Elder Robert L. Simpson has a vivid memory from July 20, 1969.
At that time, he was serving as first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric. His responsibility over the Aaronic Priesthood of the Church had taken him to an international Boy Scout Jamboree at northern Idaho's Farragut State Park.
"It was on that day that man first walked on the moon," recalled Elder Simpson, now an emeritus General Authority. "They had large television sets put in strategic places in the vast encampment, among those thousands and thousands of Scouts. I just can't adequately describe the looks on their faces as they saw a man walking on the moon and as they dreamed about what their future might be in this kind of a world."
Perhaps as well as anything, that mental image encapsulates the mood and tone of the 1960s, a decade of staggering change with a focus on the rising generation. That occurred in the Church as much as anywhere else.
"The '60s was about youth," mused Elaine A. Cannon, whose extensive involvement with Church magazines, curriculum and correlation during that decade led to her service as Young Women general president in the late 1970s. "We were training up a generation to receive the Savior. It was during the '60s that this emphasis began."
From 1959 through the end of the 1960s, Sister Cannon worked with Elder Marion D. Hanks, a former high school classmate who was then an Assistant to the Twelve, editing a section of the Improvement Era magazine, "The Era of Youth," forerunner to today's New Era magazine for youth of the Church.
The title "Era of Youth," might appropriately be applied to the decade itself. America's post-World War II "baby boom" had reached its apex. Like millions of Americans, many adult Church members, having seen hard times in their own youth or having served their country during the war, were striving to rear their children in the midst of new-found prosperity with its attendant conditions, not all of them wholesome.
Advancements in mass-media technology, coupled with the burgeoning under-25 population in America, fueled the emergence of a very pronounced youth culture in popular music and other entertainment. An unfortunate by-product of this was a counter-culture that rejected many traditional values of morality, religion and patriotism. The United States' prolonged and controversial involvement in the conflict in Southeast Asia alienated many young people and was a main cause of rampant unrest and dissension on college campuses across the nation.
For young Latter-day Saints, however, the Church was a refuge in the midst of societal turbulence, an anchor in a time of shifting values.
"That's really what we tried to accomplish," said Elder Simpson, who went on to become an Assistant to the Twelve and then a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the 1970s. "It took some doing, of course, but the curriculum for our youth was restructured. And about the same time [1962], the age at which a young man could serve a mission was reduced from 20 to 19, which gave us a whole new view on the number of missionaries that we could furnish the world. The numbers went up by the thousands almost immediately."
At a seminar in 1961 in Salt Lake City for all mission presidents worldwide, a new teaching plan of six lessons that was to be used in every mission of the Church was officially presented, as was the "every member a missionary" program, which was based on President David O. McKay's famous statement from the April 1959 general conference. Also in 1961, a Missionary Language Institute was established at BYU, which was renamed the Language Training Mission in 1963.
"Youth conferences flourished in that period," Sister Cannon recalled. "The Church was beginning to create stakes around the world. [The first non-English-speaking stake was organized at The Hague in the Netherlands in March 1961.] In parts of Europe, the youth would come for hundreds of miles to meet together. It was exciting to think that we were bringing Mormon youth to be together with other Mormon youth. Today, a stake is big enough to have a youth conference on its own, but these were big, regional gatherings, and it was wonderful as we watched the youth of the Church turn into proper priesthood people."
Priesthood, in fact, was the operative term in the 1960s when it came to Church programs and endeavors. In March 1960, under First Presidency assignment, the General Priesthood Committee, chaired by Elder Harold B. Lee of the Quorum of the Twelve, undertook an extensive study of programs and curriculum. Its objective was to provide better "correlation" under the protective umbrella of the priesthood.
This effort would have far-reaching and long-lasting impacts in later decades, but already in the 1960s, it resulted in the home teaching program replacing ward teaching in January 1964. Also that year, it led to establishment of a priesthood executive committee on a ward level to coordinate priesthood activities and a ward council to coordinate auxiliary activities under priesthood leadership.
"Under the correlation program, the curriculum was coordinated, including all the materials for the Sunday School, the Primary, the Relief Society and the priesthood and so on," recalled Elder Simpson.
Not only was curriculum better coordinated, Sister Cannon remembered, but its preparation was formalized. Whereas, previously the writing of lesson manuals had been assigned out to auxiliary board members, now Church members with professional expertise were called to prepare the curriculum materials.
A major impact of priesthood correlation, Sister Cannon said, was on the shepherding of college-age members of the Church.
"We could no longer enroll everyone at BYU," she remarked. "In 1962, I was called to be on a committee that set in place the constitution and by-laws for an LDS fraternity and sorority that would be campus-acceptable. These were perilous times, and something was needed to safeguard our young adults. Rolfe Kerr [now of the Seventy] and I had each been in a fraternity or sorority, so together we created all the regalia, the crest, the mottos and all of these things necessary to enable young people to absolutely be in the world but not of the world."
The Latter-day Saint Student Association was created as an organization to place college-age Church members under priesthood watchcare. "It was a smashing hit that still exists today, but modified to meet today's needs," Sister Cannon said.
It was in general conference of April 1964 that President David O. McKay uttered the now-famous words, "No other success can compensate for failure in the home." Growing out of that focus was a renewed and unprecedented emphasis and encouragement in the holding of family home evening throughout the Church. A manual for this purpose was first published in 1965 and was, for a time, replaced every year. In 1966, stakes were urged to set aside a regular night for family home evening and to avoid scheduling Church activities on that night. In 1970, Monday night was designated Churchwide as family home evening, with no other activities to be scheduled at that time. Family home evening became an identifying characteristic of Latter-day Saints in the latter 20th Century.
The 1960s saw a major global expansion of the Church from its western United States base. Membership almost doubled from 1.3 million at the beginning of the decade to 2.3 million at the end, and 38 stakes were created outside the United States during the 10-year period.
As part of a continuing series of efforts to properly administer the expanding Church, the position of regional representative of the Twelve was created in September 1967.
"Sixty-nine men were called," Elder Simpson said, "qualified men ready to go and do the bidding of the Lord under the direction of the Twelve. It was just a great thing."
Coupled with the growth was a concerted effort to enhance the visibility of the Church. Millions of people were exposed to it through the exhibits in the Salt Lake Temple-shaped Mormon Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1964. The landmark Church motion picture "Man's Search for Happiness" was produced for the fair. Some of the exhibits later formed the basis of a new visitors center (now called the North Visitors Center) on Temple Square, including the famous Christus statue. The Church's pavilion at the New York World's Fair was followed four years later with an exhibit at the 1968 exposition in San Antonio, Texas.
The Tabernacle Choir, ever the goodwill ambassador for the Church, fulfilled invitations to perform at the inaugurations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 and Richard M. Nixon in 1969.
To counter the use for evil purposes of mass media technology, the Church used it to carry the gospel message far and wide. April 1964, for example, marked the first time that general conference could be viewed in every state of the union, with 186 television stations volunteering their time and facilities. President David O. McKay announced then the conference proceedings would reach a potential audience of 90 million people.
In November 1964, a new temple was dedicated at Oakland, Calif. It was the only temple dedication of the '60s and the last one at which President David O. McKay would preside. But it was on the threshold of what would become the most prolific period of temple building in history in the 1970s and beyond.
Preparatory to that period was the expansion and refinement of the effort to gather and index records of the dead for temple work. That effort literally made possible the temple building that came later. Among other events, it was marked by the completion in 1963 of the Granite Mountain Records Vault, a secure storage facility burrowed out of a mountainside east of the Salt Lake Valley for the preservation of the Church's expanding collection of microfilmed records. And it was in 1962 that Church employees first began to extract names from parish records for immediate processing for temple work rather than depending exclusively on the research done by Church members on their own ancestral lines.
The first World Conference on Records took place in Salt Lake City in 1969 and, in the eyes of the world, legitimized the Church as a leader in the field of genealogical and family history research.
An icon that perhaps best symbolizes the growth, in-creased efficiency and administrative expansion of the worldwide Church in the 1960s did not take shape until the next decade: the 26-story Church Office Building in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City. But it was planned and announced with an architect's rendering in 1969.
With its faithful youth fortified against worldly wickedness, its programs and curricula properly correlated and its high-rise headquarters building ready for construction, the Church was poised for the exciting events of the decades to come.
