Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
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Mormon Studies Review

Lauren F. Turek

Keywords

Ezra Taft Benson, anti-communism, latter-day saints, conservatism, cold war

Abstract

The Cold War looms large in Thunder from the Right, an edited volume that offers readers an incisive appraisal of the religious and political career of Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson. As the collected essays reveal, a profound anxiety about Soviet communism and, more specifically, the perception that internal socialist subversion threatened the United States and its core values, impelled Benson to speak out widely and vociferously. His zealous anti-communism infused every aspect of his life and his work, from the policy positions he advocated for as President Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture to the religious teachings he shared as a minister and later as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Benson’s prominence in politics, agriculture, and the church ensured that his message had far-reaching public influence. Yet, as volume editor Matthew L. Harris aptly notes in his introduction, “Ezra Taft Benson’s intense patriotism and fierce ultraconservatism made him a controversial figure within the Mormon community” (9). The eight chapters in this volume, which examine a range of topics including Benson’s government service, his ties to the John Birch Society, and his views on race, gender, and civil rights, underscore the intertwinement of Benson’s deeply conservative (indeed, often reactionary) politics and his religious views. The contributors also illuminate just how polarizing a figure Benson was, exploring how his pointed efforts to fuse conservatism and anti-communism with Mormon spiritual teachings alienated some of his co-religionists and contributed to his periodic clashes with Latter-day Saint leaders.

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