Europe.[3]
The publication of No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, by Fawn Brodie. Brodie's most notable Mormon critic, Brigham Young University professor Hugh Nibley, published a scathing 62-page pamphlet entitled No, Ma'am, That's Not History, asserting that Brodie had cited sources supportive only of her conclusions while conveniently ignoring others. Brodie considered Nibley's pamphlet to be "a well-written, clever piece of Mormon propaganda" but dismissed it as "a flippant and shallow piece". Brodie's book becomes a best seller, and has not got out of print yet.
George Albert Smith is said to have petitioned the Lord to lift the ban on blacks receiving the priesthood. He claims he is denied. The ban was not lifted until 1978.
1949
October: The first public broadcast of General Conference on television.[3] Conference talks are given time limits for the first time, to fit with broadcast station timetables.[12]
1950s
1950
August 8: George F. Richards, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, dies.
September 1: The first early-morning seminary is started in southern California.[11]
July 26: Short Creek raid, a mass arrest of polygamists at the Short Creek Community in the Arizona Strip. At the time it was described as "the largest mass arrest of men and women in modern American history".
September 11: Bern Switzerland Temple is opened, the first outside North America, and in Europe. It introduces films for the Endowment ceremony in various languages.[3]
October: With new stakes outside the United States and leaders travelling to Utah, translators are first used in General Conference to provide live talks for other languages (starting with German, Dutch, Samoan, and Spanish).[43]
October: N. Eldon Tanner, after having been an apostle for only one year, is called as second counselor to David O. McKay in the First Presidency. He spends the rest of his life serving in the First Presidency.
January 1: The Home Teaching program replaces Ward Teaching,[11] and is placed under Melchizedek Priesthood quorums as part of the LDS Church's correlation effort.[45]
October: David O. McKay followed doctor's advice to not attend General Conference but he sent two messages to be read by his sons, marking the first time a president's message was delivered by someone else.[12]
October 3: Family Home Evening is reemphasized,[11] with a new manual and training, and increasing from once per month to one night per week (which became Monday in 1970).[47]
Joseph W. B. Johnson, in Ghana, claims he was told by Jesus to preach the Book of Mormon and the Joseph Smith story to the Ghanaians. Over time, he converts 1,000 people,[49] all who cannot hold priesthood in the church until the revelation received in 1978.[50]
Upon hearing news of Billy Johnson's work in Ghana and others in Africa, David O. McKay petitions the Lord to lift the ban on blacks receiving the priesthood. He says that it is denied. It is not until 1978 that the ban is lifted.
January: Ensign, New Era, and Friend magazines are first published; several publications are discontinued.
February: One Bad Apple released by The Osmonds reaches No. 1 in Billboard's Hot 100 Chart and stayed there for five weeks; it also reached No. 6 on the R&B chart.[58] The members of the Osmonds are devout LDS, and their religion was discussed in many popular media outlets.
June 8: The Genesis Group is formed. It becomes an official church auxiliary dedicated to serving the needs of black members, who cannot hold the priesthood at this time.
September 1: Relief Society dues are dropped and all LDS women are automatically enrolled.[11]
May 14: Afrikaans edition of Book of Mormon, first in an African language.[60]
June 3: The Public Communications Department is created, initially called the External Communications Department, to address public relations.[61] It would become the Public Affairs Department in 1991.[62]
February: Agricultural missionary work is introduced in South America.[3]
April 7: The Welfare Services Department is created by the Priesthood Correlation Program, combining existing services, including the Welfare Program.[3]
June : The Plan, a concept album by the Osmonds is released. Although it is not one of their more successful albums, it explicitly deals with Mormon theology, including the plan of salvation.
December 26: After serving for little more than a year as president, Harold B. Lee dies.
December 30: Spencer W. Kimball becomes the 12th president of the LDS Church.
September 6: Announcement that all LDS Church-owned hospitals would be divested into a new nonprofit organization, called Intermountain Health Care. This finalized on April 1, 1975.[65]
October 3: Stakeseventies quorums are combined with stake missionary leadership.[3]
September 19: The Mormon sex in chains case becomes a major scandal in the UK, after a missionary is abducted in Surrey. The coverage was extensive in part because the case was considered so anomalous, involving as it did the issue of rape of a man by a woman.
April 1: The name extraction program is announced for local members to identify deceased persons from vital records and prepare their names for proxy temple ordinances.[68][69]
June 1: Spencer W. Kimball receives confirmation and revelation after supplicating the Lord regarding blacks and the priesthood. Moved by the exceeding faith of the Genesis Group, and moved by the dedication and perseverance of the mulattos in Brazil in building the São Paulo Brazil Temple, he takes the matter before the Lord, as many previous presidents of the church have done.
June 9: Spencer W. Kimball, after receiving the revelation, and discussing the matter with the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Quorum of the Seventy, announces that the ban on blacks receiving the priesthood has been lifted, and all males may receive the priesthood according to their worthiness, regardless of race. Despite previous understanding that blacks were not to receive the priesthood until the millennium, the members of the church receive the announcement with jubilation and it gains worldwide press attention.
June 23: Joseph Freeman, Jr., 26, the first black man to gain the priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, went in the Salt Lake Temple with his wife and 5 sons for sacred ordinances. Thomas S. Monson, a member of the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles, conducted the marriage and sealing ordinances. This event shows that blacks not only are able to gain the priesthood, but are able to interracially marry in the temple with the church's blessing. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 24, 1978)
September 17: Battlestar Galactica first airs on American television. It is produced by church member Glen A. Larson, and he incorporated many themes from Mormon theology into the shows.
September 30: N. Eldon Tanner reads Official Declaration—2 in General Conference, and it is unanimously adopted as the word and will of the Lord. This is the declaration released publicly earlier in 1978, allowing blacks to receive the priesthood.
September 30: General authority emeritus status is introduced for those above age 70, with the exception of the First Presidency and the Apostles.[3]
April 6: The LDS Church celebrates its sesquicentennial, and during General ConferenceSpencer W. Kimball dedicates the reconstructed log home where the church was founded in 1830.[73]
April 3: The "Three-fold Mission of the Church" (Perfect the Saints, Proclaim the Gospel, and Redeem the Dead) is declared at General Conference by church president Spencer W. Kimball.[11]
May 5: The LDS Church releases a statement opposing the placement of MX missiles in Utah, leading to a reversal of the Air Force plans.[75]
July 23: Gordon B. Hinckley is called as third counselor in the First Presidency, due to the physical weakness of Spencer W. Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner, and Marion G. Romney. Hinckley is referred to in the press as the "acting president of the church" because Kimball, Tanner, and Romney are largely out of the public eye.
September 26: New revised editions are published for the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.[64] They include new sections added to the Doctrine and Covenants, as well as new cross-references, footnotes, index, and other study helps.
Russian & Polish editions of the Book of Mormon.
1982
April 2: Local congregations are now only required to fund 4% of building their new meetinghouses, with the remaining 96% paid by the LDS Church's general fund.[3]
June 1: Ground broken for construction of the Triad Center on June 1, 1982 by Essam Khashoggi, chairman of Triad America.
October 3: The subtitle Another Testament of Jesus Christ is added to the LDS Church's recently revised edition of the Book of Mormon.[64]
October 30: The Grandin Print Shop opens as an LDS historic site in Palmyra, New York.[3]
November 27: N. Eldon Tanner dies. Consequently, Marion G. Romney is named as First Counselor, and Gordon B. Hinckley is named as Second Counselor.
December 31: The God Makers, an anti-Mormon film by Ed Decker, is premiered, finding screenings in evangelical Christian churches. Its popularity results in books and sequels, and impacts public perception of the LDS Church, although its claims and tone are strongly criticized, even by opponents of the church, for misrepresenting or defaming Mormonism.
April 7: Some new members of the First Quorum of the Seventy are only called for 5 years of service, the first general authorities without a lifetime appointment.[3]
May 3: Dallin H. Oaks is ordained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
June: Carol Lynn Pearson's estranged gay husband returns to live with her and their children after being diagnosed with AIDS, and she cares for him until his death. Her 1986 memoir, Goodbye, I Love You, is considered a landmark in discussions of homosexuality and Mormonism.[82]
November: Taipei Taiwan Temple, the first in a mainly Chinese speaking territory.
1985
January 15: The novel Ender's Game is published by Orson Scott Card, an active LDS Church member. The novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985,[83] and the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986,[84] considered the two most prestigious awards in science fiction.[85][86]Ender's Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986.[87]
April 28: The Salamander Letter is made public, describing folk magic in early Mormonism and causing much controversy.[88] Purporting to be an 1830 letter written by Martin Harris, it was later found to be a Mark Hofmann forgery.
June 7: Groundbreaking for Triad 1 of the Triad Center. It is not finished, but it would have been the highest building in Utah.
October 10: M. Russell Ballard is ordained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
October 15: Two Salt Lake City residents are killed by bombs laid by Mark Hofmann, a forger of Mormon historical documents, as a distraction to buy time as his debts mounted and schemes began to unravel.
October 9: Joseph B. Wirthlin is ordained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Arabic edition of Book of Mormon.
Protests against BYU president in Jerusalem by Jewish groups, shouting slogans such as "Conversion is Murder!" and "Mormons, stop your mission now".
1987
January 7: Mark Hofmann pleads guilty to murder, forgery, and fraud. His past discoveries are called into question, including many relating to Mormon history.
May 20: Marion G. Romney, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, dies.
August: The 100 millionth proxy temple endowment for the dead is performed.[3]
October: The General Conference at this time marks the point at which women would be included as speakers in every General Conference going forward.[12]
October 1: Richard G. Scott is sustained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Hebrew edition of Book of Mormon, later withdrawn.
September 1: George P. Lee, the first Native American general authority is excommunicated.
November 25: Announcement that local ward and stake budgets will be funded by general Church funds, from tithing, and will no longer have assessments.[3][91]
LDS Church membership surpasses seven million.[92]
1990s
1990
March 31: Helvécio Martins becomes first black general authority.
October 3: Gordon B. Hinckley announces Harrison New York Temple. Construction never started and all efforts for this project were eventually suspended; it was removed from the list on the LDS Church's official temple website soon after the dedication of the Manhattan New York Temple.
February 7: Howard W. Hunter is taken hostage while preparing to speak at a fireside in the Brigham Young UniversityMarriott Center. Cody Judy rushed onto the rostrum and threatened Hunter and the audience of 15,000–17,000, claiming the briefcase he held contained a bomb. Judy demanded that Hunter read a document over the pulpit, which Hunter refused to do. The audience spontaneously sang We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet, during which students from the audience, and then security personnel, overtook Judy.
July 10: Steve Benson publicly states that his grandfather, church president Ezra Taft Benson, is suffering from senility, which is being concealed by church leadership.[100] Later that year, Steve Benson publicly leaves the church.
After a controversy, a deal is struck between the Jewish and LDS communities to "Remove from the International Genealogical Index in the future the names of all deceased Jews who are so identified if they are known to be improperly included counter to Church policy".[101]
January 18: General Authorities are no longer to serve on boards of directors for public or private corporations (with the exception of the church's Deseret Management Corporation).[102]
February 25: More LDS members live outside the United States than inside it.[103]
July 1: Hong Kong is transferred to the People's Republic of China. This makes the Hong Kong China Temple the first temple on PRC territory (although there are still heavy restrictions on the church in other parts of China). Due to the disintegration of East Germany, it is the only temple in a Communist run country.
April 15: A second Salt Lake City shooting incident kills two, this time at the LDS Church's Family History Library, a block away from the January shooting. The Triad Center is also evacuated due to a suspicious note in a nearby truck, later found to be unrelated.[115]
May 24: FamilySearch.org website is launched, providing access to genealogical information.
August 11: A tornado damages SLC historic sites, delays work on LDS Conference Center and narrowly misses the Salt Lake Temple. It occurred during an unusually strong summer monsoon season. It was the second tornado to hit in Utah that resulted in a fatality (the other occurring in 1884).[118]
October: The first live broadcast of General Conference on the internet.[12]
^For the publication date, see advertisements placed in the Deseret Evening News: "Ready Tomorrow". Deseret Evening News. September 19, 1902. p. 7. Retrieved August 12, 2015. "Now Ready". Deseret Evening News. September 20, 1902. p. 12. Retrieved August 12, 2015.
^Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942–2004. Record Research. p. 445.
^"Leonard James Arrington Chronology". Leonard J. Arrington Papers - LJAHA COLL 1. Utah State University Libraries, Special Collections & Archives. Retrieved May 18, 2015.
^Francis M. Gibbons (1983). "Statistical Report 1982". One Hundred Fifty-third Annual Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. p. 25. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
^Alternate date of June 1984 found in "Chronology of Church History". Church History. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
^F. Michael Watson (1990). "The Church Statistical Report for 1989". Official Report of the One Hundred Sixtieth Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. p. 27. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
^F. Michael Watson (1992). "The Church Statistical Report for 1991". Official Report of the One Hundred Sixty-second Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. p. 30. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
^Cynthia Doxey (2003). "The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's European Tours". In Donald Q. Cannon; Brent L. Top (eds.). Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Europe. BYU Religious Studies Center. pp. 185–99.
^52. Vern Anderson (July 10, 1993). "Benson's Not Competent, Grandson Says". The Salt Lake Tribune. Associated Press.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^While not considered a schism of the Church of Christ (Fettingite) and its founder Otto Fetting, the Church of Christ at Halley's Bluff accepted Fetting's revelations, but it did not immediately break with the Fettingites in 1929. Nerren and Long instead formed a separate sect in 1932, which was later joined by five other former Temple Lot congregations by 1941.
— (III.) Minuscule, founded in the 19th century*† —
*^ Membership worldwide; generally church-reported; with an occasional exception †^ Once larger
^Organized the Church of Christ, the Latter Day Saint movement's original organization, of which multiple denominations currently believe themselves the true successor
^Members consider themselves as remaining adherents of the (historical) Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (As of 2011, litigation by the Community of Christ against Restoration Branch individuals and entities generally established CofC's right to both the full and abbreviated RLDS name.)
