Religion: Mormonism Enters a New Era

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How did the word come? By one account, 13 Apostles (top leaders) experienced a common revelation at a prayer meeting on June 1. In other renditions it came complete with a visitation from Joseph Smith, the prophet of Palmyra, N. Y., who founded the faith in 1830. In an interview, his first since the announcement, Kimball described it much more matter of factly to TIME Staff Writer Richard Ostling: "I spent a good deal of time in the temple alone, praying for guidance, and there was a gradual and general development of the whole program, in connection with the Apostles."

Kimball's predecessors felt bound by the traditional interpretation of Smith's scriptures. Passages in the Book of Mormon consider dark skin a sign of God's disfavor, and the Book of Abraham specifies that Canaanites (interpreted as Africans) are "cursed as to the priesthood." Indeed, outside dissidents bought a full-page ad in the Salt Lake Tribune last week accusing Kimball of heresy and pointing out that Brigham Young declared that blacks would only get the priesthood after all "other descendants of Adam" had their chance.

Mormons believe in a prior spirit life, and their leaders have long taught that people are born into the black race because they somehow failed God during their preexistence. Kimball says flatly that Mormonism no longer holds to such a theory. He remains opposed to interracial marriage but couches his warnings against it as fatherly admonition; Brigham Young considered such marriages an offense punishable by "death on the spot."

Sterling M. McMurrin, graduate dean at the University of Utah and leading Mormon liberal, gives Kimball personal credit for changing the church's stance. "He is a deeply spiritual person, not bureaucratic," says McMurrin. "He has suffered through this problem for 30 years." What if Kimball had not received the revelation during his tenure? Under the strict seniority system among Apostles, the next president in line is Ezra Taft Benson, 78, Ike's Agriculture Secretary. After him would come Mark E. Petersen, 77, former editor of the church-owned daily, Salt Lake's Deseret News. Both are considered much too conservative to have acted as Kimball did in lifting the barrier for blacks.

Kimball, a onetime realty and insurance man, had undergone throat cancer and heart surgery before he took over in 1974, but he has proved to be a vigorous, globe-trotting activist. He is at his desk daily by 7 a.m., stays there till 5:30 p.m. without a lunch break, then works until 10 at the home he shares with wife Camilla. In typical Mormon fashion he attributes his vitality to the fact that "all my life, from the time I was a little boy on the farm, I have done hard work." Like other practicing Mormons, he shuns alcohol, tobacco and caffeinated drinks.

Kimball is by no means the first Mormon leader to alter a major doctrine. The most famous earlier example occurred in 1890, when one of Prophet Smith's successors ended the "everlasting covenant" of polygamy after the practice had plunged the church into a bitter, and losing, battle with the U.S. Government.