Welcome and Introduction to Second Anointing Week

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 20, 2024, and we are welcoming you to second anointing week on Mormon Stories podcast. We are going to be dedicating three, four, maybe even five episodes to the super secret Mormon ordinance called the Second Anointing. Brian, what is the second Anointing?

Bryan Buchanan [00:00:26] So the second anointing is the last and likely least known of the Mormon Temple ordinances. People have very likely heard of baptisms for the dead, the Washington Anointing, sometimes called the initiatory, and then the endowment. But there's also this other ordinance called the Second Anointing that some people get, not nearly as many as the other ones. And it has had some secrecy associated with it over the years. And so as a result, a lot of people, even lifetime Mormons, may not have heard of this.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] Brilliant. And for those of you who have been longtime Mormon Stories fans or super fans, you'll know that we introduced the Second Anointing to a lot of Mormons through our very early episode with Tom Phillips. I'm going to say back in 2014ish. And you know, Tom Phillips was a high level leader in the Mormon Church in the UK who ended up receiving his second endowment but then losing his faith and then coming on Mormon Stories to talk about it. So let me just tell you, you how Second Anointing week is going to go down. So this is going to be episode one, which is a history of the Second Anointing. Episode two is going to be an interview with this gentleman sitting running right in front of me. Hey, Darren Klein, how you doing?

Darren Klein [00:01:39] Hey, Good, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:41] Darren has a really cool story because. And we'll be getting to this in a second, but basically he stumbled on his grandfather's written invitation by Spencer B. Kimball.

Darren Klein [00:01:53] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:01:54] To receive his second anointing. And as far as we know, Bryan, tell me if I'm wrong. Do we have many published instances of written invitations to the Second Anointing?

Bryan Buchanan [00:02:05] I have a couple more, but they're buried in things that people have probably never seen. And honestly, this was the first one I've actually held. So not common.

John Dehlin [00:02:15] So in part two, Bryant, Darren's going to be reading the letter and, and talking about how the second Anointing played into his own faith journey. So that's going to be a second part. We're also going to re release the Tom Phillips interview, but this time on YouTube because believe it or not, it's never been released on YouTube before. So we're taking the multiple audio segments, munging them into a single episode, adding some stills to it, and we're going to reintroduce Tom Phillips to our new, brilliant, burgeoning global audience.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] We also are going to re release Hans Mattson's second anointing account. Add that my friend Mark Burton also has a second anointing relic that we hope we're going to share and maybe have him tell his story a little bit. And I forgot to mention this, Tom Phillips has agreed to come back on Mormon Stories and give everyone an update on his life since doing that interview, by the way. Of course, since I interviewed Tom Phillips, his son, I believe it's Alan, was called to be either an area or general authority for the church. So that's kind of interesting. So it's going to be a full, vibrant and exciting second anointing week.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] And it's worth mentioning that this is certainly one of the most controversial, forbidden, undiscussed and uncovered issues in all of Mormon history, I think.

Bryan Buchanan [00:03:47] But most importantly, fascinating and fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:03:50] Yeah, absolutely. So that's what you're in store for. Welcome to this edition of Mormon Stories, and we hope you enjoy it. Okay, so getting that out of the way, Brian Buchanan has joined us at least a couple times. At least three, at least three, maybe four times on Mormon Stories. He, he appeared on. He is co host with Lindsay Hansen park on your polygamy podcast or Mormon History podcast, Sunset History Podcast. Both podcasts deserve mentioning, of course, but he's co host with Lindsay Hansen on Sunson History Podcast. We've had him on twice on Mormon Stories to discuss the history of Mormon polygamy with Lindsay. Those were very well received episodes. The other one we had, was it on like controversial Mormon apostles or whatever?

Bryan Buchanan [00:04:34] Yeah. So I came on with Gary when he was talking about his book justice and Mercy. Fascinating cases there. So some of which actually kind of tie into today's topic.

John Dehlin [00:04:43] Yeah. And then tell them just your day job and what you do.

Bryan Buchanan [00:04:47] So I work at Benchmark Books here in Salt Lake and where I will do some show and tell later. There have been some things published on the second anointing. Not a lot, but a few things we'll talk about later. So I work there and then do the Sunstone History podcast with Lindsay and then also work with books, so proofing books, doing indexes, things like that.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] And we command that you buy all your books at Benchmark Books. Is that fair?

Bryan Buchanan [00:05:11] That's not only fair, but. Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:14] So I raised my right arm to

Bryan Buchanan [00:05:15] the Square and say everyone's been under covenant.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] Okay. All right, so this part one is going to be Brian sharing with us a history of the LDS Church's second anointing. But before we begin, we want to give the teaser of Darren Klein's story because that's kind of the impetus to all of this. Is that right?

What Is the LDS Second Anointing

Bryan Buchanan [00:05:35] Yep. That's where it started. So, Darren, I actually know a lot of his family. I didn't know Darren at first. So his citrus and his wife and their. Their siblings told me that Darren had discovered a Kimball era second anointing letter, which was fascinating. And I explained I'd been working on researching this for many, many years. And so obviously that was fascinating. And so finally got to meet Darren and see the documents. And that's. Yeah, like you said, that's why we're here, because that's the centerpiece and we want to give it some context and history to put it in its place.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] All right, so Darren, give us the teaser, maybe even show us a photo and the letter, and then we're going to talk more about it in part two.

Darren Klein [00:06:18] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] And tell us a little bit about you, just super briefly.

Darren Klein [00:06:21] Oh, okay. Well, as you mentioned, my name's Darren Klein. I'm married to Rebecca Klein. I used to be Rebecca Tolman, which we'll talk more about. But it was interesting how I came across these documents. And we'll talk more about that later. But it is in 1975. My grandparents at the Manti Temple.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] What are their names?

Darren Klein [00:06:45] Blythe and Genevieve Gardner.

John Dehlin [00:06:47] And so that's a photo you're holding up there.

Darren Klein [00:06:49] That's a photo that was taken at the Manti Temple the day of their ordinance.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] So who's in the photo besides them?

Darren Klein [00:06:55] President Kimball.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] Okay.

Darren Klein [00:06:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Okay.

Darren Klein [00:06:58] And the invitation, the letter that's here, it's the original. It's also from President Spencer W. Kimball.

John Dehlin [00:07:05] It's got a signature on it, his signature.

Darren Klein [00:07:07] And their specific invitation for the anointing and asking them to respond in writing as to whether they wish to receive the ordinance. Just kind of fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] And we'll be reading that next episode. Anything else you want to say about your story before we jump in?

Darren Klein [00:07:22] Oh, maybe we'll just jump in. But for me, it was powerful when I found this information, that I understood it because of your podcast. If I hadn't have appreciated Tom Phillips podcast and everything in his story was just amazing to me, I could hardly turn it off. I want to thank him. He's such a neat guy. I had an understanding of it. So When I saw these letters, I knew immediately what it was.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] You can pull them out of the dumpster.

Darren Klein [00:07:51] I literally pulled them out of the trash. And when I saw them, I just was excited to just have it, to understand it didn't even know it had ever taken place because he never spoke of it.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] Yeah. All right, well, thanks for joining us, Darren, and thanks for joining us, Brian. Let's jump in. Where should we begin?

Origins in Adam and Eve Ritual Symbolism

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:10] So if we think.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] Do we begin with Adam and Eve or. No. Does it not go back to.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:13] We assume that they got theirs, but the records only go back so far,

John Dehlin [00:08:17] so we're not quite sure.

Bryan Buchanan [00:08:19] So we could think of the second anointing as a cat with five lives. So the first part being during Joseph Smith's lifetime. And then the second part is as they move into the Nauvoo Temple. Then there's a hiatus for a while, and then beginning in 1866 in Utah, they start doing it again. And that period lasts up until the mid. Possibly late 1920s, when there's another hiatus. And then due to a man named George F. Richards, there is a brief resurgence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then it goes away again. And then it's not until Spencer W. Kimball becomes interested in this and really pushes it that it becomes a permanent thing. And that's the period that lasts up through Tom Phillips, up through Hans Matzen, till the present, as far as we can tell.

John Dehlin [00:09:07] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:09:08] So those are sort of the rough periods that we'll be talking about.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] And just to give people a better sense of what we're talking about, and I know this will come out throughout the episode. Can you describe just a couple of the promises made in the eventual second anointing and just a couple of the main actions of the second anointing, as we understand it today, just to really. So we're not talking about something people don't even have an idea of, how to conceive it. Does that make sense?

Bryan Buchanan [00:09:35] Sure. And, you know, we'll be somewhat careful because this is obviously important to people who are believers. And I would point out that our goal is not to be sensationalist, really. I think this is a very important part of Mormon history, and it intersects with a lot of other moving pieces of the history. And so the goal here is really just to outline the history. Where did it come from? How did it work? So you have these other ordinances that I mentioned, and then this is part of the. In the endowment ceremony is the idea that if you're faithful one day you may Become a king and a priest and a queen and a priestess, whereas you've just. That's a promise in the future now. And so this is the realization of that, the occurrence of that in mortality.

John Dehlin [00:10:22] So the second anointing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:10:24] The second anointing, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] So it's where faithful Mormons are basically crowned as kings and queens, gods and goddesses. Right. While they're still living. Is that. Am I overstating it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:10:36] No, no, no. And there is an evolution to it. So where it eventually gets to is a first part, which is again, like it just a second anointing. So that does carry promises of being a king and a priest, queen and a priestess, essentially giving godhood.

John Dehlin [00:10:55] Basically, it's an aborman apostle. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:10:59] That administers it.

John Dehlin [00:11:00] Yes, washing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:11:02] So the first part of that has always taken place either in a temple or at least a dedicated space where the man and the woman are given an anointing and the promises a blessing. And then eventually there is a second component to it.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] And when we talk about an anointing for those who've never been Mormon, what I think of is like oil on the head with hands laid on the head and some sort of blessing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:11:25] Right.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Is that what you mean?

Bryan Buchanan [00:11:26] Exactly. And there are some places where it's more explicit that it does seem to be much like the initiatory anointing, where specific body parts are anointed with promises associated that. We don't have as much detail as far as the specifics of it for this, but it seems to be quite like that. And then the second component sometimes would take place in the home earlier on, now takes place within the temple also, where the wife then washes the feet of the husband and is able to give him a blessing, which obviously in other Mormon contexts is unheard of. So that's a really interesting look at somewhat of a priesthood level for women. And so, yeah, so like I said, early on takes place in the home, but later will take place in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:12:19] And I forget, does the apostle wash

Bryan Buchanan [00:12:21] feet of the recipients in the first part of it?

John Dehlin [00:12:24] Okay, so there's not just the hands on the head anointing, there's the apostle, Mormon apostle, washing the feet of both the man and the woman.

Bryan Buchanan [00:12:34] I believe so. And hearkening back to that New Testament model of Jesus and the apostles.

John Dehlin [00:12:38] Okay, yeah. It's intense. Right. Who wouldn't want that from a Mormon apostle? If you're a believing Mormon?

Darren Klein [00:12:43] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:12:43] I mean, that's like in Tom's. You know, he mentioned his interview that it was this life Changing, unbelievably powerful thing, and that's how most of the accounts describe it, is this unbelievable thing that they were so grateful for and that really in most cases changed their lives.

John Dehlin [00:13:02] And then there's a promise about their exaltation, right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:05] Yeah. And that, of course, is a matter of a lot of controversy because you can look at it that.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] What's the promise?

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:12] The promise is essentially that barring committing the unpardonable sin murder, and then what that means lots of debate on that. Is it murder? Is it denying the faith? Yeah, that's up for debate.

John Dehlin [00:13:27] But barring that, barring that, you are

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:29] essentially promised exaltation no matter what, meaning

John Dehlin [00:13:32] you go to the highest degree of the social kingdom and you and your spouse become gods to rule over your own planets.

Bryan Buchanan [00:13:38] And obviously in earlier decades, that's you and your spouses Plura, which of course not quite the case anymore.

John Dehlin [00:13:45] But imagine in life having a special witness of Christ blessing you and your spouse, that you're in to heaven, highest level. Almost no matter what you do, barring murder, you will become gods and goddesses. And you know that while you're living, it's mind blowing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:01] What is interesting is you have a few cases, sometimes you hear people say, well, once you've had your second anointing, they can't really excommunicate you. They do. There are certainly cases of that. I think John D. Lee is probably the best known case of that. So that's another part of the discussion, is, well, can you.

Joseph Smith Era and the Nauvoo Temple

John Dehlin [00:14:18] Yeah, okay, so, okay, so you said there's five main eras. Yep, let's go from there.

Bryan Buchanan [00:14:24] So let's. So obviously the main elements of it that we would recognize come from Nauvoo, but there are earlier hints toward it. So during the Kirtland years, Joseph Smith will get several revelations that will include elements that will become part of it. So in one revelation, there's the idea of becoming clean from the blood and sins of this generation. You have another revelation that talks about being endowed with power from on high. And so then in 1833, when the school of the Prophets is organized, they have a feet washing ritual that takes place there, and there's a few, and that's only men at that period.

Bryan Buchanan [00:15:01] And then three years later, once they finish the Kirtland temple enough to start actually using it, you then have this new expanded washing ritual that's now paired with an anointing with oil and promises associated with that. So by the time of the Kirtland dedication, you have kind of parallel ordinances. You've got a feet washing ritual, but then you also have this combination of washing and anointing. And again, only men through this period.

John Dehlin [00:15:28] Yeah, I don't think maybe a lot of Mormons don't realize that the ordinances that we now do in the temple Kirtland didn't have those ordinances, just beginnings of them.

Bryan Buchanan [00:15:38] And from what we can tell, it does seem, it's very similar to the washing and anointing that does continue to the present. But because we don't have as much detail as we'd like, we can't really say that for sure. It does seem very similar.

Bryan Buchanan [00:15:51] And then obviously, at the end of Kirtland, chaos ensues. We have the safety, society collapse, mass descent. And so chaos is the word for the next five years. So they move to Nauvoo. And then once things calm down, Joseph Smith returns his idea to ritual. And by this point he started talking about other topics, hearkening to the New Testament again. So he'll talk about the calling election, made sure he'll talk about the second comforter, he'll talk about the more sure word of promise. But they're more or less nebulous concepts at that point. They don't really have any tie to anything specific.

Bryan Buchanan [00:16:28] Then in 1841, he gets another revelation that's now section 124, that talks about a whole potpourri of washings, anointings, oracles, baptisms for the dead, and interestingly, sacrifices. And that's a fun fact that at least in theory, he's playing around with the idea of animal sacrifice in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:16:48] Does this coincide with his joining the Masonic Lodge, 1842, one year before?

Bryan Buchanan [00:16:55] So this, this revelation, I think is January 1841. And part of that too is it commands them to get moving and actually build a temple so that all of this stuff can take place. And there's promises of these ordinances that have been kept hid from the foundations of the world. So it's this very exciting, big things coming kind of revelation. Okay, and so then, yes, now, so you've got, you've got New Testament language, but you also have some secrecy. There's a hint that it will be for kind of the inner circle of Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] So what you're telling me is something very interesting. I thought of it as Joseph Smith goes to the Masonic Lodge and then says, hey, let's create a temple ceremony. It sounds like what you're saying is he had the idea of creating special sacred rituals before, and he was probably thinking about what's the content or the substance of those going to be? Then he joins the Masonic Lodge and says, I know I found some rituals that I can incorporate into these ceremonies. I've been promising people. Does that sound right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:17:58] The timeline is really interesting. So they introduced baptisms for the dead before anyone. There are Mormons that are Masons, but they don't have the lodge in Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith is not involved yet. So, yeah. So there's the seeds of it. But then in 1842, they set up the lodge in Nauvoo. Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, everybody that's in the inner circles becomes a Mason. And then immediately after that is the introduction of the endowment. So May 1842, he takes a group and they go to the upper room of his store there in Nauvoo, which is where everything happens. That room is. It's unfortunate. The building that's there in Nauvoo is a reconstruction, which is sad, but they tried to make it look like the original.

Bryan Buchanan [00:18:38] But in that upper room, the Relief Society is organized. That's where the Masonic collage was. And that's where he takes this group up there. And they. They set up plants and they set up curtains, and they do this endowment drama, this ritual drama incorporating Adam and Eve and theological concepts. And what I find so interesting is, if you look at who's there, they're all Masons. And you have loyalists.

John Dehlin [00:19:02] They're Masons, all of them.

Bryan Buchanan [00:19:04] So that's the thing is, is you can't just say that he rips it directly from Masonry. It's a more complicated patchwork of things going on because you've got these earlier concepts and then clear Masonic elements that he welds together in this new thing called the Endowment.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Now, I think you've covered this, or it's been covered in your polygamy, but. And I don't. I haven't really studied this in depth, but I keep hearing that the endowment, in part, was created to help keep the practice of polygamy secret. Is there.

Bryan Buchanan [00:19:39] There's an element of it. There's. Actually. Let me. This is a good time to show this book is. Gary, who was with me, with who I came on with the justice and Mercy episode along with DeVere. Anderson did this book called Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed that looks at the very beginnings of all of this. And they do some really good number crunching to show how many people that were involved during Joseph Smith's lifetime were polygamists.

John Dehlin [00:20:05] And.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:05] And it was a majority of them, but it wasn't all. So to say that its sole thing is perpetuating polygamy isn't accurate.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] And to keep it secret.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:14] And to keep it secret. But it is definitely tied up with it intricately. Definitely. So, yeah. So this initial group that participates in the Endowment, you've got your loyalists like Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, Willard Richards, but then you also have guys like William Law, William Marx, George Miller, who, of course, will go their own way.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] So when you say dissidents, they are eventual dissidents.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:36] Eventual dissidents. So it's really fun because it's like this microcosm of what will happen. You've got the strongest of both sides that are there in that Same room in May 1842.

John Dehlin [00:20:49] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:20:50] And so once they do that, then they start bringing other people into it. And it's really interesting because it becomes a group, and they will call it the Anointed Quorum. They'll call it the Holy Order. They'll call it the priesthood. And they'll meet every so often, and then they'll do these ordinances, these washings, these anointings, this ritual drama, and bring people into the group. But then they'll have meetings, and they'll just kind of talk, and they'll talk about theological concepts, but kind of like the council of 50 a little bit later. They'll also talk about literally anything in one meeting. They talk about what if we send people up to Wisconsin to get lumber to send down, so the most mundane of things will also take place.

Bryan Buchanan [00:21:31] So they bring people in, but it's, again, only men at the beginning. And then we have our first hiatus because Nauvoo goes absolutely crazy. So this is the end of 1842. John C. Whistle. John C. Bennett has blown the whistle on polygamy, and Joseph Smith goes into hiding. And they really. Nauvoo kind of shuts down a little bit because it's so chaotic. But then by the next summer, things have calmed down a little bit. Joseph Smith is out of hiding. They're not trying to extradite him to

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Missouri anymore because Boggs was assassinated.

Bryan Buchanan [00:22:05] The assassination attempt likely by Porter Rockwell. All of this is happening at the same time, and Nauvoo just is chaotic. Then it finally calms down. Things go back to normal, more or less. And importantly, you get someone like Hyrum Smith, who had been opposing polygamy because he wasn't quite in on the inner circle yet, that is now on team polygamy. And so they start meeting again. And they now have a new ritual that is a marriage for eternity called sealing. So that begins in this context as well. And then by the fall.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] And is the sealing ritual begun before DC132 is actually written and approved?

Bryan Buchanan [00:22:47] Yep. That's late 1843, August, that it's made known to people.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] So they're doing sealings before the new and everlasting covenant is revealed.

Bryan Buchanan [00:22:57] Right. And he's been hinting at that for a while, but now it's an actual practice and now will become canonized. Written. Well, not canonized, but written revelation. And sorry, it does happen at that time. I know there are people that think it doesn't too bad. It does.

Darren Klein [00:23:13] Brian, does that ceiling ordinance, does that go back to the Masonic? Is that traditionally something that they were doing?

Bryan Buchanan [00:23:20] No. I mean, I think you can see elements of Masonic thinking in it, but the actual ceremony itself, I don't know that you can really tie to Masonry, if that makes sense. I think it's the thinking and maybe the mental framework for it.

Darren Klein [00:23:38] You could say that how it evolved.

Bryan Buchanan [00:23:40] Yeah. And what's so interesting at this period is now women are finally brought into the group. Part of that is that Emma has sort of kind of accepted polygamy. There's a really good essay by Cheryl Bruno that's in Secret Covenants that just came out from Signature that pushes back on that a little bit, that her acceptance of it was a little less accepting than we've thought previously. But she's sort of on board. And so she's brought into this group. And that's a big thing. And so they start doing sealings. And then there's this fascinating meeting in September 1843. This time they're meeting in the mansion in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith's house, and the group is there. And in his diary it says, Barak El was anointed to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood. He's the president of this quorum. And then it just says companion ditto. And it's a little vague.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Barak El.

Bryan Buchanan [00:24:38] Barak El. That's Joseph Smith. That's one of his several code names.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] So you're given a new name as a part of this ceremony.

Bryan Buchanan [00:24:45] That's an interesting thought. It's not clear if it's just Joseph Smith to whom that happens, or others, but the idea of a new name certainly is part of this evolving temple theology.

John Dehlin [00:24:57] Do you get a new name in the Masonic Lodge? Does anyone know?

Bryan Buchanan [00:25:00] There is the idea of a secret name. That's kind of the goal is like we Got to figure out this grand secret name. So the idea of names is definitely very prominent in Masonic thought and Joseph Smith's evolving thought.

John Dehlin [00:25:13] So what are those names? So you were saying, what did that mean? That.

Bryan Buchanan [00:25:17] So if you were just to read it as is, it's not exactly clear what's going on. But as we see that in the trajectory of what happens later, it's clear that's the first occurrence of the second anointing. And so starting with that, and what's interesting too is like, about a week later, Joseph Smith is talking to William Clayton, his good friend. And Clayton records in his diary that Smith had told him that he had been anointed a king and a priest. And so we can see sort of retroactively what's going on. That's the first occurrence of it. And then over the next months, again, they bring other people into this new ritual, and the same guys that had been there for the endowment now get this second anointing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:02] And so that goes on. But the first occurrence of the term second anointing doesn't come until January 1844. And it comes from Wilford Woodruff's journal, which is a treasure trove for everything, but especially for this. And so he uses that phrase. It's very basic, right? You have a first anointing, and then you have a second anointing. It's a very practical term.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:26] What's so interesting is that the specific occurrence when he uses that is for Heber and Vilate Kimball. And there's his wife, right? Vilate is his first wife. And this is important also is this ceremony. Both these ceremonies are for only first wives at this point. Polygamy is going on. But again, you don't want to blow it open too much by including plural wives.

Bryan Buchanan [00:26:51] So Heber Kimball in his journal has this really interesting section that he entitles strange events and he will record being there in that first endowment group. But then he describes what we talked about earlier of the second component of this second anointing ritual that takes place at their house, where he says, vilate washed my head and my stomach and my feet and in preparation for my burial, just like Mary did with Jesus. So explicitly linking this new ritual to the New Testament, and of course, the idea that Mary was Jesus wife and later they will develop one of his several wives.

John Dehlin [00:27:26] So we almost suggesting that when Mary anointed washed Jesus feet, that was some sort of sacred ritual, right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:27:35] And the way that it will will be developed is that she then had would be able to lay claim on him in the resurrection. So it's sort of sealing the two of them together. She is being anointed to him so that they will be together in eternity.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] Because McConkie's and Smiths have believed for a long time that Jesus was married, likely to multiple wives. Right, right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:27:58] And that obviously is an interesting and controversial idea.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] I should say popes as well.

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:04] But the idea, of course, that she's one of several wives is even more controversial. And of course, Mormon leaders of that time, Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, will 100% believe that.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Okay, really quickly. So it was the Council of 50 where Joseph was anointed king of the world. Is that right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:21] Right.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] Is that considered the first, second anointing?

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:25] So that's later different. So that's the council of 50.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] You've got the 43. Joseph Smith is king anointed.

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:32] So that's a separate thing before The Council of 50 even exists.

John Dehlin [00:28:35] Okay, that's. So who's doing that again?

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:37] So that's the anointed quorum group that meets. So that's September 1843.

John Dehlin [00:28:42] They anoint him a king as well. So Joseph Smith isn't only anointed king, he's anointed king twice.

Bryan Buchanan [00:28:49] Sometimes the first one doesn't take. It is really interesting because. And that's a very Joseph Smith thing, is to have eight different things that sort of overlap, all going on at the same time. Nauvoo era Joseph Smith is wild. The next week, we might have something totally new that no one's ever heard of before, like the council of 50 in the spring of 1844.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] Okay, really quickly, Maven and Julia are talking behind the scenes, and they. They're wondering if in this second anointing process then or now, do women's feet ever get washed? Or is it only men's feet that get washed?

Bryan Buchanan [00:29:25] Do we know? I believe it seems like Tom and. Or Hans.

Darren Klein [00:29:30] Yeah, I think Tom said that his wife's feet were washed with his in that first episode, in the first meeting. And then when they go to the private room.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] So the apostle. I think it was Ballard who would have done. Tom and his wife.

Darren Klein [00:29:44] That's what I remember.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Ballard, in theory, would have washed both.

Bryan Buchanan [00:29:47] I'm pretty sure he says that.

Darren Klein [00:29:49] Yeah, I believe that's the case.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] But then when they go off to the room, the wife washes the husband's feet and then gives him a blessing,

Bryan Buchanan [00:29:55] which is so interesting because he doesn't give her a blessing. It's like one occasion out of all of them where a woman sort of Drives the bus. Yeah, really interesting idea.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] Okay, but. But men get their feet washed twice. Women get their feet washed now, possibly.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:11] Is that what happens in Nauvoo? We don't know. There's not enough detail because that's what happens later on. There's a good chance that that's just a continuation.

John Dehlin [00:30:20] Well, women weren't even in the room at that early point. Right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:24] The second anointing is always a marriage based, couples based thing from the beginning. So they're always part of it up in the.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] Up in the room.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:33] They brought their wives from the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] Okay, got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:35] That's always a couple's thing, which will become really important later on, because what do we do with single people then? Single women specifically, obviously.

John Dehlin [00:30:42] Okay, so he received. Kimberly Vitaly, did you tell us everything else you wanted to?

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:46] Yeah. Okay, so during Joseph Smith's lifetime, we have about 40 people that experience this ritual.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] And then, of course, 20 couples then, basically.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:55] Okay.

Darren Klein [00:30:56] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:30:57] I think I'm trying to remember. Lucy Mack Smith is always an interesting case because Joseph Sr. Obviously has died, so they sort of grandmother her in to some things. And we'll see cases like that later in Utah too, where there's these notable women who aren't married. And so how do we deal with them? They'll think of some things. So, yeah, so about 40 people during his lifetime. And then obviously, of course, he dies.

John Dehlin [00:31:25] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:31:25] And like so many other things that changes the trajectory. So there are a few. Sorry, it's 40 people before the Nauvoo Temple. Sorry, most of those are before Joseph Smith's death. There's like three or four in the period between his death and when they can start using the Nauvoo Temple. So just a few. So then in December 1845, the Nauvoo Temple is now ready enough to use. And they move in and they set up things so they could, you know, they have a little more space now than from the store. And they start playing around with, okay, now what do we do? And one of the first things they do is to redo all of the second anointings and endowments and everything that had been done before. And there's this really interesting sort of theology.

John Dehlin [00:32:12] It sounds like rebaptism, Brigham Young's rebaptism. But there's re second anointings, re endowments.

Darren Klein [00:32:19] I wonder what.

Bryan Buchanan [00:32:20] And the idea is the temple Joseph wasn't good enough. Isn't that interesting? Like, Joseph Smith personally did this, but we're going to redo it.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] Whoa. That's A power grab a little bit now.

Bryan Buchanan [00:32:32] Well, you can see it like that.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] I mean. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Bryan Buchanan [00:32:35] No, no, no. I mean, I think that's a legitimate way to look at it. Brigham Young is certainly centralizing his authority. There's no question about that.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:32:41] But also, and Joseph had even hinted to that. It's like the baptism is in the river. The baptism is for the dead in the Mississippi River. They're like, that's good enough for now, but eventually we're going to have a temple and it'll be dedicated, and that's the ultimate goal. And so that's the thing, this theology place, the temple is the holiest place. And so things need to be done there where possible for them to be the most legitimate, most authentic.

John Dehlin [00:33:06] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:06] So they redo all those. But then what's so interesting is then they branch out to everybody. So in about a month period From January to February, 1846, like, 600 people will go through all of the ordinances, including the second anointing.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] So Washington Anointings. Endowment.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:24] Endowment and second anointing and second anointing.

John Dehlin [00:33:26] So was it a default ordinance at that point?

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:29] Kind of.

John Dehlin [00:33:29] It wasn't selective or elite.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:31] If you have people who are even kind of interesting during Nauvoo, and especially if they're in beautiful downtown Nauvoo, there's a real good chance, like Darren's wife, her ancestor, Judson Tolman, he goes through with his first wife, Sarah Holbrooke. That's where they have it. And so random.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] It's just like they happen to live there in that time, in that place, and they get it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:33:51] Well, in the theology that's there at that place, this is the highest, holiest. That assures you exaltation. So obviously, anyone that's worthy should get it. And that's an important point to remember because of course, that will evolve once we're not giving it to everybody.

John Dehlin [00:34:08] It's like second endowment roulette. Basically.

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:11] It depends on what time you live and where you live and who you know.

Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Mass Anointings

Darren Klein [00:34:16] I'm curious, was there a level of secrecy then, as there is now?

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:20] Kind of interesting. One thing Lindsay and I love to say is that Mormons really suck at secrets. You can tell Mormons to not talk about things as much as you want.

John Dehlin [00:34:31] They'll talk about them.

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:33] So during that Nauvoo period, with that many people doing it, you find lots of journal accounts, and that's really interesting. Yeah. So they'll say, we did, and they'll tell you, we did the first Part we did the second part. This is who was there, this is who officiated. And luckily we now have. We start to have really good records for that time period.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] Why isn't there a book on the second anointing or is there.

Bryan Buchanan [00:34:52] Hold that thought. That's actually teaser, something I'm working. Been working on. So the Nauvoo period is fairly well understood because we do have good accessible records for that time period. In fact, Smith Pettit foundation published essentially a catalog of all the ordinances during Nauvoo, which is where you can find Judson Tolman, his dates and everything. So that's if people are curious. I have an ancestor in Nauvoo. You know, what did they participate in? Go there.

John Dehlin [00:35:23] Is there a book? Wait, they published that? Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:25] So it's book or different. It's a Smith Pettit. So it's a limited printing. It's now out of print, unfortunately. I know a place where you can get a print copy benchmark.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:35] And it has been scanned and put on archive too. So you can go see what's there.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] We can go look up everyone who's received it that we know of through

Bryan Buchanan [00:35:43] the end of Nauvoo until they leave. So that's really interesting because, you know, you might think my ancestors, you know, they weren't high muckety mucks. But again with the theology that was there in place, everyone who is faithful, worthy, let's give it to them.

John Dehlin [00:36:00] Julia wants the title for the show. Notes to Help.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:03] Nauvoo Ceilings, Adoptions and Anointings. A register. That's close. Signature Books. Smith Petta. Smith Petta, yep.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] And what not. Signature Books, Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:16] So Smith Petta is sort of a sister company under the same umbrella.

John Dehlin [00:36:19] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:20] So Smith Petta things were often very data heavy. So you'll have. There's like significant textual changes in the Book of Mormon that my friend John Dinger put together and early patriarchal blessings Michael Marquardt did. So a lot of document rich sort of raw sources.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Darren, does it ever occur to you that Brian knows a lot of stuff?

Darren Klein [00:36:43] He's amazing. His historical reflection on dates just blows my mind.

John Dehlin [00:36:49] Sorry. Just back to our regular.

Bryan Buchanan [00:36:51] You should know that the second we started talking about doing this episode, it was gathering all of these. These sources that have been gathering to try to put them in a coherent, linear thing. Hopefully it's coherent and linear.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] This is great.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:03] Okay, so that month period, 600 people in a month.

John Dehlin [00:37:08] In a month.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:08] And that's in addition to thousands a day. No Joke. They are there night and day. They have shifts. So it's like you sleep in the temple and then you get up and you go do more of it.

Darren Klein [00:37:17] And you know it's being talked about. So you make it makes you wonder about the people who felt like they were left out. You know, why not me? Why wasn't I chosen? Is this a special for only the elite? What do I have to do to be part of this group?

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:30] And that's a theme that will kind of wax and wane throughout this whole history, for sure. Absolutely. So it's just literally night and day until the day comes that that first group leaves. And again, it's that theology of place, because obviously it's not like they're all going to die, but this is the last time they're going to have access to a temple.

Bryan Buchanan [00:37:50] And as a result of that, once they leave Nauvoo, it's night night for the second anointing. So for 20 years, no second anointings period are performed, which is so odd to go from a zillion people to none, literally overnight.

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:06] And we get a couple hints. So halfway through that period in 1857, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith are compiling Joseph Smith's history, moving along chronologically until they get to this period in Nauvoo where they now have to write about it. And so they go next door to Brigham Young and they start kind of shooting the breeze about the second anointing. And they're drawing on these now 10 year old memories of what they experienced in Nauvoo, and especially what did Joseph Smith personally teach them about this?

Bryan Buchanan [00:38:34] And they have very interesting memories. So the specific thing they remember is if this is in a private room that's been dedicated, you can do one a day. But if you're in a temple, you can do as many a day as you want. But you have to have separate distinct meetings. So you have one you administer and then you close and then you open a new meeting as though that first meeting never happened and open with prayer again. And it's so interesting because they are just so about these routines and how they do it. And numbers are important and you know, where it's done has different restrictions.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:12] Really interesting. And that's that they go back to compiling the history. And literally I cannot find a single reference to it in anything until December 1866. And it's clear that it's been on Brigham Young's mind because he brings it up in a meeting of the apostles.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] Okay, wait, so you've got the 1857 Wilford Woodruff and George Albert Smith talk.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:33] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:34] Yeah. And as part of the compiling history, thinking back to Nauvoo, we gotta write about it in Joseph Smith's history, which becomes History of the Church. The. We know that, you know, the blue set that everyone had.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Okay, okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:47] And then it just kind of disappears.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:39:49] Because we're not doing them anymore and no one is talking about them. But, yeah, it's in Brigham Young's head. And so in George ki. Cannes Journal, December 1866, there's a sort of offhand remark about it. So it's clear the wheels are spinning in his head. And then like three days later, in another meeting, he's like, okay, let's get serious about this. Let's talk about more of these procedures for administering it. And it's clear, like, this isn't just talk anymore. We're going to start doing it. And sure enough, New Year's Eve, 1866, they bring in Daniel H. Wells and his four wives. So now it's 100% tied to polygamy, and they give it to him.

Bryan Buchanan [00:40:32] So he's an interesting guy because he had been friends of the Mormons, but not a Mormon in Nauvoo until the very tail end. So by the time they were done with the temple, so he's the first one. And then, and this is the interesting pattern is whenever there's a hiatus and they come back to it, the procedures always start with any church leaders who haven't gotten it. And then we branch out from there. So just like they've done in the Nauvoo Temple. So that's what they do. So they bring in Joseph F. Smith, Brigham Young Jr. All these guys who had been too young or whatever who hadn't gotten it in Nauvoo, and they come in with their wives and get it, but then they branch out.

Darren Klein [00:41:07] And where were these anointings taking place?

Bryan Buchanan [00:41:10] So remember the restrictions, because we don't have a temple yet. We can only do one a day in these private rooms. Well, that's. We got a lot of people. That's not great. So Brigham Young thinks he's like, okay, what about this? Let's do three locations. So we can do one a day in these three locations. So you have the historian's office, where Wilford Woodruff will often be. You have the endowment house, because we don't have a temple yet and won't for another 10 years. So the endowment house is sort of the in between compromise. It's Dedicated. We're only doing temple stuff in there, but it's still not quite a temple. And then the other one is Brigham Young's house. And so, once again, the lighthouse.

Darren Klein [00:41:53] Or.

Bryan Buchanan [00:41:54] No, see, I'm trying to think. Is that built yet?

John Dehlin [00:41:57] Yeah, it depends on when. Okay. Wherever he was living. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:41:59] His residence.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:00] I think it is the linehouse. I'm trying to remember when they do that. Yeah. And what's so fun about Woodruff's journal is he will usually tell you which couple got it, not only where he was, his location, but usually at the other two. So we have pretty good records for this.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:16] And so they started administering it to people. But again, like, even with three locations, we got a ton of people. All right, let's think about this. Okay. What if we double dip? What if we do two sessions at each of these three locations? But again, of course, very specific. You have to close this one meeting, and then you open another meeting as though that first one had never happened, and open with prayer. And it's just so interesting to see how they were very particular about certain things, and they don't really hint as to why that was so critical to them. They were very particular.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] Did you mention Vienna jocks already?

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:53] We. Yeah. I'm trying to remember when exactly she comes on.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] It also says quorum concept.

Bryan Buchanan [00:42:58] Yes. So this is so interesting because it sort of looks like how they did it in Nauvoo, where it's. You're brought into a group, not just that you got the ordinances, so, you know, they'll open with prayer. But then at some point, they also start doing a prayer circle, so incorporating some of the elements of the endowment and praying for blessings, Screw our enemies, that kind of thing. But they don't have the sermon discussion component. It seems like maybe because it's not one group now, it's several groups, but it sort of looks like the quorum idea.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:34] And so over the course of that year, we're giving it to tons of people. And once we branch out from the church leaders, then we start thinking about other people. And most of them, I would say, are people you've never heard of. One of them is my wife's ancestor. So I kind of have to pretend like, no, they're all important.

Bryan Buchanan [00:43:51] But then you get this woman named Vienna Jacquez, and she's really interesting. So she comes from the Boston area, and she's one of this network of really successful women. They have furniture businesses. They have these other things that are doing real well. And Joseph Smith becomes friends with them, Vienna visits Kirtland, and they start sending a lot of money to Kirtland, and they're bankrolling some stuff.

Bryan Buchanan [00:44:16] And they're very interesting because they slowly become part of the inner circle. So one of the women that she knows there. Marries another guy, but then becomes a plural wife of Joseph Smith, one of the polyandrous ones. And Vienna, there are some hints that she may have been a plural wife of Joseph Smith. She's not in Nauvoo, living for a lot of the time. She's still back east. But there's hints. And as I recall, she is sealed posthumously to Joseph Smith as a plural wife, which in some cases points to the fact that she was a plural wife during his life, sometimes not. But she's really interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:00] She's very smart, she's very well educated, and she's done well. But she does get married. It goes south. So she's now single, but she's important. So they do allow her to have her second anointing as a single woman, which is very rare, very progressive, very rare.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:18] So, yeah, so 1867 is the year of second anointings. So at the end of the year, Wilford Woodruff will do some back of the envelope math and think, you know, I think I gave it to more than 250 people.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:28] And so again, like, if for some reason your guys are sort of interesting, but they didn't get it in Nauvoo for one reason or another, it's very likely that they picked him up in 1867. But then what's so interesting is it drops off. So the next year, he gives it to less than 20 people that whole year. And okay, wait, there's.

John Dehlin [00:45:49] Before that bullet, you've got two sessions per location. Older people.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:52] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] 87 with 64 year olds. Oh, yes, sorry.

Bryan Buchanan [00:45:56] So we start to see hints that it's for older people. It's not a requirement yet, but we're headed in that direction. And this one guy, Wilford Woodruff, notes that he's 87 years old, and he proudly notes that his oldest son was 64 years old. His youngest son was 11 months. Now, there's a polygamy story for you. That's polygamy math. Other people might look at that and think, I don't love that math. But in Utah polygamy era, that's, if not common, certainly not unheard of.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] My older brother is 53 years older than me.

Bryan Buchanan [00:46:35] Kind of interesting. So, yes, we start to see the trajectory towards this is an ordinance for the older People and that will get developed over time. And so it seems like they did have a list because they refer at one point to the fact that, well, if somebody that's supposed to, that we've summoned doesn't come, well then we'll just go back to our list and call the next person. So it seems like they may have exhausted that initial list in 1867. They've kind of hit the main people that were on their radar. So it calms down after that. And so over the next few years we start to see interesting trends.

John Dehlin [00:47:11] So you said 250 and 67.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:13] 250 in 1867, less than 20 that next year.

John Dehlin [00:47:17] Not because they didn't like it anymore. They just ran out of chosen.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:20] It seems like their main candidates they'd run through and so which again is

John Dehlin [00:47:25] weird because at the beginning everyone was getting it right. Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:28] So. And we don't know the numbers, but we assume the other two locations are probably similar. So we're, you know, again, several hundred people during that year for sure.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] That would suggest to me someone cool to the idea somewhere. But you're saying there's no evidence of that?

Bryan Buchanan [00:47:42] Hard to tell because they definitely keep doing it. And the numbers will actually start to go up over the next few decades. So a couple interesting trends that happen as anti polygamy legislation heats up. People need to get out of the line of fire. So they start moving even farther south. You know, they've gone to St. George, keep pushing into Arizona. So you'll see both people that are targeted from headquarters or that will write in requesting it saying we're going to be out of reach of a temple for who knows how long can we get our second anointings? And what's so interesting is to look at that trend of requesting it because it happens all the time. I want it. Can my son have it? I realize he's 25, but he's great. He's an up and comer.

Why Members Sought the Second Anointing

John Dehlin [00:48:27] We can assume why people felt motivated to want it. Do we have sort of like a top five list of why people wanted it? Was it like I want to become a God or I want. I don't want to worry about my sins, I want to know that my salvation's saved. Or I want to brag about it, like any idea?

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:44] All of the above.

Darren Klein [00:48:45] I think it was a prestigious thing too.

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:47] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] Status.

Darren Klein [00:48:49] Yeah. Total status, I think.

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:50] Absolutely. And it's the kind of thing, well, you know, my dad got it or my grandpa got, My uncle got it.

John Dehlin [00:48:55] But how's it Status if nobody knows you got it.

Bryan Buchanan [00:48:58] Well, see, that's the thing is again, Mormons suck at secret talk.

Darren Klein [00:49:02] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:03] So I think it was reasonably well known who had gotten it.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:08] And that will actually many, many, many years later that will come up in a meeting.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] And I didn't know there was some tell like you wore your tie in a certain way or you wore a ring or, you know, something that would

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:20] come the wider your tie was something.

Darren Klein [00:49:22] It's interesting you would say that, because even in this invitation from my grandpa, it says in the letter, it literally says, you know, if you talk to other people, you can't speak to anybody about it unless, you know, they've had this ordinance. Well, how do you know you don't

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:36] get to talk about it. That's hard to figure it.

Darren Klein [00:49:38] Or something that's interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [00:49:41] So we see a lot of. So as the numbers increase, then we get more journal accounts of it. And, you know, a lot of times they're very basic. They'll talk about, you know, this person administered it, this person held the horn that had the anointing oil in it, and these two guys were the witnesses. A lot of times that's all you'll get.

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:01] But then you get really sort of normal life stories that are associated with it. One of my favorites is Brigham Young writes to a guy in southern Utah, because, of course, there's nowhere to administer it down there. You got to come to Salt Lake. And so he says, all right, you're older. Here's what you do. Put your rocking chair in your wagon. Then you can just ride in comfort all the way up. That was a pretty good idea. So you've got these people in outlying settlements that are less on the radar, but, you know, some of them will still get selected. So again, just like in Nauvoo, if you're living right there, if you're living in Salt Lake now, you're more likely to be identified and be invited to have this.

John Dehlin [00:50:38] Was that James Martineau or no? Is that a different story?

Bryan Buchanan [00:50:41] So this is part of the requests. You get the most interesting request because it's, yeah, can I have it? Can my son have it? Can my brother have it? Can my dead parents have it? Were they good people? Yes. Okay. So requests, barring any major red flags, are almost always granted, even if they don't want to. They're like, yeah, that's a good point. You're not going to be in reach of a temple. Sure. You're young, or, you know, we're not exact. We don't know you all that well. We can't vouch for you, but sure.

Bryan Buchanan [00:51:09] So this guy, James Martineau, who is a really interesting second tier guy and there was an earlier edition of his diaries and signature, just has published a new edition, tons of footnotes. The editor, Noel Carmack, has been working on him for decades. Really interesting. So he's one, he's never a general authority, but he knows all of them. He's very well connected. So he writes to Wilford Woodruff and he says, hey, you know what? Can this dead woman who is native, I've already had her sealed to me, can she also have her proxy second anointings? And Woodruff thinks he's like, the ceiling was probably okay, but you know, let's not do the second anointing.

Bryan Buchanan [00:51:49] And that speaks to an interesting limbo place that native people were in because they weren't quite to a hardline ban that people of African descent had throughout this period. But they're also definitely not quite accepted. And that's a huge discussion of where do native people fit in the theology? You know, the Book of Mormon obviously talks about them.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] They're the pure blood of Israel.

Darren Klein [00:52:13] Right.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] According to the Book of Mormon.

Bryan Buchanan [00:52:14] Let's not give her the second anointing, though. And the other thing that I thought was so interesting is he yells at Martineau for wanting to do proxy ordinances for people who weren't family. Because of course, Wilford Woodruff has got to be the best known example of doing exactly that. Founding Fathers, Robert Mason, this guy he knew back in Connecticut, he's constantly doing it, but he doesn't really love it when other people do.

John Dehlin [00:52:38] It wasn't John D. Lee, Brigham Young's like adopted son.

Bryan Buchanan [00:52:41] So that's another thing that's really interesting is a couple will come in and Wilford Woodruff will administer the secondary anointing to them. And then after that, they're then spiritually adopted to him.

John Dehlin [00:52:51] So this is the law of adoption

Bryan Buchanan [00:52:52] that also plays into this. So yeah, so you'll have these. And it's. That one is such an interesting one because it never really gets figured out. It's always kind of murky and odd until Woodruff eventually, in the 1890s, just does away with it because it never really fit well.

Sealings Between Men and Rites for the Dead

John Dehlin [00:53:10] And this is where men were sealed to other men.

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:12] Yes, correct. And that's interesting because that's something that like Mike Quinn would look at in his study and say that that plays into higher acceptance of homosexual relationships of some sort. And it does occupy an interesting theme because, yeah, you do have men being sealed to men. And that starts in Nauvoo, will continue all throughout Utah. But, yeah, it's this kind of piece to the puzzle that never really fits in.

John Dehlin [00:53:38] Well, did you just mention second anointings for the dead? Did I get that right?

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] So why do we have second anointings for the dead now? If we had it, we had it at one point.

Bryan Buchanan [00:53:49] Do we? Maybe. What's so interesting is you get to a point in the early 20th century where Heber J. Grant will write back to someone saying, I don't think we've done any proxy second innings, where both parties were dead for a long time, which is fascinating because in the 19th century, they'll keep these ledgers, you know, at the end of this year, the St. George Temple has performed this many secondary for men, this many secondary for women, and that's the living line. But then they'll have a line for the dead and this many for men and this many for women, and they're huge.

Bryan Buchanan [00:54:24] So, again, like, unless there was some red flag, like, we knew that these people were terrible, we'll probably grant the request. And that's. Obviously, that's going to be almost purely request driven. Because Wilford Woodruff doesn't know your dead grandparents. He never knew them. He's relying on you to vouch and say, yeah, they were good people. And over time, they grow more leery of that until they're like, whoever is recommending them needs to know them personally. And it can't be some random dude. It needs to be a church leader. And so over time, you see the. The recommending process slowly get more focused.

Darren Klein [00:55:01] So what you're telling me is I still have a chance.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:06] I'll vouch for you later. You keep your nose clean, and I'll vouch for you. Absolutely, Darren.

John Dehlin [00:55:12] Second anointings for the dead, I never thought of that.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:16] And you think about it. It makes sense if we do everything else by proxy because of this interesting theology that their existence continues. And this is important, but yet it has to be done by people who have a body. Then by extension, obviously, the second anointing, too.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] But you have evidence of second anointings for the dead. There is evidence.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:36] Tons of them. Thousands.

John Dehlin [00:55:37] Thousands.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:39] That's blowing my mind.

Bryan Buchanan [00:55:41] Now, there is one hitch to it, because one of the letters that comes in to Woodruff is a woman who says, you know, my husband and I went to the temple, and we did the first part, but then we came home, and before we could do the second part, their baby Got sick or something, they postponed it, and then the husband died. And so she's concerned. We didn't quite finish that. And Woodruff thinks about it, and he says, you know what? We can't do this by proxy. You're probably okay. And you wonder if you can do everything else by proxy. Why is that not.

John Dehlin [00:56:11] That should apply to all proxy work for the dead, period. If you could just be hand waved in one instance, then why don't we spend. Why don't all our old people spend their retirements feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing clean water, instead of living out their retirements working in temples like

Bryan Buchanan [00:56:33] the theology of place, where you have, you know, the temple is the best physical location. You also have this theory of corporeality, right? These things have to be done with a body, which is so interesting, except when a church leader thinks and says, it's probably okay, and we'll get that. So another really interesting request, again, a proxy one.

Formal Recommends and Priesthood Fullness Debates

Bryan Buchanan [00:56:56] This man, Samuel Woolley, who is an early missionary to India. And there's this great photo of him with an earring like a pirate. And he's a longtime bishop in Salt Lake. He writes in and he says, what about my son? My son was great. He's passed away. Can he have it?

Bryan Buchanan [00:57:13] And Woodruff writes back and he says, you know, I thought about this one, and we're really moving towards it. Should be for the old, you know, older people that have proved themselves over the course of many years. They've borne the heat of the day. It's for them. So he says, you know what? Your son, he's going to be okay. He will lose nothing by not having it.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] What the.

Bryan Buchanan [00:57:34] See that? It's so interesting to see how they respond to certain cases.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] It's not really that important.

Darren Klein [00:57:40] It's the second anointing roulette reminds me of.

Bryan Buchanan [00:57:43] Is it crucial or is it not? Because it's not always consistent messaging on that, which is really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:57:51] Dang, that's weird.

Bryan Buchanan [00:57:52] So 1887 is the first time that I found where there is specific language written down. It's in a letter from John Taylor that says, yeah, this is primarily for the aged, and that will become more hard and fast over the coming years. And so we see over time, all these interesting policies and procedures will come up and they might last for a while, and then they get rethought, and then we decide, no, we don't really like that anymore. We'll change it. And so we see as we go toward the end of the 19th century, we see more Formal recommends occurring. And so earlier, it had been largely either a letter.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] Oh, wait, we have quit asking for it, is the next point.

Bryan Buchanan [00:58:39] Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And so these tons of requests coming in, they'll start responding. You know what? This is not something that you can request. This needs to come from bishops, this needs to come from stake presidents, and this comes from temple presidents. But then just a year after that council, they restrict it even more and they say, nope, this is. Stake presidents are the ones who will recommend.

John Dehlin [00:59:02] So they got sick of fielding requests and they said.

Bryan Buchanan [00:59:05] And they got a lot of them. And this was in a time period where you could write to the church president and expect a response. And sometimes it would be in his handwriting. A lot of times it would be secretaries, but at least signed by him. Like you were getting a personal response from the church president.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] Receipts.

Bryan Buchanan [00:59:21] Yeah. Which is really interesting.

Darren Klein [00:59:22] It doesn't seem like it was quite as secretive as it is today, obviously, for people to be talking about it and wanting it and desiring it, feeling like they needed this ordinance maybe to be in par with their friends.

Bryan Buchanan [00:59:35] And you get nods towards secrecy. You'll see. Sometimes they'll say you probably shouldn't talk about it. But it's nowhere near where it becomes. Yeah. And so the idea of these recommends is, again, who can recommend? So it goes to stake presidents, and they make a ruling in the 1890s where other recommends for endowments, whatever those can be signed by. So it comes from your local leadership. First send it to headquarters, and then somebody in headquarters will also sign it. And the other ones, the first presidency counselors can do it, but the church president has to be the one that does second anointing recommends.

Bryan Buchanan [01:00:18] And we start to see them become more formalized until at least by the turn of the century, probably a little earlier. They have formal printed certificates. So the process works. You know, your stake president sends in one of these forms filled out that says Lewis Anderson and his four wives. Here's. Their names are recommended.

Bryan Buchanan [01:00:38] But there's. Sometimes the thought is, well, we don't want to be too obvious, so just put like a two over their name because no one will ever figure out what that is.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] That's so subtle.

Bryan Buchanan [01:00:50] Yeah, no one will figure out Mormon code. And then the church president will then initial it with the date seconds. So we have some from Joseph F. Smith. I don't know that there's any earlier than that. They send it back to the bishop, and the bishop goes and says, okay, great, you have been. You're ready to go. Prepare yourself and go when you can.

Bryan Buchanan [01:01:11] And then that's where we get really interesting stories. Because if you live in RICHFIELD in the 19th century, that's a long way away from a temple, and you got to go there by wagon, and you need somebody to take care of your farm while you're gone. And so it's a big process, and it's very difficult for people.

Bryan Buchanan [01:01:27] And so sometimes to economize. There's this one great account of the young couple is getting sealed in the temple. Their parents are going to get their second anointing, and they meet up with, like, a plural wife along the way. So you'll get these family trips. And, you know, it takes some effort to get to the temple, so we might as well just do everything at once. And so we get really fun stories, thanks to journals. And, you know, sometimes the whole bishopric of a ward would come together with their wives and get their second anointing.

John Dehlin [01:01:57] It's like date night.

Bryan Buchanan [01:01:58] Yeah. And again, this speaks to this idea that it's. It is a ton of people that get it. And it's talked about, and you'll hear stories later as it starts to fall away. People are like, yeah, it was talked about. We knew who in town had gotten it and by extension, who hadn't, which is interesting. Remind me where we're headed.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Okay, so we did formal recommends. Right. For one temple process for two signs.

Bryan Buchanan [01:02:29] Yeah. So this is something that I think modern Mormons may not realize is at that point, usually a temple recommend would be for a specific temple, you know, because they would send it to the temple and say, this. This guy is. Is authorized. We all, the stake president and I as the church president, both sign off on him. But there's this one case where Joseph S. Smith is explicit to say, this is good at any one of the three current temples. Logan, Manti, St. George. So right before Salt Lake is. Is done, it's finished. Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:02:56] And so. And. And we get statistics over the years that show that this is really common, and there will be hundreds, if not a thousand in a year at any given temple. So it's a lot of people that get it. And as a result, like I said, we see more and more journal accounts of it, and we really like the ones where they're more descriptive and they'll talk about, this was the crowning day of our lives. These were wonderful blessings.

Bryan Buchanan [01:03:25] One woman says, I really hope that we can live up to what we've been given, essentially. And then other people, it is so pedestrian. They get it. They go back to the town, and the next day they're farming again. And it's just, you know, it's just one of the things that you check off, essentially. So it definitely means more to people than others.

John Dehlin [01:03:46] You have the bullet confusion and other ordinance. Did you already cover that?

Bryan Buchanan [01:03:50] No. So in theory, you go to the temple after this whole process, you receive the first part with your wife, and then they explain to you how to do the second part. Once you return home in your house, you dedicate it, and then you do the feet washing part. Well, sometimes they appear to forget this because one guy writes in and says, I've heard about another ordinance that takes place in the upper room. Can I get this? Where is this? And Woodruff responds and says, yeah, no, somebody dropped the ball and didn't explain. All this is, is the part at home where the wife washes your feet. So like always, roulette. Again, depending on how it was explained to you, you might have got a good, clear understanding of what was going on, or you might be hypothesizing some higher ordinance yet.

John Dehlin [01:04:39] So are you saying he wasn't being fully honest?

Bryan Buchanan [01:04:42] No, I just think whoever did it that day, they're doing it so often, it kind of loses that specialness. They forgot that part of their instruction. Tell this guy when he goes back home, this is the second part of it.

Darren Klein [01:04:56] What year is this again?

Bryan Buchanan [01:04:57] So this was in early 1890s that that happened. So by the end of the 19th century, we've got tons and tons of people who have received over the course of now almost 60 years. So it's got a long history, multi generations of people and families who might have received it. And of course, like anything that's notable, that's kind of the best thing that becomes a mark of distinction. This is one way that you can think to yourself, if not to others. I'm the best kind of Mormon. I've proved like their counsel, that I have borne the heat of the day over many years and have proven worthy of this incredible ordinance.

John Dehlin [01:05:41] What does no man can hold a fullness mean?

Bryan Buchanan [01:05:43] So at the start of the 20th century, we get to see. We see more talk of procedures and the theology around it in public meetings. So just like now around General Conference, they'll convene priesthood leader meetings. And during the end of the Lorenzo Snow to the beginning of the Joseph F. Smith era. So 1901, 1902, they're very specific about making sure that we're only recommending people who are worthy. But then Joseph F. Smith is very explicit. He says, no man can hold the fullness of the priesthood until he has received the second anointing. So that's a case where very clear messaging, you should get this, you should be aiming for this, and everyone that's worthy in theory can have this.

John Dehlin [01:06:30] That means that people who die and go to heaven who don't have the second anointing don't have the fullness of the priesthood until they get it right. So that makes it a required ordinance for exaltation. Certainly that's how I'm interpreting it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:06:43] It's certainly, I don't know that they ever explicitly say you cannot be exalted without it. But statements like this are functionally the same. If you don't have the fullness of the priesthood, you don't have the fullness of whatever. And this of course is really interesting because that is a concept that fundamentalists, as they start to branch away, we'll pick up on this term, the fullness of the priesthood, and will become really interesting to them.

Bryan Buchanan [01:07:11] And so yes, we see this very specific council, but from that point forward there's not a lot of evolution, innovation, new things. Through the 1920s, they do get a little more strict on some things, making sure people are worthy. And at this point it is only stake presidents that can recommend. They'll occasionally get a bishop who like one bishop sends in a list of like 20 people from his ward that he thinks should get it and they gently write back and say, you didn't get the memo. It's only stake presidents. Now you can tell your stake president about these guys, but he's the one that has to recommend them to us. So it's kind of centralizing that authority.

John Dehlin [01:07:51] It's only for old folks.

Bryan Buchanan [01:07:52] And that's the other component is they get really specific that it is only for the elderly because you don't want

John Dehlin [01:07:59] like a 30 year old getting caught up in adultery after he's, you know, had a second anointing.

Bryan Buchanan [01:08:07] We don't want to age. Shame. Old people can certainly be adulterers too. Much less likely. Yeah, yeah. And they never, the, the main point behind it seems to be like they need to kind of prove themselves that they're in and obviously that you know that. And again, that's the, the personally vouching for them. Like they're specific to say presence. They're like, are you sure? Like this guy's good, you know him, you have no qualms about him. Because less with the living, sometimes with the proxy ones, they'll write in and say, what about this Guy, he committed adultery, but by the end of his life he was good. And they'll kind of take it on a case by case basis, but some get approved, some do get approved. And the kind of thing, it's sort of that theology of just do it all and they'll work it out later kind of thing.

Darren Klein [01:08:54] Wow.

Bryan Buchanan [01:08:54] And that's, you know, that's. I always like the. That'll get figured out in the millennium. That's the perfect. Honestly, I don't know how to deal with this. Kick it to the can. To the millennium.

John Dehlin [01:09:06] And the idea of admitted adulterers getting the second anointing should give lots of people hope that, you know, they could still. Don't lose hope.

Bryan Buchanan [01:09:14] It's an interesting performance.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] You're still a candidate.

Darren Klein [01:09:17] It just seems so arbitrary as to who's invited and who's not. It just is so unsettling.

Bryan Buchanan [01:09:22] Well, and then you get accounts that, you know, a guy says, well, thanks to the assistance of Apostle Francis Lyman, I was allowed to get it.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] Who was an adulterer?

Darren Klein [01:09:31] Not him.

John Dehlin [01:09:31] Oh, wait, Francis. Dad. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:09:34] Francis is the hardliner. He's the one what was his son's dad. So you have amis alignment. The grandpa who preaches the atonement's not really necessary. The. It's excommunicated. The Francis comes in and has to prove him himself because dad went off the rails.

Darren Klein [01:09:45] Can you believe it?

Bryan Buchanan [01:09:46] But then his son, the Lyman. Fascinating. Is the one who committed the pilgrimage. And if people are interested in Richard's story, go to the interview that we did with Gary, because that's one of the chapters, Richard, and that's a fascinating story.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] So the second Lyman did what?

Bryan Buchanan [01:10:00] He helped this guy. He kind of shepherded him and ran interference to make sure his friend got it. Okay, so again, depending on who you knew would make it more likely that you got it, because they could, you know, they could put in a good word for you that because we're not taking requests anymore, they can get you through the process.

John Dehlin [01:10:21] Yeah, it's super. I mean, that's one of the big criticisms of the second anointing, that it's kind of an elite wealthy who, you know, kind of an indulgence. I've been reading about Martin Luther a little bit, and that was one of Martin Luther's big things, his indulgences. The Catholic Church selling salvation. And it's almost like, oh, you've given a ton of money to the church. You've given your life to the church. You're in retirement. Okay, we'll give you your second anointing, especially if you're worried about your kids and grandkids. Are you going to be talking about that? About the promises to the up to fourth or fifth generation tied to the second anointing? Because that's a big deal.

Bryan Buchanan [01:10:56] The concept of the elite, keep that one in mind for when it becomes less common, once that circle really tightens in. Because at this point, certainly elite, but everyone's elite. That's what's so interesting about it at that point is if you are an elderly person who has been faithful your whole life, the chances that you're going to get it are very, very good.

John Dehlin [01:11:17] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:11:18] And yeah, you know, it's not like later where it's. I can look down a list of everyone that got it and I'm like, I know who most of these people are to this point. Anybody. And that's what's so fun, is they're buried in these family histories. And you go on FamilySearch and find one of the most interesting ones is this woman had posted a typed copy of a letter from the Stake Presidency to her ancestor inviting him to get a second anointing. But I think it said second blessings. And she posted it and the caption was, I don't know what second blessings is, but this is kind of cool, I thought.

Bryan Buchanan [01:11:56] And so I got ahold of her and I said, do you by chance have the original of this letter? And I kind of explained what it was and I wasn't careful enough because she found some other letter and posted that. And I. She did find a photocopy of it of the original, which was really fun. And again, that had become so uncommon by the present that someone could come across a thing. And because they hadn't listened to the Tom Phillips interview, they had no mental framework for what they were looking at.

Bryan Buchanan [01:12:22] And because it was so common, you know, you'll find them in all sorts of family histories and journals, but you got to go dig to find them. And that's what's fun. That's where you pull out the really interesting stories.

Restriction of the Rite in the Early Twentieth Century

John Dehlin [01:12:33] Okay, so you got two key events in the 1920s.

Bryan Buchanan [01:12:36] The 1920s are where things change. So at the beginning of the decade, they now pull that authority in even tighter, from the Stake presence to only the apostles, but more specifically the president of the church. And we know this because we've got some letters from. From Talmadge to two Stake presidents saying, will you please send your recommend books into headquarters.

Bryan Buchanan [01:13:01] Don't tell anyone what it is, don't send it with anyone, but we need to have them back asap. And the one guy's response is fascinating because he says, a, I don't have the book. I don't know who maybe my predecessor had it. And then he says, honestly, I don't even know really what the second anointing is or what the procedure is. So that tells me that this guy is now a stake president who probably hasn't gotten it himself, who no longer has a recommended book, doesn't know the procedures. So that means nobody in that guy's stake will be getting it. So that's really interesting. But then, more importantly, by the end of the decade, they essentially stop, and we're left to wonder what's going on. And our best Hint comes later, 20 years later, Apostle George F. Richards thinking,

John Dehlin [01:13:48] Is this the 1828 ID story?

Darren Klein [01:13:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:13:51] Okay. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:13:52] So it's funny because the story has all the hallmarks of Apocrypha. So he says, you guys remember that back in 1928, this dude in Idaho gets up in a meeting.

John Dehlin [01:14:02] Now, this is who?

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:03] Again, we don't know who's in the story. Oh, George F. Richard. Sorry, an apostle.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] An apostle in what year?

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:09] This is 1949. Thinking back 20 years earlier to try to explain why they stopped.

John Dehlin [01:14:14] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:16] And he doesn't say who the guy was, he doesn't say where. He just says, about 1928 in Idaho, this guy gets up in a meeting, sacrament meeting, priesthood meeting, we don't know, and says, everyone should have their second blessings. And that apparently gets back to Salt Lake. And they're mad because, hey, we told you guys not to talk about it, even though we've been talking about it for 100 years.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] How did it take 70 years for something like that to happen?

Bryan Buchanan [01:14:41] And was that even the case? The fact that this is 20 years later and he doesn't know the guy, he doesn't know where, he doesn't know exactly when it happens. Now, it is problematic because Richards ties this Idaho story to the authority being pulled from the stake presence back to the apostles. And that's a problem because, like, we just talked about, that happens years before this.

Bryan Buchanan [01:15:02] So he's got the time frame right, and this story very well may be true. I would love to verify it. I've asked a couple people about it, and they say, yeah, all I've got is this Richard story. So. But it does basically stop.

Bryan Buchanan [01:15:15] And so later, Richards will talk about. So up to a certain point, 33,000 second anointings had been administered. But in the last 12 years, this is 1942. He says this. So like 1930 to 1942, eight had been performed. And he says this is not okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:15:35] Well, it's interesting because in 1934, this is like the first time that Richards gets on his soapbox. He is very passionate about this. He is. He's one of those guys that at the time was incredibly important to what's going on in Mormon history. He had been. He. He gets put in as an apostle in 1906 in the fallout of Matthias Cowley and John W. Taylor. So he's a replacement for them.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] They were booted for not wanting to give up polygamy. Is that right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:05] Super complicated story that Judson Tolman, the ancestor of these guys, is right at the center of fascinating story. So he comes in. David O. McKay is also one of them. So they're in an interesting place because they're replacing polygamists, but they kind of have secret interests. Like, Richard still wants polygamy to continue. Just, you know, we can't do living polygamy, so let's have dead women seal to us. That's his solution. He's a fascinating guy. He's the kind of guy like today, if you pulled even like, you have to be a pretty Mormon history nerd to have ever heard of this guy who at the time was incredibly important.

Bryan Buchanan [01:16:42] He becomes basically the de facto head of all temples, and he's Mr. Correlation and Standardization. Because over time, each temple created their own identity. So Salt Lake, even though you'd think about it now as the central temple, they didn't think about it really that way because it wasn't the first. St. George is the first. And they knew about that. And they would let you know about that explicitly. No, no, no, no. That's cool that you think in Salt Lake that we should do things this way. But as you may recall, we're the first and we kind of set the patterns. Their stake president is a canon.

Bryan Buchanan [01:17:20] He's David H. Canon. I'm trying to remember if he is the son of. I can't remember how he relates to George might be a brother. I think he's a brother. He very much had that canon force of personality. And so when George F. Richards now was trying to standardize things, he'll occasionally yell at these temple presidents and say, hey, man, we're all doing a standardized thing.

Bryan Buchanan [01:17:43] And so part of that is, how does the second anointing fit into all this? And so he at some point creates a book that's probably like the procedures and how to do it. So put George F. Richards standardized book on the shelf for a minute because we'll come back to that in the McKay years.

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:03] So in 1934, he says, this is deplorable. We are not doing this anymore. And he sends this kind of pointed letter to church president Heber J. Graham.

John Dehlin [01:18:13] He says, we're not doing second anointings anymore.

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:15] He says, we're basically not doing them anymore.

John Dehlin [01:18:17] He's mad about it and we should

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:18] be okay, he says, because again. So this is the thing that I forgot to mention earlier is once you go for several generations, saying how important something is and then stop and then you don't do it anymore. People are like, hold on. And this, this is the polygamy story.

John Dehlin [01:18:36] Polygamy, it's like law of adoption, united

Bryan Buchanan [01:18:39] order, consecration, all these things. Like, if you talk about them for several generations about how they're so important and they're in revelations, and then you don't do them anymore. People who are more of a literalist mind view say, whoa, hold on there. We said for years these were so important. Why aren't we doing them anymore? And he says to the point that there are general authorities who have never gotten it, including Grant's counselor, J. Reuben Clark, which I have to think was a very pointed, like, hey, dude, your counselor, he doesn't have it, like, go, you're the guy. Move.

Second Anointing Becomes Reserved for General Authorities

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:15] So then three years later, the recorder for the Salt Lake Temple records in his journal. We are preparing for a second anointing today because this is now a special thing. And you're like, oh, it'll be J. Reuben Clark. It is not. It is a guy who's in the first council of 70 who not coincidentally is married to Grant's daughter.

Bryan Buchanan [01:19:35] And that is like the only one. And that's definitely not coincidence because Grant is like where the concept of Nepo babies starts. He will stonewall the office of presiding patriarch for like 10 years because he wants his son in law to be it. And the other guys will come back and be like, it's supposed to be a Smith descendant. And he's like, I just. I can't get the spirit on what you're seeing. Really think it ought to be my son in law. So Grant is very much a relative and really quick.

John Dehlin [01:20:04] Richard or Heber J.

Darren Klein [01:20:05] Grant.

Bryan Buchanan [01:20:05] Heber J.

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Grant. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:20:06] And so, you know, you'll. And again, they'll still have summaries. Eventually they'll develop kind of a printed form that's like this year, you know, for the temple for this month, the Salt Lake temple. We did 7,000 endowments. We did 2,000 baptisms for the dead. And then there's this column at the end for second anointings. Again, male, female, living dead. 000.

Darren Klein [01:20:28] Interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [01:20:29] 000. And of course for this year, two. Now there is so like I mentioned there in the 12 year period that he says, you know, after doing 33,000, we did eight over 12 years. So we know two of them. That's this couple we just talked about. The other one is this woman named Maud Mae Babcock. So graduates of the U might remember there's the Babcock Theater at the U. She's a fascinating woman. So she is at Harvard and she meets Suzy Young Gates who is this writer, poet, suffragist and daughter of Brigham Young. So she meets her at Harvard and says, boy, you're really talented.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:08] I like you. You should move to Utah. She does. She converts. She goes up to the U. She founds two departments, but she's never married. So another case like this, well, we've got this single woman who's really an elite.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:24] What do we do? Because by this point it's totally clear. Like you, a woman has to be anointed to someone. And that's the language that we'll use. So like you'll have a man with plural wives and he'll come in with his first wife, you know, at some point and then later on he'll come back with his other wives. And the language is Lucy was anointed to her husband. So it's very clear. So what do we do with Maude? Remember that her friend is the daughter of Brigham Young.

Bryan Buchanan [01:21:51] Easy. Let's seal her to Brigham Young and then we will anoint her to Brigham Young. So in an era where Grant is not even administering this to his counselor in the first presidency, but he does this. He gives it to Maud Babcock to anoint her to Brigham Young. Really odd. Interesting story.

John Dehlin [01:22:12] Wow.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:12] So through the 1930s, it's just not happening. And what's so interesting is it doesn't seem to bother anybody except George F. Richards who absolutely will not give up.

John Dehlin [01:22:23] How do they just stop doing it for 12 years for the most part, and it doesn't raise a ruckus.

Bryan Buchanan [01:22:30] You are George F. Richards, buddy. Like I said, he wouldn't give up. So 1942, he tries again. It's clear that Grant, he loves Grant and he's very loyal, but he can't give it up. So 1942, he tries again. He's like, okay, guess what? We still haven't been doing it. And J. Urban Clark still hasn't gotten it, which is, you know, I get that we're not doing it much, but the fact that his counselor, he wouldn't give it to. And by this point there are now several apostles that haven't gotten it yet. Well, this time, Grant, and they're not

John Dehlin [01:23:01] complaining that we know of.

Bryan Buchanan [01:23:03] These guys aren't. Now, they might have been quietly. They could see that George F. Richards was taking this one. So they're like, I really like this George. Will you go talk to him? You're kind of the guy at this point, he's moving up in seniority in the council. And he was an interesting guy. It seems like his colleagues respected him and he was a very. He's the kind of guy like you don't want to be at a party with. He seems super boring, but he's. He's very much a straight liner. He is loyal as the day is long. But he says this is too important. So he tries again and this time Grant gives him and he says okay. He says, heber J.

John Dehlin [01:23:37] Grant.

Bryan Buchanan [01:23:37] Yep. Heber J. Grant, still church president. He's very old by this point. His health is failing. That might have been part. He's just. He's tired of dealing with Richards. So he says, make out the recommends. I'll sign him. And then you, along with Joseph Fielding Smith, you take care of performing the ordinances. And George F. Richards is over the moon about it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:23:57] They're currently publishing his diaries online, kind of like they did the George Buchanan journals, the Church Historians Press. So this is one of their online only projects. And it's great. I have to think once they get to this part, we're not going to see it. Actually, I think they'll redact this. On his case. There's a really interesting dissertation that was done that focused largely on his involvement with temples. But then Mike Quinn also got to see the journals and took page after page of excerpts. So in this case will be good, even if this part will almost certainly be redacted. But we'll have Quinn's transcription because he writes about, I went to Grant and I bugged him.

Bryan Buchanan [01:24:35] And then he finally said yes. And then he writes, he frames this as a Christmas present. This is all taking place December 1942. You know, World War II is raging. This is his baby. And so he'll do an end of year summary in his journal. And he says, this is the greatest year ever because I got these guys their second anointing and this is Just amazing. It's clearly extremely important to him.

John Dehlin [01:25:01] And it also mentions the temple presidents and stake presidents.

Bryan Buchanan [01:25:04] Yes. So again, that same pattern. If we're going to restart it, we look around and see who of the leaders doesn't have what we start.

John Dehlin [01:25:11] Why didn't it say apostles first?

Bryan Buchanan [01:25:12] Well, the apostles are first.

John Dehlin [01:25:15] J. Ruben Clark, J. Reuben Clark.

Bryan Buchanan [01:25:16] We assume he doesn't say when that happened, but we assume, assume once Grant gives him the green light, I'm, I'm guessing like 10 minutes later, he's like, okay, come on Tuesday, let's do it. I've got the. Okay, so. But then they do temple presidents. So the, the Salt Lake Temple president, Idaho Falls Temple president, one other guy.

John Dehlin [01:25:37] I mean, it makes sense. If stuff's going on in your temple, you need to know about it. And if you need to know about it, then you should have it, then you're going to want it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:25:46] That seemed to be the implication is George F. Richards is like, awesome, we're going to resume doing it. These guys have got to get them be part of the program, so they do those.

John Dehlin [01:25:54] I totally miss this. Did George F. Richards have it while he was complaining about not being given up?

Bryan Buchanan [01:25:59] He had gotten it. So he is the weird son of Franklin D. Richards. There's this Franklin D. Richards marries their family history is so interesting. His father, apostle Franklin D. Richards, marries some of Willard Richards wives. That's what it was. Willard Richards, apostle, first presidency counselor, good friend of Brigham Young, dies fairly early.

Bryan Buchanan [01:26:25] So Franklin D. Richards, who is his nephew, marries his uncle's wives as kind of this Old Testament levirate marriage, like you raise up seed to them kind of thing. So it's so interesting because they'll refer to Uncle Willard's wives, but they're married to Franklin now, so their family is really interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [01:26:46] Speaking of redacting, so there is a Richard's descendant who was a doctor and then a area authority, 70 or lower level 70, who got super interested in family history to the point where he went and transcribed Willard Richards journals, Franklin D. Richards journals and George F. Richards journals. All in all, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. Took them forever. He's a doctor, he's got kids, he's busy.

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:12] And then Deseret book published some of them, not surprisingly. This kind of stuff, not part of the deal. But yeah. So George F. Richards had it pretty early on. This was still before we were explicitly saying old people. And his dad was an apostle, so he gets kind of, he gets to have it fairly young.

John Dehlin [01:27:34] Got it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:27:35] So yeah. So the implication is we're going to resume it. We've been giving it to temple presidents. It kind of goes away by now, you realize, well, George F. Richards is not going to take that for an answer. 1949, he tries yet again, new church president this time, George Albert Smith is now the president of the church. So he writes another long, impassioned, this time theological argument, marshaling scriptures. Like, at one point he says, we are under condemnation for not doing this.

John Dehlin [01:28:02] It's like Ezra Benson in the Book of Mormon. Yeah, it has.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:05] It has very much that feel like, what are we doing, guys? The difference, of course, is he already had permission.

John Dehlin [01:28:11] By that point, Grant's dead, so he has to start over.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:14] He has to start over. And again, he's like, these are the guys that don't have it. And George Albert is more. It doesn't take as much convincing. And of course, this time, well, who else should we give it to? My sons. My sons definitely need it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:28:32] No big surprise there. But then there's at least one stake presidency here in Salt Lake that gets it. That again leads us to the same conclusion. His goal, his vision is to go back to where it was because he wants to return the power to recommend it to stake presidents. So, of course, well, then the stake presidents have to have it. So if you guys get it, then George F. Richards dies. 1950, it's so weird. No one else cares about it, and these guys have all gotten it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:29:03] So do they just think, I've got it, I'm good, so you have to rethink that theology. And that's where we'll start seeing more responses to inquiries that say, you know what? It's the kind of thing that some people get, but it's not really necessary. So this is really the period as the number of people become less common, the rhetoric becomes more common of kind of explaining in a way that it's really not that big of a deal. And it kind of starts to become this relic of old times, right?

Bryan Buchanan [01:29:38] They did this in the 19th century, kind of like they did polygamy. But you know what? We don't really do that much anymore, but people still remember it. You have enough people that have received it or have heard about it that periodically they'd ask questions.

John Dehlin [01:29:51] You know, what this is reminding me of is The Jehovah's Witnesses 144,000 problem where all the members were wanting to be designated as one of the 144,000, but then, like, too many people were requesting it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:05] They can do the math, right?

John Dehlin [01:30:07] And at some Point they're going to grant it to too many members. And then they start going over, like, weird things start happening. But ultimately, leaders have to realize we gotta start, like, downplaying this thing because it's just gonna be a headache, especially as we grow and grow. So it sounds like the church wanted to kind of, you know, let it go away.

Bryan Buchanan [01:30:27] They did let it go away. But the question is why? And there's really not good answers to that. Part of that is there are. As you get into the 20th century, the availability of the kind of records you need to answer these questions become harder to get. So, you know, we are more and more reliant on people like Mike Quinn, who had access to things like this in the 1970s that researchers currently don't, but seems like might have access soon.

Darren Klein [01:30:54] It seems like they kind of. It kind of undermines the importance of the anointing in general. If it's not that important, why are we doing it? Why did we do it then?

Bryan Buchanan [01:31:03] If it's not that big of a deal, then why can't people have it? And, yeah, yeah, there are no good answers to this. And so it seems more and more they just. Church leaders would prefer to just not talk about it, and that's what they do. So, like I said, George F. Richards dies in 1950. That's kind of into that brief resurgence of it. Now, there's a really interesting, very brief reoccurrence during the McKay era. So in 1965-1966.

John Dehlin [01:31:30] Okay, really, really quick, you've got the Salt lake, more than 20,000 others, three to 4,000.

Bryan Buchanan [01:31:34] Oh, yes, yes, yes. So in the 1949 letter, Richards not only marshals theological arguments, but he brings the receipts. And so that's where he says, listen, so in the Salt Lake Temple, they did. From 1893 up to the present, they did 21,000 of them.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] He went and counted them.

Bryan Buchanan [01:31:50] Now, what's interesting.

John Dehlin [01:31:50] And he's got that letter.

Bryan Buchanan [01:31:51] He's got that. Yeah. We have again, Mike Quinn, typescript of the letter Salt Lake, 20,000 plus Logan, Manti, St. George, three to 4,000. So still a lot. But obviously St. Salt Lake is where it's happening. But what's so interesting is, I didn't really think about it until later, is that's all the numbers he gives.

Bryan Buchanan [01:32:13] He does give a Nauvoo one somewhere, but it's low. But there's nothing about that early Utah period before the temples are built, which is so interesting, because I wonder, did he just not look there or did he Think those didn't really count.

Bryan Buchanan [01:32:28] This is that theology of place coming back. It's only when it's in a temple that it really counts. And so that's. Yeah, he brings receipts to try to persuade him. It's like we were doing thousands of these, and now we're doing like, one a year maybe. And for a time, while he's there as the squeaky wheel, it kind of happens.

John Dehlin [01:32:48] It kind of makes sense that we've never heard of this guy, because it's like B.H. roberts, like the church isn't going to emphasize in future generations, a guy that was kind of a troublemaker. And in this case, he was kind of a troublemaker just behind the scenes.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:02] He doesn't have the edge that Roberts does.

John Dehlin [01:33:05] Of course. Of course.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:06] But again, yeah, when it's a topic that. Especially after his life, a topic that we just don't really want to talk about, that's one of the things that he was most passionate about. It does make sense. Yeah. And part of it, too, is he wasn't a writer. He never wrote a book. There was never. There still is not a biography. His kids did a thing, but it's not great. So, yeah, he's a guy that just.

Bryan Buchanan [01:33:30] I wish we. Someone needs to write a good biography of him because he is so interesting. He's not a polygamist because it seems to be a situation where his wife is like, no, I'm gonna take care of you. I will be the best wife. You would definitely. You wouldn't want another one. Trust me. You know, with that edge in a voice. Trust me, buddy, you don't need another wife. Eight billion kids. They're all very successful. They marry other kind of prominent Mormons. Like, it's one of those kind of dynastic style families. So he's very interesting, but then he dies, and so there's nobody there to push the issue anymore.

Bryan Buchanan [01:34:05] But so then during McKay, they kind of start thinking about it, and it seems to start going back to this correlated book that Richards had created about the second anointing. They start hearing rumors that, Whoa, hold on. Each temple has one of these. Because that was Richard's pattern. He would do research and find out what's out there on whatever it is he was interested in. You know, what materials does the St. George Temple have on how the endowment should look like? You give me this, or you give me copies. And he collects everything. And he says, okay, here's the standardized thing that we're all going to do.

Bryan Buchanan [01:34:38] And sometimes this involves going to the first presidency and saying, I think that we need to make these changes. And they say, great. And he makes the change. And then each temple gets this like leather bound, official, standardized copy. So in the McKay era, they realize, oh, hold on, all of the temples have one of these and they hear a report that one of them, I think Manti had it on his desk and it wasn't in the vault. And that is just unacceptable. And it's also in an era where you have all McKay's health is failing and you have Hubie Brown and Eldon Tanner, who mckay had loved and wanted them on his team until they were a little too charismatic and powerful for his tastes.

Bryan Buchanan [01:35:23] And so they start kind of doing their own thing. And he gets reports that, like, Hubie Brown had authorized the temple president to do whatever and this concerns McKay. And so they assign someone to go get all the books back here. So that means if a temple no longer has the book, the how to manual, obviously they're not going to do any more second anointings. So this is really centralizing. Not only are we not going to do it here, we're not going to do it there, we're not doing it, period.

Bryan Buchanan [01:35:51] However they do, McKay asks somebody to look and be like, who of the general authorities doesn't have it yet and let's take care of them. And this is really interesting because this is toward the end of 1966, and I had seen.

John Dehlin [01:36:05] He's getting old.

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:06] He's getting old.

John Dehlin [01:36:07] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:07] And again, like, remember he comes in as an apostle in 1906. He had had his, you know, decades before this, but he doesn't have that feeling like Richard's, that it's that important. It's like, I guess the general authorities probably should have it, but that's as far as it goes. And that timing was really interesting because I had seen references that McConkie had gotten his second anointing in 1966. And now that in connection with this journal entry makes it seem like that's very plausible. So they take care of probably just the 12 and that's it.

John Dehlin [01:36:42] How do we know that McConkey got it in 66?

Bryan Buchanan [01:36:45] We don't. Okay, I've seen little hints, but they're the kind of thing like, you know, my mom's uncle's dog thinks that he got it then. But now that we have this entry from the McKay journals, thanks to Greg Prince, he donated his papers to Virginia and they digitized. So the way that he wrote the McKay book is his buddy was the nephew of Claire middlemess, who was McKay's secretary and had left him one copy of the journals so that they would not go into the black hole. And so he becomes friends with Greg. And at one point, I think Greg said he goes over to his garage and there's like this palette in his garage and he takes the tarp off and there's the copy of McKay's scrapbook journal in his garage. And Greg's eyes, you know, bug, and he's like, that's McKay's journal.

John Dehlin [01:37:37] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:37:38] And eventually they write a book. So the way that he did it is he goes through and types all of McKay's massive, you know, multi dozen volume journal into topical files. And that's. Greg is so interesting because that's how he does things. He says, I want every single piece of data and then eventually it will just sort itself into the most important topics. So this is what Virginia has digitized now are his topic files. So you go in and to the temple file and we get these journal entries from the 1960s that thanks to Claire Middlemass, we actually get to access.

Bryan Buchanan [01:38:13] So they do that. And importantly, he assigns Joseph Fielding Smith, who had been Richard's assistant, so in the Grant era, when it pops up again, they assign Richards and Joseph Fielding Smith as the two guys to take care of it. Same thing. Well, Joseph Fielding, you know what's going on here? So you and Kimball go take care of this. And so they do the apostles and that's it. It's like a really, like a one time thing. And then it dies again.

Bryan Buchanan [01:38:41] Kimball's got the taste now, so a little bit about him. So he becomes an apostle in 1943 under Grant. Yeah. And then two years later, in 1945, he and Camilla get the second anointing. And then over the next couple years, he performs two, maybe a couple more, but that's it. Because again, this is this period where it just, it really doesn't happen. So then in 1970, how do we know he's doing it? His journal.

John Dehlin [01:39:08] Okay, his journal. Oh, that's. And that's new.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:11] That's new.

John Dehlin [01:39:12] The. The availability of Kimball's journal is a relatively recent thing. Okay, got it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:16] And he mentioned most of his journal.

Darren Klein [01:39:18] It's not redacted.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:19] There are redactions.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] Oh, bummer.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:21] This was a long process. Kimball's son Ed donated the journals with the express understanding that they would be available to researchers. And they drugged their feet for a long, long time.

John Dehlin [01:39:33] They meaning who?

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:34] The church history library. And they finally released him. But they are redacted. And there are a bunch of gaps,

John Dehlin [01:39:42] but Kimball writes that he performed the second anointing on people, and that wasn't redacted.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:48] Sometimes they forgot to redact things.

Darren Klein [01:39:50] Oops.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:51] Thanks, guys.

Darren Klein [01:39:52] And that's where we learned that he received it in his life as well.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:55] Yep.

Darren Klein [01:39:56] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:39:56] Okay. I was gonna ask that, too.

Bryan Buchanan [01:39:58] So that's how we know a few.

John Dehlin [01:40:00] So it could be. Apostles were trickling around both receiving it and giving it out, and it didn't make the records.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:06] It's possible.

John Dehlin [01:40:07] Yeah, it's.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:07] It's definitely possible. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [01:40:10] Because that's an example of it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:11] That's an example. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:12] Now.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:12] Now, the. The idea that he's rogue or doing it just on his own authority, I highly doubt.

John Dehlin [01:40:18] Yeah, me too.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:19] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:40:19] But, yeah, so it does happen to that limited degree at that point. Well, now, of course, he's not only gotten it, but he has performed a couple, and he slowly becomes George F. Richards 2.0. So in 1970, he has this meeting with now church president Joseph Fielding Smith and his counselor, Harold Beeley. And they talk about it, and they say, I really think that we need to be doing this again. But they don't. And so now we Fast forward to 1973. December 1973. Harold B. Lee unexpectedly passes away. He was this relatively young, dynamic hardliner who was going to be president of the church for, like, 25 years.

John Dehlin [01:41:05] Do you have any idea why Joseph Ealing Smith and Harold B. Lee wouldn't be into second anointings?

Bryan Buchanan [01:41:11] There seems to be an unwritten rule that by this point, there's only one person per generation that can care about this. It had been George F. Richards, and now it's Kimball, and no one else can care about this. It's so interesting because just like Kimball, Joseph Fielding had been part of performing these limited number of them, but it just wasn't that big a deal to him. As the mentor of McConkie, who clearly cared about it too, it just seems odd that he wouldn't have been very proactive about it. I don't know.

Darren Klein [01:41:43] That's interesting, because when my grandpa received this invitation in 75, the nomenclature is very clear. It makes it. It's not ambiguous. It makes it very clear that they should be aware of what this anointing is. And do you desire it?

Bryan Buchanan [01:41:57] Right.

Darren Klein [01:41:58] So it's still talked about. It's still enough that they're being asked or invited. They have to be able to respond to it. They had to have some knowledge of it.

The Church's Priesthood Claims and the Hidden Rite

John Dehlin [01:42:07] Can I just make the point that the Mormon Church holds out as its probably number one selling feature in 2024, that it holds the keys and the authority to priesthood. Sacred ordinances. And I would say in Mormonism, the leaders would claim the most sacred things we do are baptism, you know, confirmation of the Holy Ghost and the temple ordinances. So to know that ordinances are of primal importance to modern day Mormon Church leaders and our key differentiating feature of all the other false churches out there, to see them take the most sacred of all the ordinances and then treat it so casually and so willy nilly and variably, carelessly, carelessly through it is mind boggling to me. Sorry I had to do that.

Bryan Buchanan [01:43:04] You. This is George F. Richards argument, this is why so tight? Because he, he has heard the sermons, he's read the things. And so later, as it's absolutely not being performed anymore, you'll get these really interesting little snippets where a missionary will meet with an apostle. You know, they'll have a meeting in the temple before they all get sent out. And does anyone have any questions? Yeah, I do. What's the second anointing and what's the deal? And the apostle shakes his head and says, I really wish no one was going to ask me that, you know, that kind of thing. And then they'll give him sometimes good answers, sometimes kind of no answers.

Bryan Buchanan [01:43:44] And even like there's this fantastic account. A lot of the material that we have around this is thanks to a guy named David Berger who did a book that we'll talk about at the end. But he tells this story. He was Mr. Curious. He was 100% down the rabbit hole. So anytime he would go to a temple when his brother was getting sealed, he would make sure to find the temple president and say, hey, I got a bunch of questions. We're in the temple now, so can I ask you all my questions? And the temple president would, okay, what's this second anointing? And in the one case he grabs him and he pulls him into the coat rack and he's like, we can't talk about this, here's the deal.

Bryan Buchanan [01:44:22] And he actually gives him a pretty good answer based on what he knew. But that's the thing is you get to the point where people don't even know enough about it to ask questions. So it really is in danger of completely dying out if it weren't for Kimball.

Bryan Buchanan [01:44:39] And there are a lot of topics where this is the case. Mormons rarely appreciate the importance of a specific person in a specific place to impacting history. And you get this all the time. Like, you know, if Reed Smoot is not a senator, then we don't have the Smoot hearings and polygamy might continue. You know, that kind of thing, like the importance of one single person, where they are, when they are, is incredibly important. And this is Kimball here. If Kimball isn't Mr. Let's revive this thing, it very legitimately might not have been revived.

Bryan Buchanan [01:45:12] So they have this meeting in 1970 and yeah, this is probably important, but nothing happens. So Joseph Hilling Smith dies, Harold B. Lee dies, and now 1973, December 30, Spanish W. Kimball, unexpectedly, nobody thought the guy who had throat cancer like 87 times and heart attacks is going to become the president of the church. Because Harold B. Lee, Mr. Energy, Mr. Military Haircut, he dies of heart attack at a relatively young age. I mean, he's in his 70s, but for general authorities, that's young.

Bryan Buchanan [01:45:48] And within a month, Kimball takes his counselors and he takes his trusted secretary and they go into the vault of the Salt Lake Temple and they find the books. They find George F. Richards, leather bound, correlated book on how to do the second anointing. And he's like, okay, we really like. He says, I have a compulsion about this. He uses that word, which is really interesting. And he says, I hope we can revive this. We're working on it. And he says, we've got people copying stuff down and it's clear.

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:24] And what's so interesting is because he no longer has to convince the guy because he's become the guy. That's the thing. If George F. Richards had been president of church, which he was really close, if he'd outlived George Albert Smith, he would have become president of the church. So Kimball is the decision maker now. So he can do it. And he does.

Bryan Buchanan [01:46:46] And so by the summer of, so this is February 1974, that they go into the vault, they find the books, and he says, okay, we're going to make something happen. So by the summer and possibly even earlier, this is one of the places where there's this maddening gap in Kimball's journal.

Bryan Buchanan [01:47:04] And this was known to his son, there's memos in there where an archivist will say, hey, Ed, do you know where these journals for this period of your dad's are? He's like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know where they are either.

Bryan Buchanan [01:47:16] Really irritating, but there's a gap. So, but then summer 1974, he records these six couples came to the Salt Lake Temple and we gave them Their second anointing. And there are names that you will definitely recognize. You've got Thomas Monson, you've got Marvin Ashton, Tom Perry. Again, there's our pattern again, after hiatus, we start with the general authorities, and then we branch out from there. So the second anointing becomes really important to him. So every couple weeks he'll write, I had these three dudes and their wives come to my office and I interviewed them. And then a week or two later, they have a special meeting.

Bryan Buchanan [01:47:54] And one of his counselors or one of the apostles assisted me, and we gave them their second anointings. And they're fascinating accounts once they start branching out. And this is where Darren's story comes into play, because the general authorities make sense, right? But it's then after that, it's who do they choose to give it to after that that I think is so interesting. And one of the most fascinating cases comes in 1974 when they dedicate the Washington D.C. temple.

John Dehlin [01:48:22] So it mentions, like Monson and others in the journal. He's naming names of who he's giving the second anointing to.

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:31] Earlier on. Later on he might say something like, we went to the Manti Temple and we gave 18 couples.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] So does that mean Monson made it to apostle without receiving the second anointing

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:41] for like 10 years?

John Dehlin [01:48:42] What the.

Bryan Buchanan [01:48:43] So that's so crazy because we don't always have the sources we want. We have to infer. So if you. If Monson is getting it at that point, that tells you they are definitely not giving it to anyone else. If they're not giving it to an apostle, they're not giving it to anybody. And that's really interesting. That shows that it really had. And Kimball talks about this, and it's so interesting when they have the. When they go to the day where they go to the vault, he kind of reflects on the history that he'd been involved with. And he, who at that point is the only living general authority who really had experience administering it, screws up the history.

Bryan Buchanan [01:49:19] He talks about how George F. Richards went to President McKay and petitioned for it. Now Richards dies before McKay is church president. Even Kimball doesn't really know that history. That shows you how scarce that knowledge is.

John Dehlin [01:49:30] The memory applies to apostles as he does the membership.

Darren Klein [01:49:34] He had to go search it out, research it.

Bryan Buchanan [01:49:38] All right, so they go to dedicate the Washington D.C. temple. And the last session happens. And then he says, we brought in a group of seven couples at 7:30 and we gave them their second anointing. And there's a couple interesting names you have. Bill Marriott is one. And he just says, Richard Scott. I assume the apostle Bill Marriott gets it.

John Dehlin [01:50:03] Gazillionaire.

Darren Klein [01:50:04] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [01:50:05] And he was. He had been a stake president in the D.C. area. So he gives me this list of names. You know, I recognize a couple, but I don't the other guys. And then I searched one of the names and I found the identifying thing for all these people in all places in Gerald Ford's presidential papers because he had been invited to the dedication and he had this little booklet that they gave the dignitaries. And here's the local. Hi, mockety mocks. This guy is the current president of the Silver Spring Stake. This guy is the former stake president. Like, hey, thank you. You just helped my footnotes there.

Bryan Buchanan [01:50:43] So that's the first group. At 7:30, then they dismiss. And of course, because we're still doing this thing at 8:30, we bring in another group of exactly seven couples, no doubt the same thing. We close with prayer, out of the room, New group open with prayer as though this other meeting had never taken place. This is this remnant of 19th century practice, which is still I always find interesting. He gives it to another seven couples. You don't recognize most of the names, but then he says, we gave it to K. Gunn McKay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:12] And that's a name that should ring a bell. Because if it doesn't, he was in Washington for a very specific, interesting capacity called. He was a congressman. So the fact that they gave the second anoint from Utah, one of our three at that time.

John Dehlin [01:51:26] Okay. Oh, okay.

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:27] Only him. Maybe another time. That's one of my. So he is the other McKay line from David O. McKay. And he talks about how there were the God blessed McKays and there were the God damned McKays and all the McKays knew which one they were and he was the latter, but he's a congressman. So I have to think that people will find a sitting congressman receiving the second annoying to be mildly interesting.

Darren Klein [01:51:53] What year was that?

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:54] That was 74.

Darren Klein [01:51:55] Interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:56] Yeah.

Darren Klein [01:51:56] Wow.

Bryan Buchanan [01:51:58] So. And then he talks about in his journal that they had wanted to go to the Manti Temple to give a group of people their second anointing, but they had to delay it because the temple president had a heart attack. So they postponed it. And that's right is exactly where Darren's story comes in, because his grandfather was one of that group.

John Dehlin [01:52:16] If somebody wants to see all of Kimball's list, because there's probably people that many of us watching or viewing would identify on the list that you might not.

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:27] This is true.

John Dehlin [01:52:28] How does somebody find out who was on Kimball's second anointing list?

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:33] Be patient. Okay, so I am working. This is the, this part of the project I'm working on. I have a list from sort of when it dies in the twenties till the present. And there are hundreds of names on that list right now.

John Dehlin [01:52:45] But it's not. There's not a website or a book that people can go to. Kimball's. What about Kimball's journals?

Bryan Buchanan [01:52:51] Kimball's journals are digitized. They're on the church history library website, which is an amazing resource for a bunch of things, including this.

John Dehlin [01:52:58] But is that where people could find the names or it's heavily redacted?

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:02] Not anymore. There were some places where they forgot to redact initially and then later, but there are still a couple that I double checked and they're still sitting there, which was interesting.

John Dehlin [01:53:14] Somebody lost their job.

Darren Klein [01:53:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:16] Some editor lost their job.

Bryan Buchanan [01:53:17] Senior missionaries I think were doing. And it was really interesting because you could see different methods. Like this guy knew that we needed to black out this whole paragraph. And this guy's like, yeah, probably just that line. So interesting. So that's. So that's where Darren's story will come in for the next part. Because that's the time when his grandfather give him all the responsibilities he had.

Darren Klein [01:53:40] Well, he was stake president at the time when this took place. But prior to that he was an excellent bishop for over 10 years, served as stake president. Then they served for five years in Germany as mission president. And of course his wife was with them and family, and then returned again as stake president.

Bryan Buchanan [01:54:00] So these are the kind of guys, once they branch out, who they identify are these guys largely in the Mormon corridor, but like we saw also in D.C. so the way that it works, and this is the case with your grandpas, is the church president would go or an apostle would go to a stake conference.

Bryan Buchanan [01:54:17] And part of them being there was keeping an eye on the up and comers in that the ranks, guys that were now candidates. Because again, remember, we're no longer Stake presidents do not get to recommend this. It's only apostles or above. And so that becomes their job. One of their things, you know, home teaching numbers this, that who might be a good candidate for the second anointing and then would administer that to them.

Bryan Buchanan [01:54:44] So make sure you come back for part two, because Darren will tell that story. Finding the records and their story, which is really, really interesting. So there's a few more stories during the Kimball years that are fascinating. And what is so Interesting is that after a lag of a few years, people start publishing family histories privately done. That will then include details about this because why Mormons suck at secrets. So I brought a few show and tells. So this one, this is, you know, the kind of thing that you'll see.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:23] You know, this is my grandpa. I love that. It's the story of Harold Mitchell and Bertrude Mitchell. That's a good Utah grandma name for you. So I was going to show this to Darren. Does that page there look all familiar?

Darren Klein [01:55:40] Yeah. That's amazing. I can't believe you found that.

Bryan Buchanan [01:55:43] So you can imagine my surprise when I look at this page here to find a photocopy of a letter from Kimball to this couple saying, we are going to be at the Manti Temple and would you like to have your second anointing?

John Dehlin [01:55:58] Do you want to read the letter or not? Well, that steals the thumb difference.

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:01] Well, it's a verbatim kind of letter.

John Dehlin [01:56:02] Okay, so you found that after. After you. You found out that, I started looking

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:06] around, I started realizing that families don't necessarily get the memo that we don't talk about this. And so they will put it in things they publish. So some cases, again, you know, a very basic thing, the life of Eva Peterson. She gives the chronology of the. The things they do. Then in August 1974, received second endowment in Oakland. Temple president Spencer W. Kimball officiated. Marion G. Romney sealed the anointing, and Arthur Haycock, secretary to President Kimball, recorded the ordinance. Five other couples also were there to receive this ordinance.

Darren Klein [01:56:41] So they'll describe it very similar to Tom Phillips experience.

John Dehlin [01:56:45] Yep, it's like a group of couples.

Bryan Buchanan [01:56:48] There's always more than one. Sometimes like the one it was 18 couples. So it's huge. Now, this one, of all the ones I found, this one was super interesting. It's in a family history, you know, basic thing. You'll get 20 pages of birth and death dates, but then you get little biographical sketches of specific people.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:06] And so in this one, there's this section called Remarkable Event. And what happens is this couple Got it in 1977 from Spencer W. Kimball and were apparently told that you can tell one person about this in your family. And they told it was a daughter. And so then after they passed away, she's like, hey, guys, I got a fascinating story. And they describe it, and they only know about it because their parents had had this. This was totally new to them. And so again, unfortunately, it's a crappier copy. But again, you get a photocopy of the letter from Kimballer. But the best part is that they also include a photocopy.

Bryan Buchanan [01:57:53] Let's see, is that this one? Oh, that's in a different one. There's another one like this where the envelope had a note on it that said, you can open this after we're dead, and then you'll know what we're talking about.

Bryan Buchanan [01:58:06] So some families got the memo better than others. But it wasn't just random families that no one's ever heard of writing about this. There are three occasions where at least high level people, if not general authorities, wrote about this in their own memoirs. So the best known of this, your listeners may have heard this one, is in 1979, Russell Nelson, who was then the president of the Sunday school, he's not yet a general authority, writes a memoir called From Heart to Heart, where he talks about being a doctor, family events. But then in an oblique reference, he says, dancel and I were invited to the temple for a special ordinance or blessing.

Darren Klein [01:58:49] Whatever.

John Dehlin [01:58:49] He says, you can put the puzzle

Bryan Buchanan [01:58:52] together if you know what you're looking for. You're like, I know. Exactly. And it helps that we have Kimball's journal entry that says XYZ and Russell Nelson. I gave him the second anointing. So that one was apparently intended largely for friends and family, but was sold at Deseret Book for at least some time because we've seen copies that have stickers from Deseret Book. Nothing happens.

Bryan Buchanan [01:59:14] They're hard to find, they're collectible, but nothing. But then there's two really interesting cases. There's another guy named Joseph Bentley who was the superintendent of church schools. His father had been down in the Mexican colonies and had been the stake president and important down there. And the son puts together this life and times of Joseph Bentley Sr. And he includes this letter from the church president saying, if you want to get your full blessings, then Anthony Ivins, who's down there in the colonies, can okay it and then we'll get it. Bentley Jr. Says, oh, that was like his ceiling.

Bryan Buchanan [01:59:57] It's not. And you know that very well because Joseph Jr. Also publishes his own memoirs. And in there he has a paragraph where he says, before we went on our mission to Hungary, my wife and I were called in by President Kimball and given a special blessing.

Bryan Buchanan [02:00:13] Well, this one's fun because somebody clearly yelled at him because they made him put a sticker over it with a revised paragraph that of course did not talk about the special blessing. Well, there's nothing more like a red flag to nerds than A sticker over something, because you're like, what does this say under the sticker? So people steam off the sticker, and there's the paragraph, or you just read it through the back. It's not super difficult. So that was fun because he clearly got yelled at. But the best one is Leonard Arrington writes in his journal that a man named Henry Taylor comes to his office and gives him and Davis Bitten a copy of Taylor's autobiography that he had just published.

Leonard Arrington and Documented Evidence

Bryan Buchanan [02:00:52] And it's very nicely done. It's eight and a half by 11. And he says, davis and I went through it very carefully and were quite interested to see that there was this page, this full page that described him getting his second anointing. And then later in the book, there was again a chronology of ordinations. And at the very bottom, got my second anointing on this date. And again, thanks to Kimball's journal, we can go and we know exactly what date happens.

Darren Klein [02:01:16] Wow.

Bryan Buchanan [02:01:16] But then Ericin says, three or four days later, Taylor came back to our office and said, can I have my book back? I got to do something with it. And then he brings it back and he says, we noticed that the only changes were that page with the second anointing had been very carefully taken out with a revised page stuck in. It was so good. Like, I've got a revised copy. And unless you look at it from the top, you can barely tell what's going on. But it's super interesting because the page before he includes Talmage's description of the Holy of Holies from House of the Lord, and then a picture of the temple. So even if you don't know what's going on, it's really odd to include that. So that's fun. Clearly, he was getting yelled at, too.

Darren Klein [02:02:03] Do you think that ordinance took place in the Holy of Holies?

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:05] Mm, definitely.

Darren Klein [02:02:07] Interesting.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:08] So this would later become really interesting to Arrington because I think it's that same year, all of a sudden, Leonard starts getting real curious about the second anointing. And so he'll write in his journal, I have the staff search up every single thing about the second anointing that they could find. And then he says, then I talk to staff members, and one of my staff members is a bishop. And I said, do you have any members in your ward that have the second anointing? And that becomes very clear why he's so curious when, like a week later, he talks about how after general conference was over, he and his wife went to the Salt Lake Temple for a special Temple session on a Sunday.

Bryan Buchanan [02:02:50] And then apparently in his wife Grace's journals, she talks about them doing the second part of it at home. And that's really interesting because that shows you as late as 1979, that second part was still being done at home.

Bryan Buchanan [02:03:06] But then you fast forward a couple years and Leonard says, I have learned that Billy Casper, the golfer who had gotten his second earning the same day as us, apparently was excommunicated before his death. And he says all the sports writers knew about it. So that's an interesting one. That's kind of like Gun Mackay. The selection of non church officials to get it is really interesting.

John Dehlin [02:03:34] Was he excommunicated after getting the second anointing? So, because that's. People have wondered why Hans Mattson or Tom Phillips, as far as we know, were never excommunicated. People wonder why Nemo has been excommunicated. I'll explain why I mentioned Nemo, but. But what you're saying is, is they can't excommunicate you after you're promised that unless you murder someone, you'll become a God and a goddess someday. They can still excommunicate you.

Bryan Buchanan [02:04:00] Can and do.

John Dehlin [02:04:01] What does that mean?

Bryan Buchanan [02:04:02] So that's part of that long, long debate on what the unpardonable sin means, because some people interpret that to mean if you turn against the church, you're essentially shedding innocent blood is the way that that's dealt with. So Billy Casper is an interesting.

John Dehlin [02:04:19] And again, it's so gross that it's like wealthy, famous people, like, I'm sure the Osmonds get it. You know, Steve Young, like Marriott's Romneys, like, I'm guessing Hatch, like, it would. It would just seem like this becomes, in Kimball's time, a way to reward wealthy or famous people with a special thing.

Bryan Buchanan [02:04:44] Let's put that together with another interesting story. A year or two later, Leonard's at an event at Mary Bradford's house. Dialogue editor, wonderful person and part of a generation of kind of new, not fundamentalists, feminists, people like Lavina, people like Judy Dushku, who are all meeting together. And Leonard learns that one of the couples that had been there had gotten their second anointings. And they're a fascinating case because the husband had been part of LDS social services, but his wife, Marianne is fascinating because she's also hanging out with Mary Bradford and Lavina and writing poetry in dialogue, which I have to think was not welcome.

Bryan Buchanan [02:05:33] Including, Leonard says she wrote this poem in dialogue under a pseudonym that I understand hints at the Second anointing. So you go and read it and it's, you know, it talks about oil and kind of like the inner sanctum of the stones.

Bryan Buchanan [02:05:50] If you didn't know what she was talking about, you would have, what are stones? Like within the, like the inner recesses of the temple is the imagery she's evoking.

John Dehlin [02:05:58] Oh, like the stone, like the granite.

Bryan Buchanan [02:06:01] Yeah, but if you didn't know she was talking about that, you would have no idea. So she publishes under a pseudonym, but then a few years later, that generation publishes this amazing book called Sisters in Spirit, where she republishes the poem under her name. What's her name again? Marianne McMurray.

John Dehlin [02:06:18] And she probably received it, you're saying?

Bryan Buchanan [02:06:20] Yeah. Yep. And fascinating woman. She was, you know, a feminist, loved the outdoors. It sounds like just a really interesting person, but 100% not the mold of who they intended to give it to, I'm guessing. So that ends the Kimball era, and after that there is a giant black hole where the second anointing is concerned. Until we get the stories from people like Hans Matzon, who we think got it probably about 2000 in the Hinckley era, and Tom Phillips, who got it in 2002, also within the Hinckley era.

Bryan Buchanan [02:06:58] So the question is, did it continue during that time? Probably. But the question then is, who gets it? How is it presented to them? And again, how does this work within this idea of if it's not that big of a deal, then how come only these kind of people are getting it and do you have to get it? If not, then why do some people get it? There's all these questions that are left unanswered because we don't quite know how exactly it worked. And that leads us to the present, where we assume it probably still takes place.

John Dehlin [02:07:36] I think it's happening a lot. Why wouldn't it be?

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:38] It seems like it.

John Dehlin [02:07:39] Yeah.

Bryan Buchanan [02:07:40] Yeah. But it is so fascinating because it is very much like, you know, the story of the coelacanth where they pull this 80 million year old fish out of the sea into the modern world. There's this 1840s era ritual that survives, but it no longer has most of that context that it did in the 19th century because we're not doing polygamy anymore and, you know, we're not doing these other things. And it's been redefined and re examined over the course of all this time, but still at its core is this 1840s ritual. So it's a fascinating history and evolution of it that will Give a lot of color to when Darren tells the story of his grandparents.

John Dehlin [02:08:22] Okay.

Darren Klein [02:08:23] It's fascinating.

John Dehlin [02:08:25] Really quickly, I had a friend tell me that it was his understanding that when you get the second anointing in whatever language they use, they're promised that this will not just save them or exalt them, but it will exalt their posterity until like the third or fourth generation or something like that. Which to me.

Darren Klein [02:08:49] Good.

John Dehlin [02:08:50] Which to me, if I'm a wealthy, high status Mormon that's given my life to the church, that's probably given hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to the church, and then my children and grandchildren start falling away. Well, that's sad heaven to me, like the whole point, the whole value proposition of Mormonism was no empty chairs, that we're all going to be with our family together forever in the eternities. So I'm going to be like, now wait a minute, what about all my kids and grandkids that have left the church? If I were the church creating a super sacred ordinance for the super wealthy, rich, famous, committed people, I would want to give them some reassurance that they wouldn't go to Sat Heaven, that their money and time that they gave to the church would not just save them, but all the family they care about. Do you have any information about that?

Bryan Buchanan [02:09:43] I've also heard that I haven't run into it in any of the 19th or 20th century accounts. And I'm trying to remember now if Tom. I feel like Tom might mention that idea. And what's interesting is I kind of wonder. There's sort of a parallel idea that comes originally from Orsnef Whitney. He says Joseph Smith taught and there was never a more comforting doctrine that the seal that is placed upon a worthy couple will save their posterity no matter what he says. You know, they might stray, but the tentacles of divine providence will reach out and will kind of gather them back in. And obviously for a parent, that's comforting language.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:21] It gets repeated by like James E. Faust in conference. But it's a very problematic statement because it doesn't seem like Joseph Smith ever actually said that. And Orson F. Whitney was both given to very poetic, imaginative language and also like to kind of make things cooler than they were. He writes a biography of his grandfather, Heber Kimball, that has a lot of stories that don't seem to exist outside of Whitney's head.

Bryan Buchanan [02:10:51] So I kind of wonder if it's not somewhat that concept getting smushed into that or it just may be, you know, like I Said a lot of the accounts that we do have of this from people who experienced it aren't very detailed and they rarely will talk about the kind of language that's in the ceremony.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:10] So it is very possible that that has always been in there or that comes into it. Or it very well might be that after the official ceremony, from what Tom said, you know, they were allowed to ask questions from the apostle. And it's very possible that in some many occasions that language was conveyed to them outside of the official ritual.

Darren Klein [02:11:33] So I think it was interesting Tom said too, he wanted to ask, is this when I'm going to meet the Savior? You know, he actually thought that that was going to be part of the ordinance.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:44] That's why I love the accounts of missionaries asking questions, because the same kind of thing the leaders like. So does anybody have any questions with kind of the unsaid understanding that don't ask tough questions?

Darren Klein [02:11:55] Right.

Bryan Buchanan [02:11:55] And so I'm sure people had a bunch of questions, but they didn't necessarily want to ask them.

Darren Klein [02:12:01] Well, even today, if you go to lds.org and you ask about the second anointing, the first article that appears in the first paragraph, it literally says, don't ask questions about this. Don't bring it up in lessons. Don't have discussions about it. It's on the lowdown. I mean, it's just today, that's what you find.

Bryan Buchanan [02:12:20] That's why I think the Arrington account of it is so fascinating, because here's a guy who didn't grow up in Utah, but in the Mormon corridor. That was the church historian that has to start from scratch. He has no idea what this is. Another interesting story. They have another kind of study group meeting where Gordon Madsen and Ron Walker and other guys like that will present on what they know about it. And it's fun because they'll say things like, we've kind of heard rumblings that Kimball has reinstituted this on a limited basis. And Arrington's sitting there thinking, yeah, yeah, he has. I'm not going to tell you about

Darren Klein [02:12:57] it, but you don't know the half of it is what he's thinking.

Bryan Buchanan [02:12:59] But that's so interesting that somebody like that. By the end of the 1970s, the cultural consciousness has evaporated to the point that a guy like Leonard Arrington has no idea what this is. That tells you your average member, unless they have a grandpa who got it and talked about it, you're just not going to hear about it.

Recent Accounts and the Rite Today

Bryan Buchanan [02:13:19] And that's another one of your interviews that was so interesting on this topic was Lila Tuller because she talked about how Hartman Rector, her father had gotten it, but would sort of use it as a trump card sometimes in arguments and say, you do remember I've had my second anointing.

Bryan Buchanan [02:13:34] And she made a point in saying like, I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to do that. But he, you know what? Because he grew up as a convert, he didn't always know all the norms and. And even if he did, he obv. He sometimes didn't like to follow them.

John Dehlin [02:13:46] Yeah, well, I'm dying to know. I'm dying to know if that multi prosperity, prosperity posterity, the multi posterity promise is there because the math in my head says that it is, you know, but you don't know yet.

Bryan Buchanan [02:14:04] Again, when you have something that is explicitly not supposed to be talked about, people don't talk about it. And so a couple things happen. Knowledge, accurate knowledge of things falls away and rumors and stories kind of take their place. And when you don't have good records, it's difficult to separate the two.

Darren Klein [02:14:23] It does stand to reason though, because that's part of the temple ceremony, that same verbiage.

Bryan Buchanan [02:14:29] Yep. It's a fascinating history and there is a surprisingly large amount of information out there about it that sheds light on parts of the story.

John Dehlin [02:14:41] Okay, so before we summarize, I'm just gonna make sure everyone knows we're gonna be sharing the full Tom Phillips interview on YouTube so that you who have not listened to it or watched it yet because it's old school Mormon stories. That's audio only. Days of Mormon stories. Pre. You know, pre. My excommunication, actually, I think I recorded it in 2013, but actually released it in 2014. Once I knew I was going to be excommunicated, I'm like, what the fetch? I'll release it anyway. We'll be releasing that. We'll be releasing Hans Mattson's. I'm probably going to get my friend Mark Burton to talk about his grandpa's the momento that allegedly Kimball gave my friend Mark Burton's grandpa to secretly signify that he had received it.

John Dehlin [02:15:26] So we. I have a picture of that. That's kind of fun. And then hopefully we'll have Tom Phillips back to just kind of. Because a lot of people are worried about him or like wondering if he's okay, wanting to hear how he's doing, especially now that his son has been designated in an area or a general authority. I forget. Anyway, all that's coming up. But before we end Please subscribe to this episode. Please like the episode. Please share it.

John Dehlin [02:15:51] That will really help with the algorithm. Please do that. Okay, so do we have any. Do we want to draw any conclusions from this history? I don't even know if you do that as a historian, Brian, and you probably try and withhold. I usually.

Bryan Buchanan [02:16:07] That's not my strong suit. Part of it, too, is because this is a topic that really needs more work. And I nearly forgot. I did want to do one thing too. Something that Lindsay and I always do on Sunstone History podcast is we'll do the Books of Mormon's Report, which is always introduced by song lyrics. And I forgot that. So we're not doing that. But so I talked about this one. So there's a three part series. The first one is Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed. So that's that period in the store. Other places until they can move into the Nauvoo Temple. So that's Nauvoo Endowment companies. As you can see, this is like three times the size because this is when they're giving it to hundreds of people as opposed to a couple dozen.

John Dehlin [02:16:50] And then those are signature books. Right?

Bryan Buchanan [02:16:52] These are both published by Signature Books. And the third, and in a lot of ways the most interesting is the book that takes from the end of Nauvoo to 2000. And in all cases, these are just raw data. So it might be a journal, it might be minutes, it might be a circular letter, especially in that third volume, unbelievably interesting. And not just second anointing. All things Temple. And a lot of that was based on the research of a guy I mentioned earlier named David Berger. So he wrote two seminal articles in dialogue, one on the development of the endowment and one on the history of the second anointing. And he eventually grew disaffected and kind of moved on from Mormon studies. But his research was put together in this book called the Mysteries of Godliness. That is a narrative history.

John Dehlin [02:17:40] Spell his last name.

Bryan Buchanan [02:17:42] B U, R G E, R. Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [02:17:44] Like burger.

Bryan Buchanan [02:17:44] Yeah, so yeah, just throw an extra E in the middle of your burger. So, okay. And this is fun because it's narrative, so it'll kind of put some of the pieces together. But what it'll do is they'll say, you know, this conclusion or this point is based on this letter. And then you can go to these three books and often find that whole letter and give you more context. So, like I said, there's not a ton out there on there on the secondary Writing. But there is some things and very, very interesting. Come to us at Benchmark. I'll tell you more stories.

John Dehlin [02:18:16] So we'll make sure Julia includes a link to all these books in the show notes.

Bryan Buchanan [02:18:20] Perfect. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:18:21] She's really good about that. Okay, so in terms of making any analysis or judgment, that's not your deal.

Bryan Buchanan [02:18:27] It is interesting because you have. I mean, you have so many different ways you can look at it, but to me, the raw numbers of it are so fascinating of a practice that goes from thousands to nothing overnight and then kind of gets turned on and then definitely gets turned on permanently, but in a very different way. And so I think the ultimate idea of it is you prove yourself over the course of years to be worthy and faithful. But that circle grows so, so much more narrow over the course of the history of this ordinance. And that's interesting because it reflects on what is an elite. Should there be an elite? What does an elite consist of? That gets redefined? And obviously now that idea of a Mormon elite, I think, is very distasteful to a lot of people.

John Dehlin [02:19:21] Well, you know, we know now that bishops and stake presidents and even George P. Lee. Right. The church can call child abusers adulterers to become leaders in the church, like we know now, or they can call a child molester to produce the temple ceremony films. Right. Like we know the gift of discernment is either deeply flawed or just never existed to begin with. So, like, one big question is like, how do we have any reliability that. That. That God is directing who gets chosen and that it's not, you know, huge mistakes aren't being made if it's not just made up completely like that. That's. But. But yeah, a lot of people tell me the Tom Phillips episode was devastating to their faith just because for some, the elite of it all is just gross and distasteful.

Darren Klein [02:20:20] No question.

John Dehlin [02:20:21] No. What do you think?

Darren Klein [02:20:22] No question. I felt the same way that the Tom Phillips story was so powerful for me, and had I not experienced it, I wouldn't have even known what these documents were because of the Church's effort to keep it so secret.

John Dehlin [02:20:35] But you. And you'll be telling that in your next story.

Darren Klein [02:20:38] Definitely.

John Dehlin [02:20:38] We're going to share that story next. Okay. Okay. Anything else you want to say before we close? Well, Brian, what a wonderful gift. It sounds like there's archives being released soon and. Or new books coming out and maybe even a new book to be written about the second anointing.

Closing Reflections and Preview of Part Two

Bryan Buchanan [02:20:56] Ultimately, that's the goal.

John Dehlin [02:20:57] Okay.

Bryan Buchanan [02:20:58] And part of it is a call to action, to be snoopy. You know, don't let things go in the dumpster. Be curious. If you have a grandpa, a great grandpa who was a stake president in the Mormon Corridor, a mission president, there's a very good chance that they received it. And some of those people still living, they might want to talk to you, they might not want to.

Bryan Buchanan [02:21:19] But it's interesting because you learn more about not just Mormon history, but how your family is part of that history. So I would say be curious, ask questions. Do we have documents? Who knows how many interesting things that can help flesh out the story are sitting in a dusty box in the basement because no one's ever bothered to look through them.

Bryan Buchanan [02:21:39] That's one of my favorite things about Mike Quinn, is the reason that he found so much stuff was he was innately curious. He was constantly wondering, asking questions, poking around. Lots of reasons to be curious.

John Dehlin [02:21:56] Yeah. Beautiful. All right, well, Brian Buchanan, what a wonderful contribution to the Mormon story.

Bryan Buchanan [02:22:04] Thanks for having me as part of the story. Now, I want to be careful, like, what we're doing is teeing up Darren's story here so that this has some context, because, like I said, this is where the story starts, is finding treasures in the dumpster.

John Dehlin [02:22:18] Yeah. Very cool. Okay. You ready for that, Darren?

Darren Klein [02:22:21] You bet.

John Dehlin [02:22:22] All right, so thank you for joining us for part one or a part. I don't know how this will ultimately be seen. So thanks for joining us for this part of second Endowment Week on Mormon Stories. Remember that we're also going to be covering the original. We're going to be releasing the original Tom Phillips interview in full on YouTube, Hans Mattson's second earning account. We hope to have Tom Phillips back to talk about his life since that episode. And right now, come right back at some point in the sequence because we're going to have Darren Klein tell us the story of discovering his grandfather's second anointing invitation written by Spencer B. Kimball. And it's the first that, you know, we ever learned about such documents existing. And he's going to read it and maybe we'll share it as a document.

Darren Klein [02:23:20] You bet.

John Dehlin [02:23:21] As well on our blog or on the podcast or maybe on the screen so you can see it. So come right back. Thanks for joining us. Please like and subscribe this episode and always please support Benchmark Books. Buy your books from them. Go hang out with Brian. He's a really fun visit. And also, thanks for your donations to Mormon Stories podcast. We couldn't do all this without your support. And if you're not a donor and you you value this type of content, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor and we'll be able to keep providing this type of content and other cool things in the weeks, years, months ahead. Thanks everybody. Take care and we'll see you really soon.

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