Mormons and Beards

Boyd K. Packer

On one occasion when I went to the temple to perform a marriage I found one of the witnesses to be a young man, bearded, and with odd, hippie-type glasses. I felt uneasy. I did also a few days later at another marriage, when the groom wore a beard. Not that there is anything wrong with a beard-not in and of itself. Many of our leaders have worn them. Brigham Young wore a beard, and Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith, and George Albert Smith, to name a few. The thing that made me uneasy was just that it is another indication in our day. Here was an indication that this was a young man who apparently wanted to be in the world and to look like the world. It seems so strange to me that young men would come to the temple and in effect say, “We want to experience the most exalted and the highest ordinance in this life,” and yet at once insist on saying, “However, I am part of the world, and I want to be like the world and look like it.” To follow after the pattern of the world is to consent to influences that will erode and weaken and may ultimately destroy a marriage. It is extremely difficult to fight the world in the marriage relationship. So I worry, not about the beard but about what it means. It must mean something, you know. (The Things of the Soul, 226)

Harold B. Lee

Now may I make a personal reference, which I’ll try to treat in such a way as to preserve the confidentiality. It involved a beautiful, young wife and mother from a prominent family. She had gone away from her home and was now in the East. She had gone out into an area where she and her husband had taken up with those in the ghetto, and she wrote me a rather interesting letter, and I quote only a paragraph: "Tomorrow my husband will shave off his long, full beard. Because of the request of the stake president and your direction in the Priesthood Bulletin, he must not have the appearance of evil or rebellion if he is to get a recommend to go to the temple. I have wept anguished tears; the faces of Moses and Jacob were bearded, and to me the wisdom and spirituality of the old prophets reflected from the face of my own spiritual husband. It was like cutting out for me a symbol of the good things my generation has learned." Then the letter concluded with a challenge to me: "We are prepared for clear, specific, hard-line direction as youth. Wishy-washy implications are not heard very well here. We look to you to tell it straight."

I don’t know whether she knew just what she was asking for when she asked me to tell it straight, but these are some things I wrote to her: "In your letter you address me as, 'Dear President Lee,' and in your first sentence you refer to me as the Lord’s prophet. Now, in your letter you tell me that you are saddened because with the shaving off of the beard and the cutting of the hair, which, to you, made your husband appear as the prophets Moses and Jacob, he would no longer bear that resemblance. I wonder if you might not be wiser to think of following the appearance of the prophets of today. President David O. McKay had no beard or long hair; neither did President Joseph Fielding Smith; and neither does your humble servant whom you have acknowledged as the Lord’s prophet. The inconsistency in your letter has made me reflect upon an experience that I had in the mission field when, in company with some missionaries and the mission president, we were at Carthage Jail, where the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph and his brother, Hyrum, took place. In that meeting there were recounted the events that led up to their martyrdom. Then the mission president made some significant comments. He said, 'When the Prophet Joseph Smith died there were many who died spiritually with Joseph.' Likewise there were many who died spiritually with Brigham Young, and so with others of the presidents of the Church, because they chose to follow the man who had passed on, rather than giving allegiance to his successor upon whom the mantle of leadership had been given by the Lord’s appointment."

And then I asked her, "Are you following, in looks, prophets who lived hundreds of years ago? Are you really true to your faith as a member of the Church in failing to look to those who preside in the Church today? Why is it that you want your husband to look like Moses and Jacob, rather than to look like the modern prophets to whom you are expressing allegiance? If you will give this sober thought, your tears will dry, and you’ll begin to have some new thoughts." (“Be Loyal to the Royal Within You.” Speeches of the Year, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1974, pp. 97–98.)