General authority Marion Duff Hanks was a “progressive” before many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints even knew what the word meant.
Warner Woodworth, an emeritus professor from church-owned Brigham Young University, once called Hanks, who died in 2011, the faith’s “Albert Schweitzer.”
The charismatic Hanks opposed the church’s long-standing priesthood/temple ban against Black members before it ended in 1978. He wrestled about doctrine with more rigid leaders, including apostle Bruce R. McConkie. He created a humanitarian mission for refugees in Southeast Asia, where handpicked “sister” (female) missionaries served others rather than proselytize. He urged more emphasis on Christ and social justice, while also encouraging Scouting and sports activities. He was the mission president to two future apostles — and one historian-excommunicant — and loved all his charges.
He was known for his acceptance of those on the fringes of the church, a beacon for those experiencing difficulty of one kind or another, or facing intellectual dissent.
Still, too many in the 17.2 million-member church of today know little to nothing about this freethinking and compassionate Latter-day Saint leader, says his son, Richard Hanks. And so the younger Hanks recently published a biography of his once-famous father, “To Be a Friend of Christ: The Life of Marion D. Hanks,” drawing on otherwise unavailable primary sources — journals, correspondence, notebooks and recordings.
His hope was to introduce modern readers “to one of the most remarkable and unique leaders in the history of the church, incorporating his devotion to the Savior, his complete integrity, his willingness to speak up for what he believed, and his absolute commitment to serving his fellow man,” Richard Hanks says in an interview. “Dad was truly a Renaissance man, excelling in all that he did. He influenced a generation of Latter-day Saints and was the catalyst for many of the progressive changes we now enjoy in the church.”
Indeed, Hanks — who was tapped in 1953 as a general authority Seventy at age 31 and was not released from full-time church service until 1992, when he was 70 — was beloved for his winning ways as a speaker and teacher, his rapport with teens, and his ability to discuss Shakespeare, popular television shows, the Scriptures, newspaper stories, ancient history and contemporary issues. Members also smiled at the light-colored suits he sometimes donned for General Conferences amid a sea of black.
Hints from 40 years of serving the faith
Here are some aspects of his life and work highlighted in the book that people may not know:
• From 1962 to 1964, Hanks was the president of the British Mission, where he paired two future apostles, Jeffrey R. Holland and Quentin L. Cook, as missionary companions. Also among his charges was D. Michael Quinn, a historian who was later excommunicated from the faith for his research on the continuation of polygamy after the church said it officially had stopped the practice. Hanks urged all three of them to study the country, to know its history and to love its people.
(The Salt Lake Tribune) From left, apostle Quentin L. Cook, the late historian D. Michael Quinn, and apostle Jeffrey R. Holland. All three served as missionaries in Great Britain under Marion D. Hanks.
• He was the church’s strongest connection to the outside world, serving on multiple national committees, including the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under five U.S. presidents.
• He was recruited (while a general authority) to be a CEO, senator, governor and university president — all of which he turned down.
• He worried that too many members were caught up in “nonessential” traditions, Richard Hanks writes, like “who sits where in meetings, what can be said in funerals or farewells (even what to call those meetings), which hand to use in taking the sacrament [Communion], acceptable facial hair, who can pray in meetings, perfection in delivering the sacrament prayer, hair length and shirt color worn by young men [and] … standing when a general authority enters the room.”
Some make sense “in certain situations,” the son writes. “Others just seem silly.”
• He “came out of the darkness [on women’s issues] earlier than most,” the son writes. “He included women on his boards and committees and asked for their input (when neither practice was common) and treated them with respect.”
After counseling with a divorced woman, Duff Hanks wrote, according to his son, “This hierarchy of value with men at the top of the heap is just baloney to me. There is no preference for men in the heart of the Almighty.”
• He was given a special blessing by church President David O. McKay to “let your voice be heard,” which he did repeatedly, the biographer says, even speaking up “when he differed from an approach taken by the institutional church or some of its leaders.”
(Utah State Historical Society) David O. McKay is seen on the day he was ordained as president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1951. He gave Marion D. Hanks a special blessing.
He disagreed with apostle Bruce R. McConkie on the latter’s famous 1980 BYU speech, “The Seven Deadly Heresies,” (Hanks’ “feelings about salvation allowed for a really big tent that would include a lot of souls,” the son writes).
• Just as he was about to become president of both the Boy Scouts and Rotary International, he was transferred (some said “banished,” his son says) to Hong Kong to be the church’s area president of Southeast Asia. Rather than just “manage” the calling, Hanks ended up initiating the faith’s involvement in institutional Christian service, opening up efforts in refugee camps throughout Asia — no strings attached — and agreeing to forgo evangelizing those the missionaries served.
• It was Hanks’ suggestion that the church proclaim itself as Christian by displaying a copy of Thorvaldsen’s Christus in the then-just-constructed North Visitors’ Center on Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. “His understanding of the temple was very different from almost anyone else in the church” at the time, Richard Hanks says. “For him, it was all about Christ — not a continual dissection of the endowment.”
• He created the first early morning seminary classes for Latter-day Saint teens.
• He was an early and ardent advocate for priesthood and temple rites for Black members. He could not believe the ban came from God but supported the church in public. As a young missionary in Cincinnati in the 1940s, converts Len and Mary Hope were distraught when they were told that white Latter-day Saints did not want a Black family to worship with them. “Can we still pay our tithing?” the Hopes asked. So Hanks and others held sacrament services in their home once a month. Later, the family visited Utah and were not allowed to stay in any hotel, so Hanks’ mother took them in. “All of us had the sense of discomfort at the continuing policy,” Hanks wrote in 1993, “that kept good and honorable people from the blessings of their possibilities.”
• He favored transparency about church history, Richard Hanks writes, arguing that “telling the truth was the right thing to do, and that curtailing or hiding the truth would eventually result in harm to the church.”
• He suggested the merging of quorums for elders and high priests, two-hour Sunday services, civil before temple marriages, adapting garments to weather, and greater involvement of female leaders, says Richard Hanks, all ideas adopted in recent years.
• Long before it became common to talk about “faith crises,” Hanks was tapped to fly to schools like the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford for “answer sessions with students,” the son says, “because of his willingness to tackle the tough issues.”
Members who believed that the church should take a more “progressive stance on some issues hoped he would take their positions forward,” Richard Hanks says. “Those who disagreed with the ‘we’re right, you’re wrong’ approach found a sympathetic ear for their concerns.”
Summing up a life
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Marion D. Hanks served as a general authority Seventy for nearly 40 years.
Duff Hanks’ final General Conference sermon was about the Christian teaching to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
A Hanks co-worker wrote in a letter that a “significant chapter in church history closes today as you leave your office for the last time,” the son reports in the book. “I cannot foresee that the institutional memory you carry will ever again be duplicated…[but] know that your influence will continue to linger not only here at church headquarters, but throughout the earth in the individual lives of all who have been touched by your words and ways.”
Hanks did not rest in his retirement but threw himself into myriad international causes, especially in Africa. He hoped his death would be a “nice, clean heart attack,” his son writes, but it was not to be. He spent his final seven years in a dementia-plagued fog.
After Duff died, a Salt Lake Tribune commenter wrote online: “He was, in a very pure way, a Christian first and a Mormon second.”
To that point, the family inscribed on his headstone: “Serve others. Wherever they are. Whatever their faith.”
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