Radical Watchman on the Tower
The Poisonous Rhetoric of Ezra Taft Benson
I have described myself as having a second faith crisis over the last few months. Many Mormons assume that I left the LDS Church because I’m gay, so they are often confused when I correct them about why I left the LDS Church. My sexuality definitely played a role in my departure, but it wasn’t the deciding factor as it is for so many. For me, the real problem with the LDS Church came down to a matter of priorities and values.
The LDS Church valued obedience to authority when I valued compassion. Leaders in Salt Lake chose authoritarianism rather than democracy. These values were bound to collide when I became an adult. Beyond my sexuality, the Church failed to meet my moral needs and wants as an adult.
So why am I calling this moment in my life a second faith crisis if I left the Church over values? Because I’m finally giving up on the idea that many active Latter-day Saints and other Mormons will listen to me about my Mormon experience. My faith in Mormons is at an all-time low, despite my love for my heritage. My problems with Mormonism have become clearer in 2022 with the fringe far-right Mormons emerging in the mainstream, just as they did in the 1980s and 1990s under Ezra Taft Benson’s poisonous leadership.
Many Latter-day Saints are not ready to talk about how Ezra Taft Benson harmed the fabric of modern Mormon culture. They want to excuse him as a product of his time or an old man who was out of touch. Being old is never a valid excuse for bigotry, in my opinion. We can all learn and grow, even if we make mistakes.
Listening to Watchman On the Tower by Matthew Harris has been enlightening about truly how awful Ezra Taft Benson was as a leader of the LDS Church. Benson adored far-right conspiracy theories. He thought Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent. He decried the welfare state as a slippery slope to communism. The Book of Mormon was Ezra Taft Benson’s justification for many of his conspiracy theories. Today, we see conspiracy theories that have burst into the Utah sociopolitica mainstream with figures such as Eric Moutsos and Natalie Cline.
Benson, like Moutsos and Cline, was never curious about the experiences of others. His rigidity made him prideful and arrogant. He was an avid John Bircher who believed that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent. Benson peddled conspiracy theories across the Church. His rhetoric led to the poisonous well of conspiracy theories that we see in the modern LDS Church.
By the time that Benson became president of the LDS Church, the damage had already been done. His talks over the pulpit pushed his radical sociopolitical agenda. Many Mormons became starry-eyed about his high political aspirations, or their own in the case of Bo Gritz. His abrasive personality cultivated a cult of personality that we still see among Latter-day Saints who decry social progress as a sign of the end times. Ezra Taft Benson was poisonous to Mormon culture. He was a radical watchman on the tower, but like Don Quixote, he tilted at the windmills of far-right conspiracy.
I don’t want to dig into too many details about the book itself. Buy the book from Benchmark Books or download it on Audible. This book feels more timely than ever, given the rise of the radical right within the Republican Party. I highly recommend Matthew L. Harris’s superb writing. You will never see Ezra Taft Benson in the same light again. And it might help you undestand our current sociopolitical environment in the United States. Ask yourself as you read (or listen to) this book:
”Who is the radical watchman on the tower with delusions of grandeur who tilts at windmills?”
There are lots of windmill tilters out there, inside and outside of Mormonism. And they project their anxieties onto all of us.