So a while back I tossed out the idea of faithful LDS who pushed back on some church policies and proposed the label of “ark steadiers.” I thought about these issues while reading and reflecting on Matthew Harris’s Second Class Saints. The big issue for me was that some members did push back on the ban and got declarations, sometimes from the First Presidency, of doctrines that the church leaders now reject.

Harris notes the 1947 letter from Lowry Nelson on the church’s racial policies in response to Nelson’s friend Heber Meeks asking Nelson about the church’s ability to proselytize in Cuba considering the common racial intermarriage. Nelson who was raised LDS but had been fired from BYU some time before over disagreeing about the Trinity (that can mean a lot of things and Harris doesn’t give details).

Nelson sent a letter to church leaders expressing his hope that the ban did not continued and got a letter back from the First Presidency, likely written by President Clark. “Some of God’s children were assigned to superior positions before the world was formed. We are aware that some Higher Critics do not accept this, but the Church does.” Clark called interracial marriage “most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now” (25).

An interesting exchange, but I’m not sure I would put Nelson in the category of how I define an ark steadier. Again I’m not making a moral but technical designation, and the implication of Nelson not continuing to practice after getting fired at BYU (I don’t know the details) suggests to me him playing a bit of a different role. I see ark steadying more as a faithful act by practicing members.

Another figure that Harris mentions that I would NOT see as an ark steadier on this topic was Hugh Nibley. Apparently Nibley was opposed to the ban, but seemed to have kept that very quiet (48). Unlike Nelson, Nibley was not fired from BYU and that likely played some role in how outspoken he was. Again, this is not a moral designation, but if one is SO quiet about the critique that almost no one knew, I wouldn’t call that person an ark steadier on that topic. I do think Nibley played the ark steadier on other topics like materialism and focus on Zion, but at least as Harris describes it, Nibley seems not to have done so on the race ban.

Two people who I do think played ark steadier roles were Lowell Bennion and Lester Bush, and did so in somewhat different ways. Harris presents Bennion working against the ban for decades, noting the theological problems in an 1954 report (56-59) and even confronting Mark E. Peterson about the theology that summer in a training meeting for church education teachers (72). Using preexistence as a reason for the ban was problematic, Bennion argued, and church leaders now agree with Bennion.

Bennion was more outspoken than Nibley while retaining his church practice. Bennion was even removed from the classroom in the early 1960s for telling his students the ban would soon be lifted (90). I see that more as ark steadying than Nelson or Nibley.

Bush was also a practicing member as he worked on his vital article on the history of the ban that came out in 1973. The article ruffled some feathers and there are those that argue it played a role in encouraging the leaders to lift the ban (196). I do believe that good scholarship even on controversial topics can be a faithful act like Bennion’s actions.

The bottom line is that there were some during the decades of the ban that opposed it with theology that the church now teaches. Some of those people did try to faithfully steady the ark and point the church in a direction that the church did adopt and now teaches.