Mormon Doctrine

What changed between the 1958 and 1966 editions of Mormon Doctrine

Two apostles read the first edition and recommended 1,067 corrections. Fifteen entries did not survive to the second — here they are.

Mormon Doctrine was published by Bookcraft in 1958, and within months the First Presidency had put two apostles to work reading it. The verdict was that it should never be reprinted. It was reprinted — revised, eight years later, with President David O. McKay's permission — and the second edition of 1966 is the one almost everybody has held. This page sets the two side by side.

The review

President McKay assigned Elder Marion G. Romney and Elder Mark E. Petersen to read the book and report. The review came back with 1,067 corrections. McKay recorded the decision in his diary on 8 January 1960.

We decided that Bruce R. McConkie's book, Mormon Doctrine, recently published by Bookcraft Company, must not be re-published, as it is full of errors and misstatements.

David O. McKay, diary, 8 January 1960, quoted in Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

The author was Bruce R. McConkie, then an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve and a son-in-law of Joseph Fielding Smith. He would be ordained an apostle in 1972 and serve until his death in 1985. The book was never withdrawn from the shops, and in 1966 McKay allowed a second edition on the condition that the changes were made and approved. It carried the same author, the same publisher, and the same absence of any church endorsement.

Fifteen entries that did not survive

These fifteen stand in the first edition and are absent from the second — not softened, not moved, gone. The middle column gives the entry's cross-references as the first edition printed them, because in several cases the cross-reference is the entry.

The Catholic Church

The single largest change is in the entry the deleted ones pointed at. In 1958 the Church of the Devil entry named the church it meant.

It is also to the Book of Mormon to which we turn for the plainest description of the Catholic Church as the great and abominable church.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Church of the Devil”, 1958 first edition, p. 130

In 1966 the same sentence in the same paragraph reads:

Nephi saw the “church which is most abominable above all other churches” in vision.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Church of the Devil”, 1966 second edition, p. 100

The identification is simply removed. So is the line that placed the great and abominable church “ruling from Rome, the city built on ‘seven mountains’”, and so is the closing sentence, that “the contentions and entanglements between the Catholic Church and the communist forces could well lead to a fulfilment of this prediction.” What replaces them is a general definition covering “all churches or organizations of whatever name or nature” that lead men away from God — which names nobody. The full before and after is here.

What the revision did not do

It is a revision of headings and emphasis more than of doctrine, and reading past the index shows how much of the first edition is still standing. Transubstantiation lost its entry; the second edition still calls it “a false doctrine, devised by uninspired men” inside the Sacrament entry. Indulgences lost its entry; the word survives in the second edition exactly once, and not about Catholicism. Cro-Magnon Man was cut while Cave Man, pointing at the same entry, was left standing.

The entries that drew the most fire outside the book were barely touched. Adam-God Theory still defends Brigham Young's statement as “perfectly consistent and rational”; the one thing that changed in that paragraph is the adjective for the people asking about it, who in 1958 raised the subject for their own nefarious purposes and by 1966 were doing so for their own peculiar ones. Blood Atonement Doctrine still teaches that “men must then have their own blood shed to atone for their sins”, having deleted the Capital Punishment entry that spelled out what that meant in law.

Cultists and other enemies of the restored truth, for their own nefarious purposes, sometimes try to make it appear that Latter-day Saints worship Adam as their Father in Heaven.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Adam-God Theory”, 1958 first edition, p. 17

Cultists and other enemies of the restored truth, for their own peculiar purposes, sometimes try to make it appear that Latter-day Saints worship Adam as their Father in heaven.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Adam-God Theory”, 1966 second edition, p. 14

The sermons those cultists were quoting are in the Journal of Discourses, all eight of them.

The second edition kept changing

Two copies can both say 1966 second edition on the title page and not contain the same words. The second edition stayed in print for over forty years, and it was revised inside those printings. The copy indexed on this site is a printing made after June 1978: its Negroes entry no longer contains the first edition's explanation of the priesthood restriction, and instead reproduces the First Presidency letter of 8 June 1978 announcing the revelation that ended it. Earlier printings of the same “second edition” do not. What that entry said, and what replaced it.

Out of print

Deseret Book stopped printing Mormon Doctrine in 2010, citing declining sales. It had been in print for fifty-two years, through both editions, and for most of that time it was the book a Latter-day Saint household reached for when it wanted an answer in a hurry. That is why the differences between the two editions are worth having in front of you: a quotation from Mormon Doctrine is not a quotation from one book.