Persp e ctive Anti-Banking on the Bankin g Lawyer’s society company KIRTLAND SAFE TY A
BY Randall D. Guynn
This article is adapted from remarks delivered at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society East Coast Conference at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on May 23, 2024. Guynn, who has been a leading banking lawyer on Wall Street for nearly 40 years, is in the process of writing a book on the history of the Kirtland Safety Society.1
TThe failure of the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company was a watershed event in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It caused the first great schism in the Church. Heber C. Kimball, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at the time, noted that after the society’s failure “there were not twenty persons on the earth [who] would declare that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God.”2 About a third of the Church’s leadership abandoned the Church.3 Joseph Smith, along with Sidney Rigdon, first counselor in the First Presidency, fled to Missouri to escape mob violence, including by disgruntled members of the Church.
The Kirtland Safety Society was an unchartered Ohio bank that was organized in 1837 and failed less than a year later. Smith and Rigdon were each fined $1,000 under an Ohio law that prohibited banks from issuing paper money without a charter to do so based on the Kirtland Safety Society’s having issued paper money. Those fines are comparable to more than $500,000 each in 2022 money. 4
A number of questions arise when we look back on the history of the Kirtland Safety Society: Why did early Latter-day Saints want a bank? Why was it organized the way it was? Did Ohio law prohibit the Kirtland Safety Society from issuing paper money? Did Joseph Smith and others reasonably believe that the unchartered bank did not violate the law in doing so? If their banking activities were illegal, was there any workaround that would have allowed the Kirtland Safety Society to provide banking services without violating the law? Why did the bank fail, and who, if anyone, was responsible? Finally, would the Ohio law prohibiting unchartered banks from issuing paper money have been considered unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court at the time?
The early Church leaders who left the Church because of the bank’s failure were ill-equipped to answer these questions. Most people today are no better equipped. I hope to provide more-complete and accurate information about the formation, operation, and failure of the Kirtland Safety Society based on my years of experience as a banking lawyer and a believing member of the Church.
Why Did Early Latter-day Saints Want a Bank?
Early Latter-day Saints almost certainly wanted their own bank for the same reasons others wanted to start banks in England or on the American frontier—to fuel economic growth and provide loans for large projects. For example, King William III of England wanted to form the Bank of England so he could fund his war with France with greater amounts of borrowed money at a lower cost than the English goldsmiths were willing or able to provide. English businesses wanted the Bank of England to address a chronic shortage
of gold and silver money by supplementing it with paper money backed by a fractional reserve of gold or silver coins. England was transitioning from an agrarian economy, where wealth was linked to owning productive land, to a manufacturing and trading economy, where the primary income drivers were innovation and technology. Without sufficient money, the English economy could not reach its full potential.
The chronic shortage of gold and silver coins was even more acute in Ohio and other states on the American frontier in the early 19th century. Like English businesses before them, Ohio businesses thought the shortage of gold and silver money was holding back economic growth. They similarly turned to paper money to facilitate that growth. Frontier businesses also wanted to be able to borrow money to finance large projects like canals, factories, roads, and other economic infrastructure.
If anything, the early Latter-day Saints believed they had an even greater need for money and credit than the average settler on the American frontier. The Saints believed they had been commanded by God to build Zion and the New Jerusalem for the “gathering of [the] elect” in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.5 According to Wilford Woodruff, who was ordained an apostle in 1839, Joseph Smith remarked as early as 1834 that the Latter-day Saints knew “no more concerning the destinies of this Church and kingdom than a babe upon its mother’s lap. . . [T]his Church will fill North and South America—it will fill the world.”6
For a prophet and people who saw their future in millennial terms, setting up their own bank to provide the necessary money and credit would have seemed like a natural thing to do.
One of the first projects that required reliable and affordable financing was the Kirtland Temple. As recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 88, the Lord had commanded the Saints in 1833 to build a temple in Kirtland,7 a structure that cost an estimated $40,000.8 That doesn’t sound like much money today, but a construction project of that magnitude would cost over $34 million in today’s money.9 Significant loans were required for its construction, which occurred between 1833 and 1836. About half the cost of the Kirtland Temple was financed by $20,000 in mortgage loans, equivalent to about $17 million today. That was a lot of money for a church with a substantial number of members living at or below what we would call the poverty line today.
In addition, Church members would have felt a lot more pressure to repay these mortgage loans than borrowers would today. There was no such thing as a 30-year mortgage in 1837. Mortgages had much shorter terms. For example, under a $4,500 mortgage loan secured by the Kirtland Temple in July 1837, one third of the principal was due in one year, another third in two years, and the final third in three years.10 Moreover, Ohio was a strict foreclosure state. That meant that mortgage lenders could take possession of mortgaged property if a borrower defaulted on the underlying loan.
One open question is whether Joseph Smith received a revelation commanding him to form the Kirtland Safety Society. After the Society failed, Warren Parrish, an early Church leader and senior executive of the bank, claimed he had heard Joseph Smith say that “the audible voice of God, instructed him to establish a Banking-Anti Banking institution, which like Aaron’s rod should swallow up all other Banks . . . and grow and flourish and spread from the rivers to the ends of the earth, and survive when all others should be laid in ruins.”11 In contrast, Wilford Woodruff wrote that Smith had said he had received a revelation on the subject, but Smith declined to share it, saying only that “if we would give heed to the commandments the Lord had given this morning all would be well.”12
There are serious reasons to doubt the credibility of Parrish’s assertion. First, he had a conflict of interest. Parrish had been an officer of the Kirtland Safety Society from beginning to end; indeed, he assumed control of it in July 1837 when Smith and Rigdon resigned. He was originally a co-defendant with Smith and Rigdon for the alleged violation of Ohio law, but for some reason he was dropped from the case. Just before Smith and Rigdon fled to Missouri, Parrish argued that they were “confirmed Infidels,” tried to take possession of the Kirtland Temple by force, and led a group of dissenters that set up a competing church.13 Thus, he had a strong self-interest in diverting responsibility for the bank’s failure from himself to Smith even though he was in charge of the bank when it failed. Once he moved to Missouri, Smith was no longer present to contradict Parrish. Second, Smith had previously accused Parrish of embezzling a large amount of money from the bank. Third, as far as I can tell, no credible witness corroborated Parrish’s statement about the words of the revelation. Indeed, Woodruff’s journal directly contradicted it. For all these reasons, Parrish’s claim that Joseph Smith received a revelation directing him to establish the Kirtland Safety Society needs to be taken with a grain of salt absent any additional evidence coming to light that is sufficient to support it.
Why Was the Kirtland Safety Society Organized as an Unchartered Bank?
When somebody sets up a major business today, they typically organize it as a corporation under Delaware law. They file a certificate of incorporation with the Delaware Secretary of State and adopt a set of bylaws. If they want the corporation to engage in banking activities, they need to obtain a separate banking license. To qualify for a banking license, a corporation needs to have sufficient capital and strong management.
The Kirtland Temple cost an estimated $40,000 to construct—which translates to over $34 million in today’s money.
Interior view looking west, first floor, Kirtland Temple, April 1934.
That process is completely different from the one that existed when the Latterday Saints applied for a charter for the Kirtland Safety Society. If someone wanted a banking charter then, they had to persuade their state legislature to enact a special law that would function as their charter.14
The main function of banks in those days was to issue paper money in the form of promissory notes known as bank notes. There was no national paper currency. A relatively small amount of paper money was issued by the first and second Banks of the United States, but that paper money was issued in such large denominations that it was useless for retail transactions. It would be as if the Federal Reserve issued paper money in minimum denominations of $10,000 today. Consequently, all paper money used in retail transactions was issued by private-sector banks like the Bank of Geauga in nearby Painesville, Ohio.
Silver and gold coins remained widely accepted as payment for goods and services, but because of the chronic coin shortage, early Americans either had to barter for goods and services or find substitutes for gold and silver coins to pay for goods and services. These substitutes included tobacco receipts, entries on account books, grain, beaver pelts, and paper money. Indeed, Americans were pioneers in the development of paper money, an innovation Benjamin Franklin famously advocated for in a 1729 pamphlet.15
When Joseph Smith and other Church leaders decided to organize a bank in Kirtland, Smith sent Oliver Cowdery, assistant president of the Church, to Philadelphia to purchase plates for printing paper money. He sent Orson Hyde, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to Columbus to obtain a banking charter from the Ohio legislature. Cowdery returned with the plates, but Hyde returned empty-handed.
When Hyde returned from Columbus without a banking charter, the Society’s directors organized the Kirtland Safety Society as an unincorporated joint-stock company. In doing so, they followed a pattern established by the Bank of New York less than 50 years earlier, whether they knew it or not. The Bank of New York is the oldest continuously operating bank in the United States. The organizers of that bank, which included Alexander Hamilton, had applied for a banking charter from the New York legislature in 1784. When the New York legislature denied their application, they organized it as an unincorporated joint-stock company and immediately started issuing paper money. That bank did not receive a banking charter until 1791, two years after Hamilton had become the first secretary of the treasury of the new nation.
The principal difference between a chartered bank and an unincorporated joint-stock company was that a chartered bank was a corporation treated as a separate legal person from its stockholders. A corporation’s stockholders enjoyed limited liability—meaning they had personal liability for the corporation’s obligations only up to the amount of their investments. In contrast, an unincorporated joint-stock company was considered a type of general partnership at common law. As general partners, its shareholders had unlimited personal liability for its obligations.
Both the proposed charter for the original bank and the constitution of the unincorporated joint-stock company contemplated that the Kirtland Safety Society would have minimum capital of $4 million, 16 which was nearly 16 times the average maximum capital in the Ohio statutory bank charters enacted between 1803 and 1836.17 For example, the Bank of Geauga—the principal bank in Kirtland before the Kirtland Safety Society—had a
maximum stated capital of $100,000 in its charter. But Joseph Smith always thought big. For a prophet who believed that the tiny church in Kirtland would eventually fill the whole world, it is not surprising that he thought he needed a bank with the potential to grow into a very large bank.
The Kirtland Safety Society Bank changed its name to the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company after being denied a charter. Because the printing plates purchased by Cowdery were already engraved with the name of the issuer as the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, the prefix Anti-, the suffix -ing, and the word Company were inserted by hand before and after the word Bank to form Anti-Banking Company on its initial paper money. These changes were presumably an effort to avoid misleading the public about the nature of the issuer of the paper money.
I have coined the term “common-law bank” to refer to unchartered banks like the Kirtland Safety Society that issued paper money pursuant to the natural or common-law right to do so without obtaining a license from any government authority.18 The natural or common-law right to issue promissory notes, including paper money, dates back to at least 1650 in England. Indeed, most of the paper money issued for retail transactions in England until the middle of the 19th century had been issued by unchartered English goldsmith banks, London private banks, country banks, and joint-stock company banks alongside the Bank of England. Even the Bank of England issued its paper money under the common-law right to do so, without any express authority from Parliament until the Bank Charter Act 1844 (more commonly known as the Peel Act). So did the Bank of New York during the sevenyear period between when it started to issue paper money and when it obtained a charter from the New York legislature to do so.
The legislatures in Ohio, New York, and other states had long treated banking charters as a prize to award to their most loyal and powerful friends or constituents. The Ohio legislature essentially sold banking charters to applicants in return for 5 percent of the common stock of the chartered banks. The state could then sell the stock for cash, which would be contributed to the state treasury. The Ohio legislature also promised to protect chartered banks against competition by passing a law prohibiting anyone other than chartered banks from issuing paper money. While the Ohio legislature passed that law, the governor and other members of the Ohio executive branch did not vigorously enforce it. As a result, there were several common-law banks that issued paper money alongside chartered banks in Ohio. Examples include the John H. Piatt & Company, the Granville Alexandrian Society, and, of course, the Kirtland Safety Society.
Was the Unchartered Bank’s Issuance of Paper Money Illegal Under Ohio Law?
The Ohio legislature passed a law in 1816 making it illegal for an unchartered bank like the Kirtland Safety Society to both lend money and issue paper money.19 Jeffrey Walker, a prominent Utah lawyer, has argued in an important and well-reasoned paper that the 1816 law had been repealed in 1824 but was reinstated in 1840.20 As a result, it would have been invalid in 1837 when it was enforced against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. Walker’s paper was based on an argument made by the lawyers for Smith and Rigdon. But Salmon P. Chas e, then a young lawyer in Ohio and later the Chief Justice of the United States, published a three-volume compilation of the statutes of Ohio law between 1833 and 1835, showing which laws had been amended or repealed. He stated that the 1816 law was still a valid law as of 1834. In addition, the court that tried Smith and Rigdon on charges of violating the 1816 law rejected the argument that the law had been repealed in 1824. I’m not going to weigh in on that debate in this article, but I will do so in my future book.
Kirtland Safety Society uncut notes $1, $2, $3.
Note from the Bank of Geauga, the Kirtland Safety Society’s chief competitor.
Did the Organizers of the Bank Reasonably Believe the 1816 Law Was Invalid?
About two weeks after the Kirtland Safety Society was formed in 1837, the Painesville Telegraph published an editorial arguing that the bank was issuing paper money in “violation of [an Ohio] statute.”21 The newspaper’s editor, Eber D. Howe, had published a stream of antiMormon articles since 1830 and had also published a book in 1834 arguing that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from a manuscript by Solomon Spalding.22 The Painesville Republican, a newspaper that was more neutral toward the Latter-day Saints, published an editorial in January 1837 arguing that the most reliable judges at the time thought the Ohio law had been repealed or was unconstitutional because it did not apply equally to all banks.23 If the Kirtland Safety Society received similar legal advice from a qualified lawyer, which it probably did, its organizers’ belief in the legality of the Society’s paper money would have been reasonable. There are at least three additional reasons why such a belief would have been reasonable. First, the United States was a very young nation at the time and the state of Ohio was even younger. Ohio was only two years older than Joseph Smith. Americans had inherited the common law from England but were still working out which portion of the common law they wanted to keep and which they wanted to change. As noted earlier, banks in both the United States and England had issued paper money for nearly two centuries pursuant to a common-law right to do so. There was also a lot of uncertainty about which laws were valid and which had been repealed or amended because there was no official codification of laws. A centuries-old common law right to issue paper money could easily have underpinned a reasonable view that the Society’s actions were legal.
Second, the Church leadership was very young and inexperienced when it came to banking. Joseph Smith was only 31 when the Kirtland Safety Society was formed, and he had no experience running a bank. Most other Church leaders were similarly young and inexperienced. Their lack of experience is relevant in determining whether their belief was reasonable at the time, even if the court ultimately ruled against them.
Third, most early Americans, including the Latter-day Saints, believed that they had certain natural rights that their government could not legitimately take away. These negative liberty rights, described by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Sir Edward Coke, are reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Indeed, the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage [other rights] retained by the people.”24 The Tenth Amendment similarly reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”25
Could a Workaround Have Spared the Kirtland Safety Society from Its Legal Problems?
Had the Kirtland Safety Society consulted with experienced banking lawyers, they might have been advised to have the bank issue demand deposit claims transferable by payment orders (e.g., checks) instead of paper money. In this way, the Society could have engaged in virtually the same banking activities without violating the Ohio law prohibiting unchartered banks from both issuing paper money and making loans; the law did not prohibit them from making loans and issuing demand deposit claims that were transferable by payment order. It is widely recognized today that demand deposit claims are the functional equivalent of paper money. Indeed, the vast majority of money used to pay for goods and services today is in the form of demand deposit and other short-term claims against private sector banks and money market funds.26
Why Did the Kirtland Safety Society Fail?
The Kirtland Safety Society failed in the wake of the Banking Panic of 1837, along with nearly 30 percent of the other banks in America in 1837.27 The 1837 panic is widely considered to be one of the most severe banking panics in American history, leading one author to characterize its impact as creating America’s first great depression.28
In addition to facing the enormous stress of the 1837 panic, the Kirtland Safety Society faced a two-front war waged by Grandison Newell, a 52-year-old businessman in nearby Mentor, Ohio, where Rigdon had been a preacher before joining the Church. Newell had been a persistent enemy of the Church since Rigdon’s conversion in 1830. He had provided most of the funding for the anti-Mormon publications by Howe. He was also a director of the Bank of Geauga, the Kirtland Safety Society’s chief competitor.
As the first front of his war against the Kirtland Safety Society, Newell organized a run on the paper money issued by the Kirtland Safety Society, perhaps with the tacit approval or assistance of the other senior executives at the Bank of Geauga. He traveled around the country buying up as much Kirtland Safety Society paper money as possible, which he would present to the bank for conversion into gold or silver coins.29 As a bank director, he would have known that banks had only a fractional reserve of gold or silver coins backing their paper money. If enough paper money were obtained and presented for conversion into gold or silver coins, a bank’s reserves would quickly be exhausted. Newell’s goal was to strangle the Kirtland Safety Society in its crib. Think of Henry Potter, the rival banker who engineered a run on the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan Association in Frank Capra’s classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. 30
A recent example of a run on a bank was the 2023 run on Silicon Valley Bank. When certain events caused its depositors to lose confidence in its ability to pay its deposits in the normal course of business, they panicked and withdrew $42 billion of cash in a single day and submitted withdrawal requests for an additional $100 billion after hours.31 Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley Bank failed as a result of this unprecedented run.
As a second front in his war, Newell hired an agent to sue Smith, Rigdon, and the other officers of the Kirtland Safety Society for violating the Ohio law prohibiting unchartered banks from issuing
paper money. That law authorized private citizens to initiate legal actions against the directors and officers of unchartered banks as a type of bounty hunter, paying them 50 percent of any fine imposed on the executives. The lawyers for Smith and Rigdon argued that the Ohio law had been repealed in 1824, but the court rejected that argument and imposed fines of $1,000 each on Smith and Rigdon, with 50 percent of each fine payable to Newell’s agent and ultimately to Newell.32 Recall that those fines would have been more than $500,000 each in today’s dollars.
Would the US Supreme Court Have Struck Down the Ohio Law as Unconstitutional?
The Supreme Court would almost certainly have held that the US Constitution prohibits the states from chartering banks to issue paper money if Chief Justice John Marshall and two other members of the Marshall Court had not died or resigned between 1834 and 1835. The logical implication of that decision would have been that the Ohio law conditioning the right to issue paper money on obtaining a charter that the State of Ohio had no authority to issue would also have been unconstitutional. This is significant because Marshall is the most venerated Chief Justice in American history, having authored many of its most important and enduring landmark decisions, including Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland
The US Constitution prohibits states from emitting “Bills of Credit.”33 In 1830, the Marshall Court struck down a Missouri law that authorized a state loan office to issue loan certificates. In a 4–3 opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall in Craig v. Missouri, the Court held that the loan certificates were “Bills of Credit” for purposes of the Constitutional prohibition.34 As a result, the Court held that the Constitution prohibited the State from authorizing the loan office to issue them.35 Three justices dissented, with Justice John McLean arguing that the logical implication of the court’s ruling was that all paper money issued by state-chartered banks violated the Constitution because states were not permitted to do something indirectly that they were prohibited from doing directly.36
Four years later, in 1834, the Supreme Court considered Briscoe v. The Bank of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (Briscoe I), a case involving the logical implication the Craig dissenters had predicted.37 The Kentucky legislature had enacted a statutory charter that granted the Bank of Kentucky authority to issue paper money. After reviewing briefs and hearing oral arguments, the Court tentatively decided by the same 4–3 majority that the Kentucky statute chartering the Bank of Kentucky was subject to the Constitutional prohibition on bills of credit. According to Justice Joseph Story, Chief Justice John Marshall had written a draft opinion for the majority at that time based on the reasoning in Craig v. Missouri, apparently ruling that the state could not do indirectly what it was prohibited from doing directly.38
If the draft opinion had been issued as the Opinion of the Court, it would have logically followed that the Ohio law prohibiting banks from issuing paper money without obtaining a charter would have been unconstitutional. States cannot condition the right to do something on receiving a charter that they are prohibited from granting by the Constitution.
[T]hose of us who live nearly two centuries after the Kirtland Safety Society failed should be slow to judge Joseph Smith, the Church, or those who chose to leave the Church over the Kirtland Safety Society’s failure.
Before the draft opinion could be issued, however, two of the seven justices became too ill to participate in the decision, one in the majority and one in the dissent. Concerned about the legitimacy of a 3–2 decision, Chief Justice Marshall ordered the case be carried over to the next term. One of those two justices died in 1834 and the other resigned in 1835. Chief Justice Marshall himself died in 1835. As a result, within the space of eight years, all but one of the justices who had been appointed by Federalist, Whig, or Jeffersonian Republican presidents were replaced by President Andrew Jackson. These Jacksonian Democrats, including Chief Justice Roger Taney, had a much more robust view of the scope of state sovereignty than their predecessors.
The case was reargued the next term and decided as Briscoe II in 1837. In contrast to the 4–3 majorities in Craig v. Missouri and Briscoe I, a 6–1 majority ruled in Briscoe II that the paper money issued by the Bank of the Commonwealth of Kentucky did not constitute bills of credit for purposes of the US Constitution. Therefore, the statutory charter authorizing the bank to issue paper money did not violate the prohibition on states issuing bills of credit.39 The Opinion for the Court was written by Justice McLean, who had been one of the dissenters in Craig v. Missouri. Justice Joseph Story, who had joined the majority opinion in Craig v. Missouri and the draft opinion in Briscoe I, wrote a long and detailed dissent.
If Briscoe I had been issued in 1834, the Kirtland Safety Society would probably still have failed. But Newell may never have filed the lawsuits charging Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon with violating the Ohio law. Even if he had, the Ohio court almost certainly would have ruled in favor of Smith and Rigdon, reasoning that the Ohio law was unconstitutional. What would the impact of such a ruling have been on the course of Church history? Would Smith, Rigdon, and the main body of the Church have stayed in Kirtland? What would that have meant?
Key Takeaways
This very brief history of the Kirtland Safety Society illustrates several points. First, the decision of certain early leaders of the Church to leave the faith over the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society may not have been fully informed. If they had had access to the information in this article, some or most of them might have stayed.
Second, those of us who live nearly two centuries after the Kirtland Safety Society failed should be slow to judge Joseph Smith, the Church, or those who chose to leave the Church over the Kirtland Safety Society’s failure. At a minimum, we should make sure our judgments are based on the entire record of reliable evidence, and not on cherry-picked or unreliable evidence, whether negative or positive. As Alexander Pope wrote in An Essay on Criticism:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.40
Third, the Kirtland Safety Society is a useful prototype of common-law banks on the American frontier and arguably Great Britain. Unlike chartered banks—whose governing documents have been preserved in the published acts of Parliament, Congress, or one of the several states—the governing documents of most common-law banks have been lost to history. The only primary evidence that most of them ever existed is the paper money they issued that is still collected and traded by numismatists. In contrast, the Joseph Smith Papers Project has collected, preserved, and made available to the public a treasure trove of original documents related to the Kirtland Safety Society.
Fourth, the history of the Kirtland Safety Society sheds light on some of the most important, but largely forgotten, constitutional debates. These include the debate over whether states have the power to charter banks to issue paper money or money substitutes like demand deposits when the Constitution expressly prohibits the states from issuing bills of credit, a form of paper money. Chief Justice Marshall and the Marshall Court tentatively answered no, but before the Court could make that view the supreme law of the land, Chief Justice Marshall and two other Justices died or resigned. The Justices who replaced them, including Chief Justice Roger Taney, decisively answered yes, showing how the composition of the Supreme Court can affect how a particular legal issue is resolved for hundreds of years.
notes
1 © 2024 Randall D. Guynn. Guynn has been the head or chairman of the Financial Institutions Group at Davis Polk & Wardwell since 1994. He was one of the leading banking lawyers during the global financial crisis of 2008 and the regional banking crisis of spring 2023. He is the author of numerous publications on a wide variety of banking law and public policy issues, including “Are Bailouts Inevitable?” 29 Yale J. Reg. 121 (2012); Bank Resolution and Crisis Management: Law and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2016); and “Resolution of US Banks and Other Financial Institutions,” in Debt Restructuring 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022). Prior to joining Davis Polk, Guynn was a law clerk to Justice William H. Rehnquist of the US Supreme Court.
2 Heber C. Kimball, “Emigration—The Saints Warned to Repent or Judgments Will Come upon Them,” Journal of Discourses 4 (1857): 108.
3 Ronald K. Esplin, “Joseph Smith and the Kirtland Crisis, 1837,” Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2010), 262.
4 I have used the production worker compensation to find the relative value of $1,000 from 1837 in 2022. See Samuel H. Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a US Dollar Amount, 1790 to Present,” MeasuringWorth, accessed July 3, 2024, measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/.
5 Doctrine and Covenants 29:7; see also Doctrine and Covenants 45:66.
6 Wilford Woodruff, in Conference Report of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1898, 57.
7 See Doctrine and Covenants 88:119.
8 See Willis Thornton, “Gentile and Saint at Kirtland,” Ohio History 63, no. 1 (January 1954): 25.
9 I have used the construction costs for 1837 and 2022 as the most relevant comparison. See Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute.”
10 See “Mortgage to Mead, Stafford & Co., 11 July 1837,” in The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 5: October 1835–January 1838, ed. Brent M. Rogers et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2017), 404–410.
11 Warren Farr Parrish, letter to the editor, Painesville Republican, Feb. 15, 1838.
12 Wilford Woodruff, journal entry dated Jan. 6, 1837, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal (December 29, 1833–January 3, 1838) , digital reproduction of original manuscript, Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/p/B82.
13 Parrish, letter to the editor; see also Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 339–340.
14 For example, the charter of the Miami Exporting Company, the first company to be chartered as a bank in Ohio, was enacted by the Ohio legislature as Act of April 5, 1803; see Acts of the First Session of the First General Assembly of the State of Ohio, vol. 1 (Norwalk, OH: N. Willis, 1803), 126–136.
15 See Benjamin Franklin, “The Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency, 3 April 1729,” in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 1: January 6, 1706 through December 31, 1734, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 139–157.
16 See “Constitution of the Kirtland Society Bank,” Art. I (Nov. 2, 1836), in The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 5, 304; see also “Articles of Agreement for the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company,” Art. I (Jan. 2, 1837), in The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Volume 5, 326.
17 This statement is supported by data on maximum capital in all of the statutory banking charters issued by the State of Ohio between 1803 and 1836. The average maximum capital in those charters was $254,000. Copies of these statutory banking charters are available in published acts of the General Assembly of the State of Ohio or from the author upon request.
18 Lawrence H. White and George Selgin refer to unchartered banking as “free banking,” especially when referring to unchartered banking in Great Britain. See, e.g., Lawrence H. White, Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, and Debate, 1800–1845 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); George A. Selgin, The Theory of Free Banking: Money Supply Under Competitive Note Issue (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988). I invented the term common-law banks to avoid confusing unchartered banks that issue paper money pursuant to the common-law right to do so from US banks chartered between 1838 and the 1860s under state laws known as the free banking laws. Those laws were enabling statutes that allowed anyone to charter a bank if they satisfied the conditions of the relevant enabling statute without the need for a special act of the relevant state legislature.
19 Act of January 27, 1816, Acts of the First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, vol. 14 (Chillicothe, OH: Nushee and Denny, 1816), 904–905.
20 See Jeffrey N. Walker, “The Kirtland Safety Society and the Fraud of Grandison Newell: A Legal Examination,” byu Studies Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2015): 33–148.
21 “A New Revolution—Morman Money,” Painesville Telegraph, Jan. 20, 1837. Originally printed in the Cleveland Weekly Gazette, Jan. 18, 1837.
22 See Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed [sic], (1834).
23 See “Anti-Banking Company,” Painesville Republican, Jan. 19, 1837.
24 Amendment 9, US Constitution
25 Amendment 10, US Constitution
26 See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Money Stock Measures – H.6 Release,” Aug. 27, 2024, federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current /default.htm. The vast majority of the money in the United States consists of M1 and M2 money, which are defined as demand deposits and other shortterm claims against commercial banks and money market funds, and not the monetary base, which consists of physical currency and deposit claims against a Federal Reserve bank.
27 See Peter L. Rousseau, “Jacksonian Monetary Policy, Specie Flows, and the Panic of 1837,” Journal of Economic History 62, no. 2 (Jun. 2002), 457–488.
28 Alasdair Roberts, America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder After the Panic of 1837 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2012).
29 “[Grandison Newell] used to drive about the country and buy up all the Mormon money possible, and the next morning go to the bank and obtain the specie. When they stopped payment, he prosecuted them and closed the bank.” James Thompson, Statement, in Naked Truths about Mormonism, vol. 1 (April 1888), ed. Arthur B. Deming (Oakland, California: Deming and Co., 1888), 3.
30 See It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra (Los Angeles: rko Pictures, 1946), dvd
31 Office of the Inspector General, “Material Loss Review of Silicon Valley Bank,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Sept. 25, 2023, 15.
32 See Walker, “The Kirtland Safety Society,” 74–79, 85–92; Act of January 27, 1816, § 5, Acts of the First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, vol. 14, 904.
33 United States Constitution, art. 1, sec. 10, cl. 1.
34 Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. (4 Pet.) 410, 433 (1830).
35 Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. at 436.
36 Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. at 455 (McLean, J., dissenting).
37 Briscoe v. Commonwealth’s Bank of Kentucky, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 118 (1834).
38 Briscoe v. Bank of Commonwealth of Kentucky, 36 U.S. (11 Pet.) 257, 328–329 (1837) (Story, J., dissenting).
39 Briscoe v. Bank of Commonwealth of Kentucky, 36 U.S. at 327.
40 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism and Other Poems (New York: Maynard, Merrill, and Co., 1898), 13, lines 215–218. I am indebted to Richard Turley for bringing to my attention the lines of this poem after the most famous one in line 215.
By David Blankenhorn PRESIDENT OF BRAVER ANGELS
David Blankenhorn is the president of Braver Angels, a national citizens’ group working for less rancor and more goodwill in American politics and society. This article is adapted from remarks he delivered at the 22nd Annual Rex E. Lee Advocacy Award Luncheon on May 17, 2024.
In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do.1
—bertolt brecht
MARYSIA MACHULSKA
or this 22nd gathering of distinguished leaders in law, following the public advocacy traditions of Rex Lee and Reuben Clark, and with admiration for this year’s honoree, Professor Irving Gornstein, I would like to share with you some thoughts on the topic of hope in dark times.
The times we live in seem palpably dark. But what precisely dark times? What does living in a dark time mean for those of us in this room? Finally, what does hope have to do with it?
KEEP TALKING
In her 1959 essay titled “On Humanity in Dark Times,” the great political philosopher Hannah Arendt explored the nature and causes of dark times in human history, defining They don’t stem from material circumstances but rather from a collapse of public discourse. In dark times, we can no longer communicate effectively with our fellow citizens in public spaces about how we can live together as people who have something in common. The result is that we feel overcome by what Arendt calls “weird irreality”—a disorientation or social vertigo that occurs whenever human relations degenerate into “absolute wordlessness” and people do not feel connected to or obligated to others by virtue of a common humanity.3
Arendt distinguishes between fraternity—that feeling of sisterhood and brotherhood which is private and intimate—and civic friendship, which is concerned with commonality and is defined by public discourse. Such discourse, Arendt insists, is nothing less than the lifeblood of a viable political community. And what’s more, it helps to define our humanity. Here is how Arendt puts it:
[T]he world is not humane just because it is made by human beings, and it does not become humane just because the human voice sounds in it, but only when it has become the object of discourse. However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. .
The Greeks called this humanness which is achieved in the discourse of friendship philanthropia, “love of man,” since it manifests itself in a readiness to share the world with [others]. 4
President Abraham Lincoln knew this. He knew that saving the Union ultimately depended on what he called “bonds of affection.”5 On the eve of the civil war he sought to avert, Lincoln told the people of the South in his first inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies”; and he lamented, “I am loath to close,”6 because he knew that peace depended on keeping the conversation going. Democracy is government by talk, and when conversation ends, the only thing left to advance an argument is force.
My friend Judge Thomas B. Griffith, a former honoree of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, also knows this. In his essay “Heroes of Unity,” he tells us that “our greatest gift to a divided nation in this present moment of peril” consists of “strengthening the bonds of affection that are a necessary precondition for constitutional government.”7 What happens to nations in which civic friendship has weakened and decayed, where social trust has evaporated, and where the collapse of public discourse has dragged citizens into “weird irreality”? Arendt knew exactly what happens. No longer willing participants in the civic discourse of friendship, people separate into identity groups, often based on real or perceived shared grievances, with each group pitted against the others.
A second and related result is a refusal to compromise. In dark times, we lose the willingness and even the capacity to accommodate others for the sake of unity. Friendship is a primary rationale for compromise. In that sense, friendship is prior to accommodation; it is not its result.
Let’s sum up. Dark times result not from problems themselves but from the failure of discourse. Meaningful public discourse requires and presupposes bonds of affection. In
dark times, when the discourse of friendship fades away, opponents become enemies, and compromise for the sake of unity becomes weakness.
STAND IN THE GAP
Does any of this sound familiar to the issues we face today? I suspect that it does. What can we do? The answer is clear to me. All I need to do is look at the people in this room. In these dark times, you are doing what needs to be done. You are emulating the example of our honoree in advocating for justice, and you are magnifying the light Rex Lee and J. Reuben Clark provided for the legal profession by standing up for the rule of law. This is both foundational to our American experiment and essential to ordered liberty—one of the chief casualties of dark times. What a precious inheritance that we are a government of laws, not men, and that our laws are intended to be publicly promulgated, fairly applied, independently adjudicated, equally enforced, and consistent with human rights.
In these dark times, when many countries around the world, arguably including our own, are experiencing the rise of thuggishness and the allure of rule by strongmen, you are standing in the gap, protecting as best as you can what is most important. That is why the mission of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society is “to promote fairness and virtue founded upon the rule of law.”8 Bless you for that.
You also know, as Arendt reminded us generations ago, that civic friendship—the caring for one another that is strong enough to unite us despite fundamental disagreements—is essential to our republican form of government and our American way of life. In a monarchy, the king rules. In a republic, we rule ourselves. For this reason, self-government, more than any other way of living together, requires that we care for each other.
WORK IN HOPE
My favorite movie is Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In fact, I invite us to consider the possibility that all questions about American ideals are answered
Civic friendship—the caring for one another that is strong enough to unite us despite fundamental disagreements— is essential to our republican form of government and our American way of life.
in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The movie’s hero, Jefferson Smith, says that what seem to be lost causes are still worth fighting for and that he fights for them “for the only reason any man ever fights for them—because of just one plain, simple rule: ‘Love thy neighbor. ’”9 You in this room know this rule. You know what it means for our country. It’s why you stand for this rule even when the cause seems lost—and perhaps especially when the cause seems lost. Which brings us, finally, to hope.
In my faith tradition, and perhaps in yours, hope is a gift from God. The Czech writer and political leader Václav Havel speaks beautifully of hope. He distinguishes it from optimism, which he has less use for. For Havel, optimism is believing that what you are doing is likely to turn out well; hope is believing that what you are doing needs to be done regardless of how it turns out.10
Havel lived and struggled most of his life in dark times. Living under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, he was frequently arrested and prevented from working as a playwright. Havel once wrote a letter to the country’s general secretary explaining why communism was a violation of the human need for truth and why the general secretary, the supreme leader, should resign.11 Havel put the letter in an envelope and mailed it. He did not get a reply. Amazingly, things ultimately turned out well. The Velvet Revolution of 1989 overturned Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, and Havel went from being a hounded, unemployed playwright to the widely acclaimed president of the new Czech Republic. But Havel did not work in optimism. He worked in hope. And perhaps that was the key to how things turned out.
Where does hope come from? I love Havel’s answer to this question:
I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.12
Hope comes not from reading the tea leaves, not from calculating the odds, not from trying to predict the future, not from discerning the observable circumstances. From elsewhere. But for our purpose, on this day and in this room, perhaps Havel does not get it quite right. Perhaps today hope does not come from elsewhere. Perhaps today it comes from you.
notes
1 Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity,” Selected Poems, translated by H. R. Hays (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1947), 175.
2 See Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts About Lessing,” address delivered in 1959, trans. Clara Winston and Richard Winston, in Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 3–31.
3 Arendt, “On Humanity,” 16.
4 Arendt, “On Humanity,” 24–25.
5 Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address,” address delivered at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, March 4, 1861.
6 Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address.”
7 Thomas B. Griffith, “Heroes of Unity,” address delivered at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Annual Fireside, January 19, 2018, in Clark Memorandum, Fall 2018, 11; see also Thomas B. Griffith, “Civic Charity and the Constitution,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 43, no. 3 (Summer 2020), 633–644.
8 Mission of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society.
9 “Jefferson’s Filibuster,” Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, directed by Frank Capra (Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures, 1939), dvd. See also Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39.
10 See Václav Havel, “The Politics of Hope,” Disturbing the Peace, trans. Paul Wilson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 181–182.
11 See Vá clav Havel, “Dear Dr. Husák,” letter to Gustav Husák, April 1975, in Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965–1990, ed. Paul Wilson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 50–83.
12 Havel, “The Politics of Hope,” 181–182.
byu Law Visiting Professor and Research Fellow
This article is adapted from remarks delivered at the J. Reuben Clark Society’s annual Women in Law Seminar on October 2, 2024.
JANE MITCHELL
PORTRAIT BY BRADLEY SLADE
welve years ago, I started a nonprofit. We were engaged in some exciting prisonreform work, and to my surprise, the company attracted a lot of attention and made national headlines.
But something happened to me as I served as ceo. I had previously been a fairly humble, loving person. Yet as the person in charge of this reform effort, I started to become more distanced from others, more hard-hearted, and more selfish. It didn’t happen overnight, but over time I started to become more prideful.
I knew in advance that this might happen to me. I was very familiar with the verse in Doctrine and Covenants 121 in which the Lord warns Joseph Smith, “It is the nature and disposition of almost all men [and women], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”1 I knew about the tendency for leaders to become self-absorbed as they assumed leadership positions. And yet I still fell prey to it. This experience led me to wonder how this happens: Why do people become more prideful and selfish as they assume positions of leadership? The answer may be obvious to you. But it was a fascinating experience for me to live the answer. And here is what I discovered.
THE POWER OF ENVIRONMENT
As a person moves up the ladder in an organization’s hierarchy, their environment entices them to think new thoughts about their relative worth. In most workplaces, the ceo is seen as more important than other employees—her work is usually more consequential for the organization, her decisions bear more sway, and her time is often considered more precious. The ceo’s environment communicates to her that she is more valuable and of greater worth than other workers. Over time, she unconsciously or consciously accepts these selfpromoting messages; instead of contesting or interrogating them, she inhales them. Hubris triggers changes in processing, and the once-humble leader starts to behave more selfishly, as Doctrine and Covenants 121 predicts.
I’ll juxtapose that experience with a story from another season of my life.
When I was 14, my family moved from our home in Europe, where I’d grown up, to Wisconsin. This move was exceptionally difficult for me. No one in the eighth grade in our middle school seemed to understand me. People called me a loser. I didn’t fit in. I missed Europe terribly. I soon began manifesting symptoms of depression and felt miserable about life.
I had been a well-adjusted, confident girl who was friends with nearly everyone. But all of that changed with this move. My new environment was enticing me to think different thoughts: It was signaling that people didn’t want to be around me, that I didn’t belong, and that I didn’t amount to much. Instead of disregarding those messages, I accepted them and started feeling terrible about myself.
In these contrasting examples from my life, my environment was enticing me to think different things about myself. My problem in both instances was that I took in the thoughts about myself that my environment fed me. Instead of questioning whether those messages and thoughts were really true, I internalized them and accepted them. I let my environment act upon me and my mind instead of using my mind to act upon my environment.
Today I’d like to talk about our thoughts—and how we can become masters of our thoughts. I realize that this is a very ambitious topic. I readily admit that I don’t consider myself a total master of my mind, though I have made a lot of progress over the years. My hope is to share with you a few insights that can help you in your journey to master your own psyche. I believe this is especially relevant for those who want to do good in the world as lawyer-leaders.
LAW SCHOOL THINKING
What are thoughts, and how do we become masters of our thoughts? Our scientific understanding of thought is still developing. Generally, the terms thoughts or thinking are used to describe a large variety of psychological activities.2 There is deliberate thought, the type we rely on when making judgments, reasoning, problem-solving, or studying. And there is reflexive thought, which feels more automatic and less willed.3 Some philosophers and religions also refer to a “monkey mind,” the scattered, restless, wandering thoughts that frequently distract us. 4 These are the thoughts we have a hard time controlling.
Legal education inevitably shapes all of these types of thinking. Law school sharpens our deliberate thought processes: We learn to reason more clearly, to distinguish more carefully, and to analyze more precisely. We learn to consider issues from a range of perspectives and to problem-solve accordingly.
Law school also affects our monkey minds. As I experienced as an eighth grader and later as a nonprofit leader, the context we find ourselves in entices us to think particular things about ourselves and the world around us—and law school is no exception. You may have been tempted to equate your worth or intelligence with where you fell on the curve or with how quickly you lined up a job or with how prestigious of a work opportunity you landed. No matter where you attended law school, that environment will have subtly enticed you to think differently about the world.
CHRISTLIKE THINKING
So how do we deal with this? How do we overcome the messages that press upon us from our environments? How can we master our thoughts, especially those fed to us from our context and culture?
The Savior gives us the answer during the Sermon on the Mount. He warns against what He calls “taking thought.” When it comes to the many natural-man thoughts that bounce around in our brains, Christ’s counsel is to avoid taking those thoughts. Listen to how He uses this phrase repeatedly in Matthew 6:
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink. . . . Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. . . .
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? .
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.5
“Take no thought”—that’s the phrase that appears here in Matthew 6. Christ uses the same phrase in 3 Nephi, in the Doctrine and Covenants, and in several other places in the New Testament.6 So what exactly does Christ mean here? Let’s unpack it a little.
Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t plan for the future or be intentional about
making sure we have sufficient food to eat or appropriate clothes to wear. His teachings elsewhere underscore that that is not what He means. As Elder D. Todd Christofferson put it, we are to pursue a “wise and prudent course in life, [which includes] thinking and planning ahead.”7
He is also not saying we shouldn’t use deliberate thought. God has blessed us with a mind so that we might use it, to worship Him and serve others. The first and second great commandments include loving God and our fellow man with all our minds. 8 The Lord explicitly encourages us to study things out in our minds 9 and to “reason together.” 10 He is not saying here in Matthew 6, “Never think.”
He also isn’t saying have no thought for your life, or never let a single thought enter your mind about what you’ll wear, eat, or drink. He’s not asking us to repress all thoughts about our stature, or to not have a monkey mind. He knows we are fallen humans with a carnal mind built into our very natures.
What He is counseling us to do here is to not take those thoughts—to not attach to them, to not take them as our own. For example, if you have a judgmental thought cross your mind about the person sitting next to you, that’s okay. Christ doesn’t condemn you for the fact that that thought crossed your mind. What He warns against is taking that judgmental thought—picking it up, carrying it with you, owning it, and identifying with it.
For me, this difference between having a thought and taking a thought makes all the difference. Because I can learn, in time, to control which thoughts I take . My culture, context, and lived experiences affect which thoughts enter my mind, but I have more say in which ones I take. My problem as an eighth grader wasn’t that my environment was telling me I was worthless. My problem was that I took in those thoughts. I made them my own. I did the same when I was a ceo. I took the thoughts that told me I was better than others because of my success and position in a hierarchy. That’s the moment when leaders become prideful— when they take in these thoughts.
This concept is reinforced in Proverbs 23: “For as [a man] thinketh in his heart,
so is he.”11 Notice that the scripture doesn’t say, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” No. Instead, it says, “As a man thinketh in his heart.” What matters are the thoughts you take into your heart and you identify with—the ones you pay attention to.
Learning to not take in these thoughts requires time, and it’s easier said than done. Today I want to offer four concrete suggestions for how to get better at taking no thought for the idle, light-minded, self-focused thoughts that enter our minds. As you get better at this skill, you will be a more effective advocate. You will free up your mind to concentrate more on things that matter. You will be empowered to use your mind more to love God and be a blessing to humanity.
1 Notice Thoughts
First, learn to observe your thoughts nonjudgmentally. Start noticing your thoughts without attaching to them. Notice the voice or voices in your head. This seemingly involuntary voice, as philosopher Eckhart Tolle says,
comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. . . . Sometimes [its] soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.”12
This voice is often conditioned by your environment and your upbringing. Listen to these voices as an outside observer might. “Be there as the witnessing presence,” Tolle explains. “Do not judge or condemn what you hear.”13 As you do, you will realize that the voice in your head is not who you are. You will begin to separate yourself from your monkey mind, and you will start building the muscle of deciding which thoughts you take. Learning to continually observe your monkey-mind thoughts and to refocus on what’s immediately in front of you is the first step to becoming a master of your thoughts.
2 Repent Daily
Second, repent daily for taking thoughts that aren’t aligned with Christ’s truth. Doctrine and Covenants 88 explains,
If your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things.
Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God.14
Wouldn’t it be amazing to be filled with light and to comprehend everything?! The verse tells us how to get there: have your eye be single to God’s glory. Well, what does that mean? A few sections later, the Lord tells us that “the glory of God is . . . light and truth.”15 So put these two passages together, and you get this: When our mind’s eye is entirely aligned with eternal truth, we will be filled with light and comprehension. Daily repentance is the key to whittling away our natural-man mental tendencies until we become completely aligned with God’s truths and subsequently filled with light.
Our prophets in recent years have emphasized that daily repentance is a joyful process. It doesn’t need to be complicated or shaming. It simply involves genuinely turning your heart to Christ. If you’re anything like me, over the course of an ordinary day you will slip into taking thoughts that aren’t aligned with truth. These might include thoughts that are judgmental of others, thoughts that compare yourself to others, thoughts that position yourself either above or beneath others, or thoughts that rely too much on the arm of flesh instead of the arm of God.16 In my experience, I’ve found my heart can’t be completely filled with light unless I frequently repent of the thoughts I’ve taken in that were distortions—even slight permutations—of truth.
By daily returning your heart and mind to God, in faith, you’ll find increased ability to let go of thoughts you attached to that weren’t aligned with eternal truth. I have found that
daily repentance for “taking thoughts” you shouldn’t take is the greatest protection against the enticing, distorted messages sent to you from your environment.
If you’re anything like me, you would love this repentance process to happen overnight—one-and-done, never to struggle with taking in untrue thoughts ever again. But we know that’s not how it works. In the field of criminal justice, we often talk about recidivism rates—the rate at which people leaving prison reoffend once they’re in the community and are sent back to prison. I’ve spent much of my professional career looking for ways to reduce recidivism rates, and I designed a program for offenders that was intended to cut recidivism rates in half. One day, I was struck when a friend of mine who spent time in prison told me, “Jane, recidivism is natural.” It is in our natures to reoffend and end up back in prison after we’ve been released, to trip up and slip up again and again in our work to get better.
I’ve come to see that it’s that way with our thoughts too. The process of changing our minds to be consistently focused on the glory of God instead of ourselves is an incremental journey, one with gradual progress and lots of repeated mistakes. You’ll make progress with your thoughts, and then after a while you’ll probably slip into old ways of thinking. You’ll try again, make some progress, and then relapse. That’s why we need daily repentance. Gradually, the frequency, duration, and intensity of your old thought patterns will lessen, and you will start carving new channels in your brain for more truthful thoughts. If you repeatedly realign your thoughts with Christ’s truths, you will eventually come to have your eye single to God’s glory and be filled with light.17
Elder David A. Bednar provides a helpful visual to illustrate this gradual process. Imagine that your mind is filled, as he says,
with dark, dirty sand. If we insert a single clean, pure grain of sand in one end, then a single dark grain of sand is forced out the other end. Has anything changed? Yes, but not in a dramatic or easily visible way. As we faithfully and consistently strive to eliminate the [dark] sand, then eventually, the container is filled with only clean, pure sand.18
It takes time to change your thought patterns, but both social science19 and Christ’s gospel emphatically assert that it is very possible. Genuine daily repentance will accelerate that change process for you.20
3 Interrogate Thoughts
Third, have some process for interrogating and working through particularly pernicious thought patterns you attach to. Most people in the world have a handful of “negative core beliefs” they attach to:
They are [specific, repetitive] thoughts that are deeply ingrained in our psyche, often
formed in our [childhood] , which typically hold very little truth value. When these thoughts remain unconscious, however, they have a lot of power over us. . . When we hold these beliefs up to the light of day, their power starts to dissolve.21
Practice using some tools in your toolkit that can help you with these negative beliefs. One approach recommends using pen and paper to write down your stressful thoughts, nonjudgmentally interrogate those thoughts, and then write out your honest responses to a set of questions like these: Are these thoughts true? How do I react when I think
these thoughts? Who would I be without these thoughts? And what is the real truth here?22
Virginia Pearce, daughter of President Gordon B. Hinckley, encourages interrogating your pernicious thoughts with gospeloriented questions: “Whose mission does this belief support—Christ’s or Satan’s?” “Is there doctrine that would be pertinent to understanding the truth or falsehood of this belief?” “What are the fruits of this thought pattern?” “Can I make a decision about what I will and will not believe?” 23 There are many varieties out there like these, but generally they involve some sitting down and directly interrogating or confronting the thoughts you’ve consciously or unconsciously taken hold of.
As you engage in this process of inner inquiry, you may discover, as author Byron Katie put it, that “behind every [stressful] feeling, there’s a thought that isn’t true.”24 If I’m feeling particularly unsettled or stressed about a situation, it’s a helpful cue—a signal—that I’ve attached to or taken in an untrue thought. I can then sit down and disentangle myself from those untrue thoughts by interrogating them and uncovering the truth. When you discover the truth, you will find, as it says in John, that “the truth will set you free”25 —and you will be filled with light.
4 Consider Meditation
My final suggestion is to give meditation a try. I wasn’t familiar with meditation until halfway through law school. At one point in my legal education, I was feeling some anxiety and couldn’t figure out how to deal with it. I fasted one Sunday about what to do, and my answer was “go learn to meditate.” I ended up studying privately for several years with a Buddhist guru named Yuri Dhara. My anxiety disappeared within two weeks of starting a daily meditation practice. What is meditation? I think of it as a spiritual practice that helps me keep my mind centered on the present and focused on my Savior. Dhara defines meditation as “the space between thoughts.”26 Particularly for those of us who struggle with an “incessant stream of thinking”27 or who have become “possessed by thought,” 28 meditation can help us stop and create more space between thoughts. This space between thoughts can
allow our divinity, our identities that matter,29 and our good judgment (our deliberate thinking) to come out more clearly—uncluttered by the natural-man mind.
Meditation may not be for everyone, but there is sufficient evidence from social science to suggest it offers a host of benefits for the average person. Empirical studies find that meditation improves your immune system, sleep quality, and heart health.30 It is effective in preventing and treating depression and anxiety.31 It has also been proven to make people more productive: Meditators have an easier time staying focused, prioritizing, problem-solving, and handling stress. Long-term meditators benefit from having an improved ability to learn, a sharper memory, and better concentration.32 I found that my ability to discern between my own thoughts and those from the Spirit significantly increased after I started meditating. Meditating can help you hear the Spirit more clearly.
There are many ways to meditate. Some approaches ask you to maintain mental focus on a certain sensation, like the breath, a sound, an image, or a mantra (which is a repeated word or phrase). I’ll teach you a simple mantra meditation as a starting point for beginners. Pick a word that doesn’t conjure up any associations for you—perhaps something from another language. Let’s use sukha. When you have a quiet moment, sit down, close your eyes, check in with your body, and then repeat that word silently in your mind, over and over: sukha, sukha, sukha, sukha, sukha. Concentrate on just repeating that word in your mind, at whatever pace feels natural for your brain. When you notice your mind wandering or thinking about anything, gently bring it back to your mantra. Ideally, do this for 20 minutes every morning while sitting comfortably in a quiet place without distractions—but even 5 or 10 minutes while walking, standing, or sitting can help. As you meditate, you’ll start to see that your ability to keep your mind focused on what is happening in the present is strengthened. You’ll be able to notice your natural-man mind more easily and to separate yourself from those thoughts. Just like a 20-minute physical workout makes your body feel better all day, a 20-minute mental workout like this can help your mind be more focused all throughout the day.
Note that the point of meditation isn’t to keep your attention perfectly focused on your mantra. The purpose is to practice returning—to practice bringing your attention back when your mind wanders. By gently refocusing your attention on your mantra each time your mind wanders, you build the muscle of returning to the present moment.
LIVING IN THE PRESENT
Prophetic teachings suggest that Christ wants you to live in the present.33 I find it interesting that one of the Savior’s many names is “the Great I Am.”34 I Am. That’s the verb to be, used in the first-person, present tense. By using that name, Christ associates Himself with the present. In my experience, I’ve found that I don’t truly experience Christ if my mind is living in the future or the past. If I’m dwelling in the future too much, there is usually some small part of me that is doubting Christ’s ability to be there for me in some future moment. I’m forgetting that He can deliver me from any situation, whatever the future holds. Similarly, when my mind is too preoccupied with the past, ruminating over some previous mistake or lost opportunity, there’s again some part of me that isn’t fully embracing my Savior’s Atonement. Perhaps I haven’t given Him some part of my past that needs to be healed, repented of, or consecrated for His purposes.
The present is where we access Christ. If you find yourself taking too much thought about the past or future, make sure you are fully giving Christ that past and future. Let Him free you so that you can live more fully in the present—because that is where you will find love and joy. As Dhara puts it, “when you live in the future, you experience fear and anxiety. When you live in the past, you experience pain and sorrow. When you live in the present, you experience love and joy.”35
Lehi’s vision of the tree of life reinforces this teaching. To feel the love of God, you need to be at the foot of the tree, partaking of the fruit.36 Our mind’s tendency to drift elsewhere can prevent us from staying at the foot of the tree. Isn’t it interesting that Nephi describes the large and spacious building as being the “vain imaginations and the pride of the children
of men”?37 What a telling phrase: vain imaginations . Useless, self-centered thoughts that Jesus warns us not to “take.” When we let our minds dwell on vain imaginations, we’re very much like a large and spacious building—high up in the air, perhaps thinking that we’re better or worse than others, not at all grounded in reality. You can’t experience or share God’s love when you’re in vainimagination land. The tree, meanwhile, is on the ground, rooted in reality. That’s where real joy and love are found.
So when you find yourself taking in a vain imagination, worrying about your future, gently bring yourself back to the Savior. Just like with meditation and daily repentance, the point isn’t to never set foot into that spacious building or have a wandering thought; the point is to return, to come back to your mantra—to come back to the Savior. Notice when your mind has meandered off into vain imaginations, and gently bring your attention back to be grounded in the reality of Christ’s love for you and for all mankind.
The world needs inspired, articulate lawyer-leaders who are armed with the power of God. We need lawyers who do not surrender to their context but come to master it. We need lawyers who can overcome the messages their environment feeds them and “think celestial.”38 We need lawyers who don’t take in every thought that crosses their minds but instead see things with an eye single to God’s glory. That is what the world needs. That will make an enormous difference. So if you haven’t already, embark on a quest to become a master of your thoughts. In the process, expect to find yourself transformed—to become happier, more at peace, and more able to use your law degree to bless mankind.
notes
1 Doctrine and Covenants 121:39.
2 See Britannica, s.v. “thought,” last updated September 11, 2024, britannica.com/topic/thought.
3 See Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
4 “Monkey mind” is a Buddhist concept that has been taught in East Asia for more than 1,500 years.
5 Matthew 6:25, 27–28, 31, 34; emphasis added.
6 See 3 Nephi 13:25–34; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:22; Doctrine and Covenants 84:81–85.
7 D. Todd Christofferson, “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, ” BYU fireside address, January 9, 2011, speeches.byu.edu/talks/d-todd-christofferson/give -us-this-day-our-daily-bread/.
8 The original passage in Deuteronomy 6 did not include the word mind, but Christ added it in Matthew 22:37–38. “Mind occurs in all three versions of this commandment in the Gospels. What is more, mind also appears in similar formulations found in modern revelation. There are at least ten more such instances in Latter-day Saint scripture containing similar lists that include mind .” John S. Tanner, “A Gospel Ground for Education: An Academic Credo,” Faith and Scholarship Symposium address, February 16, 2005, speeches.byu.edu/talks/john -s-tanner/a-gospel-ground-for-education-an -academic-credo/. See also Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:27; 2 Nephi 25:29; Mosiah 2:11; Alma 39:13; Moroni 10:32; Doctrine and Covenants 4:2, 11:20, 20:31, 33:7, 59:5, 98:47.
9 See Doctrine and Covenants 9:8.
10 Isaiah 1:18. See also 1 Samu el 12:7; Doctrine and Covenants 45:10, 15; 133:57.
11 Proverbs 23:7.
12 Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999), 17–18.
13 Tolle, The Power of Now, 18.
14 Doctrine and Covenants 88:67–68.
15 Doctrine and Covenants 93:36.
16 See Jeremiah 17:5; 2 Nephi 4:34; Doctrine and Covenants 1:19–20.
17 See Matthew 6:22; Luke 11:34; Doctrine and Covenants 88:67.
18 David A. Bednar, “Every person who has ever committed a sin—which is all of us—may wonder,” Facebook post, June 7, 2018, facebook.com/davida .bednar/photos/every-person-who-has-ever -committed-a-sinwhich-is-all-of-usmay-wonder-if -he-or-s/2087124071315323/. See also David A. Bednar in “Face to Face with Elder and Sister Bednar,” May 12, 2015, 23:59–26:09, churchofjesuschrist.org /study/video/face-to-face-events/2015-05-1000 -face-to-face-with-elder-and-sister-bednar.
19 “Habits of thinking need not be forever. . . . Individuals can choose the way they think.” Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 8.
20 “Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance. Repentance is not an event; it is a process. It is the key to happiness
and peace of mind.” Russell M. Nelson, “We Can Do Better and Be Better,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2019, 67.
21 Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive (New York: The Guilford Press, 2018), 123.
22 See Byron Katie, “The Work Is a Practice,” The Work of Byron Katie, accessed September 27, 2024, thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/.
23 Virginia H. Pearce, Through His Eyes: Rethinking What You Believe About Yourself (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 54–60.
24 Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (New York: Harmony Books, 2002), 6.
25 John 8:32, niv.
26 Yuri Dhara, “Introduction to Meditation,” presentation given at Tibet House US, February 5, 2013.
27 Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 22.
28 Tolle, A New Earth, 26.
29 See Russell M. Nelson, “Choices for Eternity,” worldwide devotional for young adults, May 15, 2022, churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts /worldwide-devotional-for-young-adults/2022 /05/12nelson.
30 See Sala Horowitz, “Health Benefits of Meditation: What the Newest Research Shows,” Alternative and Complementary Therapies 16, no. 4 (2010): 223–228. See also Christopher R. K. MacLean et al., “Effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Adaptive Mechanisms: Changes in Hormone Levels and Responses to Stress After 4 Months of Practice,” American Journal of Cardiology 22, no. 4 (1997): 277–295.
31 See Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), 212–242.
32 See Maria Gonzalez, Mindful Leadership: The 9 Ways to Self-Awareness, Transforming Yourself, and Inspiring Others (Mississauga, Canada: Wiley, 2012), 10.
33 “Thoughtful planning and preparation are key to a rewarding future, but we do not live in the future— we live in the present.” Christofferson, “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.”
34 Doctrine and Covenants 29:1, 38:1, 39:1. See also Exodus 3:14, John 8:58.
35 Dhara, “Introduction to Meditation.”
36 See 1 Nephi 8:2–35, 11:21–22.
37 1 Nephi 12:18.
38 Russell M. Nelson, “Think Celestial!” Liahona , November 2023, 117–120.
