The Life and Work of David O. McKay (feat. Brian Q. Cannon)

David O. McKay is one of the most famous presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But what about his writing and service make him, in the minds of many, the quintessential prophet? And how did his impact on the Church change its trajectory from previous generations?

BYU History Professor Brian Q. Cannon, author of the most recent biography of David O McKay, Building a Global Zion: The Life and Vision of David O McKay (Signature Press, 2025) discusses these very questions with host Nicholas Shrum on today's episode of Scholars & Saints. The two examine the various primary sources documenting McKay's life — including the Clare Middlemiss diaries, his navigation of 20th century politics and anti-Mormon sentiment as a missionary and apostle, and, particularly, McKay's expansion of the Church to new peoples around the globe and the transition away from an American Zion to an ethnically and regionally plural religion.

Brian Q. Cannon is the Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr., Chair in Western American History at Brigham Young University, where he focuses on the social history of rural communities in the American West.

Transcript

00;00;02;02 - 00;00;32;03

Nicholas Shrum

You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The UVA Mormon Studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up and coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism relevance to the broader study of religion, scholars, and saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

00;00;32;09 - 00;01;00;07

Nicholas Shrum

The podcast goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues in cutting edge methods in Mormon studies, and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the University of Virginia.

00;01;04;20 - 00;01;28;26

Nicholas Shrum

Today on the podcast, I am joined by Professor Brian Q cannon, a professor of history at Brigham Young University. We are talking about his recent biography of David McKay entitled Building a Global Zion The Life and Vision of David K, which was published in 2025 by Signature Books. Professor Cannon's biography of McKay is the most recent and comprehensive look at this really important life of a very influential church president.

00;01;28;28 - 00;01;54;02

Nicholas Shrum

President McKay was president of the church from 1951 to 1970, and before that he had decades of leadership experience, having been called as an apostle in 1906 with his church ministry encompassing most of the 20th century. President McKay was involved in or oversaw as church president many of the really important cultural and theological changes in the church. Probably the most important, as the title evokes, is the internationalization of the church.

00;01;54;03 - 00;02;19;05

Nicholas Shrum

Professor Cannon's biography dives deeply into the missionary travels of David O. McKay, including his 1921 to 1922 world tour, where he visited many places on the globe that LDS leaders had never been to. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Professor Brian Cannon.

00;02;19;08 - 00;02;48;07

Nicholas Shrum

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Scholars and Saints. The University of Virginia mormon studies podcast. Very honored and excited to have Brian Shannon on the podcast today. Doctor cannon is the Lemuel Hardison Red Junior Professor of Western American history at Brigham Young University. He's previously served as the director of the Charles Read Center for Western Studies at BYU, which he a position he held for 15 years, and has also served as chair of the history department at that institution as well.

00;02;48;09 - 00;03;15;12

Nicholas Shrum

Today, he's on the podcast to talk about his recently published book with Signature Books in 2025, entitled Building a Global Zion The Life and Vision of David Ohmic. Really excited to talk about this monumental figure in latter day Saint history from the 20th century, and Doctor Canon's new biography is sets a new standard in my estimation, for how Mormon studies biography is is done.

00;03;15;13 - 00;03;18;19

Nicholas Shrum

So really excited to have him on the podcast. Thank you for being here.

00;03;18;23 - 00;03;20;26

Brian Cannon

Oh, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

00;03;20;28 - 00;03;37;27

Nicholas Shrum

I'd love for you to to start off our conversation today, just talking to the audience a little bit about your background, whether that's your education, your research interests, kind of where where you've landed yourself as a historian and leading up to a biography of Mackay.

00;03;38;01 - 00;04;03;07

Brian Cannon

So I earned my bachelor's in American studies at BYU and then went on from there to Utah State University. And that drew me into Western American history, which is one of my fields. I worked on the staff of the Western Historical Quarterly, which was published at Utah State at the time and was the Western History Association editorial fellow.

00;04;03;09 - 00;04;35;29

Brian Cannon

So that pulled me really into the Western history orbit and also into the rural history orbit, because of the people I worked with. From there, I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I studied under Al Bogue there, distinguished Western American historian and historian of American agriculture and rural history. And so my study there cemented my interests in those areas and my expertise there.

00;04;36;02 - 00;05;24;13

Brian Cannon

Much of my work has been my scholarship has been in the field of rural and agricultural history. So my dissertation was a study of the New Deals World Resettlement Program, which involved taking farmers from submarginal dust bowl lands and trying to move them into middle class farm ownership status. In some planned rural communities, including some cooperative farms. I finished the dissertation and had the good fortune of being offered a job at Brigham Young University, and have been in the history department for the past 34 years there at Biu, and have left the experience there and the opportunity to teach excellent students there.

00;05;24;19 - 00;06;00;20

Brian Cannon

So I've I've done a fair amount of Western history, Utah history, in terms of Western history, I have at land rural history. I did a book on the homesteading program that was sponsored kind of by the Bureau of Reclamation during the post-World War II era, where veterans returning from the war could apply for homesteads, and they had a lottery system because the demand greatly exceeded the opportunities there.

00;06;00;22 - 00;06;39;24

Brian Cannon

So. So that was a fun thing to do. Then I coauthored with my former professor Charles Peterson, a history of Utah from statehood in 1896 up until the end of World War two, called the awkward state of Utah coming of age in the nation. While I was at the Red center, I had the opportunity to co-edited with Jesse Embree several volumes on different Western history topics one on immigration, another on reconstruction as it relates to to Mormonism.

00;06;39;26 - 00;06;59;29

Brian Cannon

And I've served in a variety of professional organizations with the Agricultural History Society, with the Mormon History Association, with the Western History Association. So those are my main institutional homes outside of BYU. So that's a bit about me.

00;07;00;08 - 00;07;37;22

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. As listeners can tell, Doctor Cannon is well situated to write a biography and good biography is is well contextualized, is able to place an individual well within their context. And for David McKay, who's president of the church from 1951 to 1970 or early 50s to to 1970. Doctor Cannon's research and interest in the books that he's published on the articles situate him well to be able to speak to those moments that David lived through.

00;07;37;23 - 00;08;00;11

Nicholas Shrum

And I just have to add that Doctor Cannon taught one of my favorite history courses at BYU when I was there. Also, an American Studies grad. I think you're the first American Studies BYU grad that I've had on the podcast. So that's that's awesome. But loved I've loved Doctor Cannon's work, and so I was excited to have him on the podcast.

00;08;00;13 - 00;08;09;12

Nicholas Shrum

Doctor Ken, what led you to want to or what led you to writing a biography of David and whether you wanted to or not?

00;08;09;14 - 00;08;45;11

Brian Cannon

So I have to be honest that the, the, the crucial catalyst was an invitation from Gary Berger at Signature Books to write a biography. But I had been fascinated ever since I heard of the Clara middlemiss record. Middlemiss was the secretary for David O. McKay for decades and compiled a diary of sorts. It's a tricky record because it's not all first person dictation, but it's a very rich, voluminous record, and I've been intrigued by that.

00;08;45;11 - 00;09;19;04

Brian Cannon

And by that, that time period when David K served as particularly as prophet of the church. So the richness of the record drew me in. And then McKay was the prophet of my childhood. I mean, I was relatively young when he passed away, but I do remember him. And for my parents, for my aunts and my uncles and lots of the people who I trained with and worked with seminary teachers and so forth, professors.

00;09;19;04 - 00;09;36;21

Brian Cannon

Over time, he had been the quintessential prophet for them also. So he represented what it meant in the Latter day Saint tradition to be a prophet for so many people. And so I wanted to I was intrigued by that and wanted to know more about about that and understand that.

00;09;36;22 - 00;09;56;02

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah. I'm glad that you bring up the Middlemiss diary or records. I'm actually wondering if you could clarify for listeners that might an actually for myself, I've, I've gotten into them as well with some of my research looking at kind of Alvin Dyer, who's the life you in relation to David Omega? I think you describe really, really well.

00;09;56;03 - 00;10;04;23

Nicholas Shrum

Can you kind of talk about the nature of that really important source base? So when you say it's kind of a tricky record, what what all goes into that?

00;10;04;26 - 00;10;37;03

Brian Cannon

Yeah. So I mean, McKay was a very good journalist. So he kept a wonderful mission diary. And then on his world tour as an apostle, he also kept a daily record. After his call as an apostle in 1906. He did write some things, but not nearly as much as he wanted to write. He left space in his planner or day book to to write about his call as an apostle, and never got around to writing about that.

00;10;37;03 - 00;11;04;27

Brian Cannon

For instance, for some years all that we have is these day books, and in some cases they're fairly detailed. In other cases, it's just really an appointment book and very little else. So after his call to the First Presidency, he did begin keeping a more careful record, but not nearly as rich as his mission diary had been. Soon after his call, Clara middlemiss became his secretary.

00;11;04;28 - 00;11;32;24

Brian Cannon

She was working elsewhere in the church administration building, and she within a of his diary. In some cases this meant that he dictated material to her, and she incorporated that in the diary. But she had access, of course, as his secretary, to all of his appointment books, and she had access to the minutes of meetings in which he participated.

00;11;32;26 - 00;12;14;13

Brian Cannon

And she would also quiz people casually as they left his office about, oh, did you have a good experience? And sometimes they would share things that they had learned. And she didn't have children or her husband. And so she devoted a lot of time in her after hours to developing this, this record. And he held record. Her hope eventually was to compile a biography, which would have been wonderful record if she'd been able to do it, because she knew Mackay, I think, better than any person aside from his wife, Emma.

00;12;14;15 - 00;12;44;25

Brian Cannon

So it would have been a wonderful biography. Not by a scholar, but by someone who deeply loved and intimately new David Owen Mackay. But she never. By the time that Mackay passed away, she didn't have the stamina to follow through and write that. But it's this rich record. But it's a tricky record. It's written in first person, as if Mackay had dictated or written all of it.

00;12;44;27 - 00;13;15;25

Brian Cannon

But you realize, particularly in the later years, Mackay was in no position to be physically or mentally to be able to be dictating this detailed record. And it includes excerpts from from minutes. And so a lot of the dire material that's there from Alvin Dyer are pages from his his own record that he gave to Middlemiss. He was related to Middlemiss.

00;13;15;25 - 00;13;26;28

Brian Cannon

They had a close, warm relationship, and so he shared a lot of those materials with her. And some of those materials made their way into the David Mackay Diary.

00;13;27;01 - 00;13;53;04

Nicholas Shrum

It's fascinating and I think listeners will appreciate how the craft works when compiling a biography, because we think, you know, sources are pretty straightforward. It's just somebody, diary. But this is one of those really complicated but also adds additional insights. Right. That is that helps us get at times a richer portrait of of of President Mackay. I'm wondering really quick, just because there's been some work on David O.

00;13;53;05 - 00;14;16;07

Nicholas Shrum

Mackay in the past, I'm thinking of I believe that's Francis Gibbons did a biography of Mackay, who was the First Presidency secretary, and then, especially in 2005, right, in Prince's biography of Mackay. That's more of a history of modern Mormonism since the 1950s. How does your biography differ or build upon some of these earlier works?

00;14;16;13 - 00;14;45;18

Brian Cannon

Yeah. So Francis Gibbons was secretary to the First Presidency. He had unfettered access to all of the materials. I think that I was able to access, pretty much. He did this, I think, as part of his job, but also on the side as an avocation. And he wrote biographies of many presents of the church, including Mackay. He was a devotional biographer.

00;14;45;18 - 00;15;19;00

Brian Cannon

He definitely understood the operations of the church in terms of having worked in the church office building for many years and worked closely with the First Presidency. He wasn't a trained historian. He was not particularly critical of his sources. But he did read them. He did read them carefully. He steeped himself in those sources. So it remains really the best full length biography of of David Omak.

00;15;19;02 - 00;15;58;29

Brian Cannon

Until mine at least. Okay. But there's much to be gained from that. I need to mention Mary Jane Woodrow now, Mary Jane Searle and her work. She edited letters that David Owen wrote to his wife, Rae, over decades, and she wrote a biography focusing on Mackay as an educator and Mackay as a husband and father. So that's a really good source for that personal, private side of his life.

00;15;59;01 - 00;16;28;29

Brian Cannon

Greg Princess biography of David Oma Kay is magisterial. It's really impressive. His collection of sources was amazing. As you said, it becomes really as much an institutional history of the church as it is a biography of David O. Mackay. And in fairness to Prince, that's what the Middlemiss record lends itself most readily toward. There are lots of issues that are discussed, rich policies that are discussed in the record.

00;16;28;29 - 00;17;14;04

Brian Cannon

And so Prince takes a topical approach rather than a strictly chronological approach, and he focuses exclusively on David on Mackay's years as church president. So my my own approach pays more historian to historiography, I think, than the others do, and also to the broader cultural and political and social context of events. Talking about the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, just different movements and events of Mackay's era, historical currents.

00;17;14;04 - 00;17;30;05

Brian Cannon

And it does as it takes. It narrates the full scope of Mackay's life, as did Gibbons, beginning with his birth and childhood and moving chronologically up into his death in 1970.

00;17;30;07 - 00;17;53;02

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, it's really impressive and I, I really appreciate it because I think one of the things that either amateur historians or people that are avid readers and Mormon studies may like to do is they like to categorize major figures in Mormon history. So they want to say, oh, this is, you know, Azra Benson or J. Reuben Clark. This is just kind of how they were.

00;17;53;04 - 00;18;28;12

Nicholas Shrum

One of the things I really appreciate about your biography, due to its periodization at scope, it's intimacy, but also the way that it interacts and engages with the with the context, the regular context. He's he kind of defies description, like most people do when you when you actually get into their lives, into their sources, they defy description as whether that's, we want to say, politically conservative or progressive or theologically conservative or progressive, like there there are so many important moments that that people respond to differently.

00;18;28;12 - 00;18;41;04

Nicholas Shrum

And I think that this biography does that really richly. And were there any new sources that you encountered since some of these more these, these other works on Mackay that that you took advantage of?

00;18;41;05 - 00;19;10;09

Brian Cannon

So, I mean, I think although the The Mission diary had been expertly edited, I think I'm the first one. Well, I shouldn't say that. So Gibbons did look at it, but I, I drank more deeply from that source, I think, than anyone else had done. And so, so so that's a source that I think I used in greater detail than previous historians have done.

00;19;10;12 - 00;19;53;07

Brian Cannon

I focused a lot on his sermons and his conference addresses. This is something that Mary Jane did to a certain extent, but I think again, more I, I dealt with that, I benefited enormously from over 100 interviews that Greg, Greg Prince and his coauthor, William Robert Wright conducted. The full interview transcripts are not yet available, but Prince's notes of the interviews, which are very rich and detailed with extensive quotations for those views, are available in the Special Collections Library at the University of Utah.

00;19;53;07 - 00;20;23;13

Brian Cannon

And so I was able to learn a lot from those. And to take that material, to take material that Prince had gathered but was unable to incorporate into his volume and used that. So the World tour diaries have been expertly edited and they've been used by some writers. But again, I think I was able to plumb those more carefully than others have been able to do.

00;20;23;19 - 00;20;45;11

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, it definitely shows. There's a real rich variety of sources and and ways of getting the different facets of his life. So now moving kind of into the meat of the book. I'm curious, first of all, what kinds of questions you were setting out to answer as you were conducting research? I mean, you've already kind of touched on some of those things.

00;20;45;11 - 00;21;01;02

Nicholas Shrum

The more the maybe the more intimate spiritual ministering aspects of his life, of course, the broader, trajectory of his life. But I'm just I'm curious kind of how you set out to do that at first, what questions you were looking to answer?

00;21;01;05 - 00;21;26;03

Brian Cannon

Yeah. Well, my my major, Professor Albo, would be disappointed that I didn't set out with a hypothesis to test. He was a big proponent of social science history, and I didn't have an overarching interpretation that I wanted to overturn or anything like that. But I did, as you mentioned, wanted want to understand the interpersonal dimensions of McKay's ministry.

00;21;26;03 - 00;22;00;08

Brian Cannon

That was an area that I felt had been underdeveloped by previous biographers. And so I saw that that would be an area where I felt I could make an important contribution in terms of understanding. What is it that drew people to McKay? What is it that made him the quintessential prophet for so many people? Even the quintessential organization man or quintessential administrator?

00;22;00;08 - 00;22;19;28

Brian Cannon

So efficiency wasn't his strong suit. Interpersonal relations and spirituality really were his strong suit. So I wanted to understand that and understand the interpersonal relations and the tap roots of his spirituality. I also.

00;22;20;01 - 00;22;45;17

Brian Cannon

Although others have written about this extensively, I wanted to just look and see what I could find in terms of McKay and the race issue with the priesthood restriction and the temple restriction, to try to understand McKay's understanding of that and the challenges as he perceived them, that the church faced because of its priesthood restriction.

00;22;45;19 - 00;23;11;05

Nicholas Shrum

No. That's excellent. I'm maybe our first question to give readers a sense of the content of the book and what this book offers, or if you can help situate David O. McKay in the history of Mormonism. So, for instance, I'm thinking of historians like to again, when we like to categorize, right, what kind of eras or paradigms was McKay straddling or did he even inaugurate?

00;23;11;07 - 00;23;21;25

Nicholas Shrum

Kind of how do we how do we make sense of him in his moment in the 20th century? What kind of things is are is he interacting with?

00;23;21;27 - 00;23;32;15

Brian Cannon

Yeah. So he's so he really begins his church service and.

00;23;32;17 - 00;23;59;01

Brian Cannon

Spends his early years as a missionary, as an apostle in the period that Tom Alexander calls the or Mormonism in transition from the 1890s up until the Great Depression. But this is an era where the church is pulling away from the practice of plural marriage, and it's a messy pulling away. It's complicated. It's not, you know, one announcement and then everyone simply ceases to practice polygamy.

00;23;59;01 - 00;24;32;02

Brian Cannon

And so this is an area that McKay is trying to to navigate, and it's part of a larger church navigation of its place in the United States particularly, and its relationship to the Democratic and Republican parties, its relationship to the US government, its relationship to the military. And so its image. So so these are really important areas where McKay is part of the drama.

00;24;32;03 - 00;25;19;19

Brian Cannon

I mean, he's as a missionary, he is flummoxed by continued accusations of the practice of plural marriage. There are people who are sure that he is bent upon recruiting women for the Mormon harem in Salt Lake City, and. The church suffers from very poor public relations in Britain. This is something he. In fact, it even seems to be worse to him when he goes back to Britain as a mission president in the 1920s, again with concerns over polygamy and with anti-Mormon silent films and so forth that are that are being produced.

00;25;19;22 - 00;25;51;18

Brian Cannon

He also in this era, though, in trying to understand relationship to national politics as a result of his missionary experience, he comes away with just a rock ribbed opposition to alcohol. He saw the ravages of alcoholism in Scotland and heavy drinking and addiction to drink, and the ways that it harmed families. And so he engages with wholeheartedly with the prohibition movement in the United States.

00;25;51;18 - 00;26;07;28

Brian Cannon

And that draws him into the political arena and and so, so, so that's, that's that's an important part of the.

00;26;08;01 - 00;27;08;11

Brian Cannon

An important passage in American history that McKay participates in, in terms of situating him as church president and his member of the First Presidency, the internationalization of the church, of course, the church had international missions from the days of Joseph Smith. But you really see an aggressive and forceful international expansion taking place into new areas of the world, into particularly Central and South America and in the Asian on the Asian continent during McKay's tenure as as church president and then just trying to come to terms with what it means to develop an international presence for the 19th century, most converts were encouraged to leave their homelands and to gather to the western United States to

00;27;08;13 - 00;27;33;18

Brian Cannon

gather to Zion. And that's no longer the case in the case. So they're trying to figure out what does it mean to establish a footprint in these nations, and what will it take in terms of meaningful church experiences to keep people in their homelands and to not make them feel that their second class citizens in the church, if they if they choose not to emigrate?

00;27;33;24 - 00;28;01;07

Nicholas Shrum

Really helpful. Yeah. As you say, he seems to kind of see it all almost for the 20th century. At the risk of being a little bit reductionist. I mean, we historians often think of Mormonism as kind of like, yeah, this transformation, transition, transition period from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. And then there's kind of this period of Americanization.

00;28;01;07 - 00;28;28;04

Nicholas Shrum

And then we kind of for some good reasons, we think of Mormonism kind of entering into the mainstream and then especially into the religious right in the 1970s as general categorizations. He sees most of that, and he's in church leadership for most of that. So it's impressive that somebody could be in kind of these highest ranks of the church during all of these really, really important moments, especially within the United States.

00;28;28;04 - 00;28;52;25

Nicholas Shrum

But then globally, as you mentioned. So your biography of McKay focuses on the person of McKay as a father, as a husband, as a church leader, as a friend. I'm wondering if you can comment on his figure in his legacy, especially maybe with this question of how much did he transform the trajectory of Mormonism over the course of the 20th century?

00;28;53;00 - 00;29;09;11

Nicholas Shrum

Another way of asking is how much, maybe do Mormon could Mormons today credit McKay with kind of his efforts and his initiatives and his leadership style to to the present day? What maybe I'd love for your thoughts on that.

00;29;09;14 - 00;29;35;06

Brian Cannon

Okay. Yeah, that's that's that's a big question. And I'm going to take it in several different directions I think. So first of all, for the baby boomer generation and for their parents, David Alma K was the quintessential prophet. And so he had he just possessed a powerful aura. He was charismatic. Many people say that he simply looked the part of the prophet when they saw him.

00;29;35;06 - 00;30;06;19

Brian Cannon

He was a large man, physically imposing. He was an attractive, handsome individual. He dressed beautifully. He had finally clothed hair. Appearance really mattered to him. And then many people felt that he was able to pierce their heart with his gaze, that he could see into them and understand their character before he ever said anything to them. And that's just a refrain that comes up over and over again.

00;30;06;19 - 00;30;42;28

Brian Cannon

And so I think for many latter day Saints, the reverence that they felt and feel for a prophet can be traced back to the reverence that they felt and the inspiration that they derived from simply being in the presence of David Alma K, and that would include many who are in prominent leadership positions in the church today, kind of the from those who were born much earlier up through the baby boomer generation.

00;30;42;28 - 00;31;09;20

Brian Cannon

So the understanding of what it meant to be a prophet, what it means to be a prophet, was shaped by their interactions with David. Alma K, we haven't remembered all of his teachings, but we have continued to focus upon a small number of teachings. And it was interesting to me that, aside from Spencer W Kimball, that David O.

00;31;09;21 - 00;31;38;06

Brian Cannon

McKay has been quoted more frequently and cited more frequently in General Conference addresses in the years since he was prophet than any other prophet, except for Spencer W Kimball. I think partly that's because he emphasized missionary work. There was the consummate missionary as a member of the First Presidency, particularly after J. Reuben Clark came back to full time service as a member of the First Presidency.

00;31;38;08 - 00;32;23;11

Brian Cannon

McKay's primary responsibility was missionary work, and he carried that flag devotedly and enthusiastically for years. So the focus upon missionary work and international expansion of missionary work is one element where McKay made a lasting contribution. McKay was not the first church president to speak of the family, but I think he did so more effectively, and he spoke to the interests of Americans in the middle decades of the 20th century, Family Home Evening was revitalized and encouraged a new in his administration.

00;32;23;12 - 00;32;52;24

Brian Cannon

I mean, you can say it began back with Joseph Fielding, F Smith or whatever, but it really becomes a centralized, centrally directed, strongly encouraged religious practice during David L. McKay's administration. And so the focus upon the family and McKay's adaptation of the quotation, no other success can compensate for family in the force, can compensate for no other success, can compensate for failure in the home.

00;32;52;26 - 00;33;31;02

Brian Cannon

That that's something that gets quoted again and again. And so I think in that respect, also, his legacy was enormously important. He does participate. You mentioned the shift to the right. He's involved with that. He I think was as strongly opposed emotionally and intellectually to communism as was Ezra Taft Benson. But he was not an activist or an extremist in the way that Elder Benson was.

00;33;31;02 - 00;33;56;15

Brian Cannon

And so, so the legacy of more restrained, but nevertheless, I'm mistaken. Opposition to communism and socialism is a legacy of McKay as well, I think. So.

00;33;56;18 - 00;34;06;25

Brian Cannon

In terms of transforming the trajectory, the major area where we see him not moving.

00;34;06;28 - 00;34;31;11

Brian Cannon

As successfully or as conclusively as Spencer Kimball moved would be in the area of race where he definitely had concerns about the priesthood and temple restrictions, but did not perhaps search as assiduously or campaign as assiduously as Spencer W Kimball did for For a Change.

00;34;31;14 - 00;35;10;19

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, I love hearing your thoughts on that, because it's the focus on the family, this kind of, you know, strong theological dedication to anti-communism and and not just anti-communism, but also the, the what he perceived as the opposite. Right. Like the strong advocate, advocacy for free agency or moral agency, the liberty, the freedom of the individual right that has that becomes so such a strong part of, you know, mid to late 20th century Mormonism and even conservative politics, he embraces that really strongly.

00;35;10;22 - 00;35;55;03

Nicholas Shrum

I appreciate you commenting on those trajectories, because I think members that are listening and then scholars that are starting to get a sense of, of Mormon history will will recognize those, those threads that are championed or even inaugurated by David O. McKay. And I love that you mentioned that he was just as strong as of an opponent to communism as Ezra Taft Benson, and in fact, maybe even paved the way for in some allowed for Ezra Taft Benson to be able to to take on that more public opposition and, yeah, opposition to communism during the Cold War, politics of the era.

00;35;55;05 - 00;35;55;12

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah.

00;35;55;13 - 00;36;37;23

Brian Cannon

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that David McKay was talking was emphasizing the importance of agency and individual liberty long before I think Ezra Taft Benson was making that a key focus. And in terms of political conservatism and championing Republican politics, you can go back to the 1930s with a little McKay and the First Presidency's critique of aspects of the New Deal, and then you can move forward into the 1960s, where David publicly endorses Richard Nixon.

00;36;37;25 - 00;37;10;02

Brian Cannon

McKay was visibly involved in local Republican politics in Weber County for many years, so there was no question in people's minds as to whether they would only Kay was a Republican or a Democrat. There was no question. It's not that he insisted that all latter day Saints should be Republicans, but he made clear his own political interests that didn't keep him from having a friendship of sorts with Lyndon Johnson or being interested in meeting John F Kennedy, those types of things.

00;37;10;04 - 00;37;35;14

Nicholas Shrum

Well, the other things I really appreciate about your biography related to this, and this is just an example of it, is that his his life and his his travels, his emphasis on education and his experience in education really led him to being quite open, open minded and moderate. But also, I mean, beyond tolerant, I would say at times of of people with differing worldviews.

00;37;35;14 - 00;37;48;25

Nicholas Shrum

And so he surrounded himself and had friendships, as you mentioned, with Lyndon Johnson. But, I mean, even within church leadership with Hubie Brown and then his relationships with those that were considered dissident, like, I'm trying to.

00;37;48;27 - 00;37;49;22

Brian Cannon

Really learn.

00;37;49;26 - 00;37;59;17

Nicholas Shrum

Still in my mind. Yeah, absolutely. That's that's such a, an interesting part of, of, of his approach to leadership that is fun to read about.

00;37;59;21 - 00;38;21;01

Brian Cannon

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People mattered a lot to him. And he wasn't one to allow ideological divisions to want to. He wasn't wanted to wall off people because they viewed doctrine differently or because they viewed science differently or Pollock's politics differently.

00;38;21;03 - 00;38;44;17

Nicholas Shrum

I'd love to to go back in chronology. We've been talking about kind of this mid-century period, but one of the real big contributions, I think, of your book is how you narrate and really rich detail his both his missionary days in Scotland, as you mentioned, but then especially this 19 is it 1920 or 1921 world tour?

00;38;44;19 - 00;38;49;08

Brian Cannon

Yeah, it's the it's the 1920s, 1921, 22 world.

00;38;49;09 - 00;39;06;14

Nicholas Shrum

Oh 22 okay. Yeah. Can you talk about what that experience did did for David O. McKay? He's. Because I think, as you mentioned, up until the time that he dies, he's the most widely traveled church leader, even, right? Not just church president, but any church leader.

00;39;06;17 - 00;39;54;06

Brian Cannon

Yeah. So aside from Heber, Jake Grant, who had served as a missionary in Japan, no other apostles had ever been to Asia. None of them had been to. And no church president had been to the South Pacific. Many had been to Hawaii and to Europe, but none of them had been to the Middle East. And so his his world tour set him up really with the experience as to understand the needs of church members and to have a less Eurocentric view of issues and of of the church than did other church leaders.

00;39;54;08 - 00;40;24;12

Brian Cannon

I mean, he came away from his experiences. He served also as European mission president right after his world tour. And so he understood the needs of European congregations. He visited nearly all of them, I think, in his time. So he had visited widely. He came away from these experiences understanding that the church needed to develop a bigger presence.

00;40;24;12 - 00;40;49;22

Brian Cannon

And I've already alluded to this. But as a missionary, he's teaching one woman who's relative is a member of the church. And she says, I would never join your church because you made in rented halls. And I would want to have a respectable chapel for to attend church. And I want to feel that. I want to feel proud of where I, I worship and to feel that I can invite my friends there.

00;40;49;22 - 00;41;12;17

Brian Cannon

And that's something that I could never do with your church. Why do you encourage people to go to America? Why don't you build up a church there? And so that plants a seed very early on. But he sees that on his on his world tour, that there are a handful of individuals who have scraped together enough money to be able to get to Salt Lake City from New Zealand, for instance, to go through the temple.

00;41;12;17 - 00;41;58;26

Brian Cannon

But the vast majority of church members are never in a million years going to be able to do that. To simply is impossible. And so they they don't they won't have access to the crowning church rights that are available only in the temple, including temple marriage. And so he recognizes that that that's needed. He also sees the benefit of the very limited church education system that exists at the time in in the islands, particularly where the church has a small school on Oahu and the church has mission schools that are operated by missionaries in some of the South Pacific islands.

00;41;58;27 - 00;42;28;05

Brian Cannon

They have a school in New Zealand. And he recognizes that that the educational needs far exceed what the church is able to do. He meets with island leaders in Tonga and they say, you know, we we would like to have a much larger educational infrastructure that the church would invest in here. And we would like to see we love the missionaries, but they're not teachers, they're not trained teachers.

00;42;28;08 - 00;42;56;14

Brian Cannon

And the K defends them and says, well, they you won't find better people in the world. But McKay also acknowledges, yes, they don't have the pedagogical training that I have as a professional educator. And so he recognizes the need to try to enrich the curricular offerings and expand the church's curricular offerings. So so those are some things that he comes away from his world tour with.

00;42;56;16 - 00;43;25;14

Brian Cannon

He also he still is racist. And that's not surprising that growing up in a tiny town in rural Utah, you don't encounter a lot of diversity. And so on his world tour, he writes that he finds the Polynesian skin very beautiful, and the Fijian, the Melanesian skin repulsive is the term he uses. He doesn't regard the people as repulsive, but their skin, he says.

00;43;25;20 - 00;43;55;11

Brian Cannon

It just repulses him. So. So he doesn't. It's not as if his encounters with other people eliminate all of those prejudices. He does. On the other hand, comment that he uses the term that we don't use now Orientals. But he says many of the Oriental people are more refined and dignified and gracious than the Euro-Americans, who claim that they're far superior to them culturally.

00;43;55;11 - 00;44;14;16

Brian Cannon

And so he sees that, and he calls out your Americans for their denigration of Asians or people on the Indian subcontinent or Middle Easterners, he says, this is just this just isn't right to treat them as second class citizens.

00;44;14;22 - 00;45;02;29

Nicholas Shrum

I appreciate you for, again, some more contextualization of McKay, because he's obviously a product, as you just described, a product of late 19th century civilizational discourse. Right? There is some sense of a hierarchy of civilizations that can be seen through certain things like education, art, cultural refinement, kinds of things. But on the other hand, as as you're saying, right, this exposure that again, the other latter day Saints, very few latter day Saints before him had had did necessarily open him up to seeing the world a little bit differently than than people that were just stuck in Huntsville, Utah, or stuck in the Mormon chord or further entire lives.

00;45;02;29 - 00;45;26;07

Nicholas Shrum

That maybe this was kind of a necessary, yet uncomfortable and at times rocky and tumultuous way of bringing Mormonism into the world so that it could be an actual worldwide religion rather than being imposed right off the bat, but something that could be negotiated a little bit, a little bit better.

00;45;26;09 - 00;45;54;10

Brian Cannon

Yeah. Along those lines, on his world tour, he finds that the missionaries are lording it over these much more experienced local members. So the Maori members in New Zealand, he's enormously impressed with their ability. Some of them are enormously successful in the world of business and finance. They are skilled administrators, their wise, their spiritual individuals. And he's really impressed with that.

00;45;54;10 - 00;46;25;10

Brian Cannon

And he says, we need to stop having missionaries serve as the branch presidents in all of these branches. When he's in Japan, he's enormously impressed with the Japanese, and he just praises Japan never disappoints. He writes over and over again in his diary. He's enormously impressed with the infrastructure in Japan, with the discipline of the Japanese people. And he you can force he can't speak Japanese, but he's working for the mission president.

00;46;25;10 - 00;46;46;17

Brian Cannon

But he says we need to college, brother, as a Sunday school superintendent. And they do so. And he says, these people just have a lot to offer, and we need to develop their leadership abilities and take advantage of the leadership abilities that they already bring to end their wisdom that they bring to the table.

00;46;46;20 - 00;47;14;29

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, I was going to ask a question, but kind of given time and we've already we've already touched on it a bit, this kind of these personal interactions. And I think that those examples you just gave are, are good examples of how even kind of interactions that would have been limited by contextual historical forces. So again, the racism, the xenophobia, the chauvinism right that predominated most people of this time doesn't go away.

00;47;14;29 - 00;47;41;08

Nicholas Shrum

But at the same time, David Mackay is able to be quite compassionate and open to listening to the concerns of people. And one of the things that stuck out to me the most that I was not aware of, is how open he was to those involved in the third convention in Mexico in the 1930s. That was that was an episode that I wasn't as familiar with his his role and kind of the things, his efforts there.

00;47;41;09 - 00;48;07;00

Nicholas Shrum

So again, that's maybe that's a story that people can read about. It'll give them a teaser to go read about. But he in in very controversial aspects of 20th century Mormonism, whether that schism or fundamentalist Mormonism with polygamy, he he's firm and he's not bending, but he's also quite compassionate. I don't know if you've if you want anything to say about kind of those those things.

00;48;07;05 - 00;48;45;08

Brian Cannon

Yeah. Well, he was he he once commented that we can't run the church as we would a business, because fundamentally the church is about individuals. And he really practiced what he preached there. He loved people. He loved getting to know individuals. He had a phenomenal memory. One anecdote that didn't make it into the book that I heard about from a person who experienced it in the book talk afterward, he had given a ride to a eight year old boy on a horse and up in Huntsville, and the person the boy was visiting with grandparents up in Huntsville.

00;48;45;08 - 00;49;10;21

Brian Cannon

And then a couple of years later, Mackay met the boy and he said, how was that horse ride? You know, he still remembered that that face and linked it to the experience. His wife said that if he could spend all his time in church service doing what he wanted to do, that he would spend all of his time performing temple marriages and preaching at funerals, because that's when people needed the church leader.

00;49;10;21 - 00;49;43;23

Brian Cannon

That's when it was important to them, and that's when the gospel mattered to them. So yeah, he just prioritized he couldn't give a blessing to everyone who requested a priesthood blessing. He didn't have time, and that was disappointing to some people. But he prioritized those with terminal illnesses and those who suffered from paralysis. So Pollio victims, for instance, the mentally ill he reached out to, he reached out to those who didn't possess much cultural power.

00;49;43;25 - 00;50;07;19

Brian Cannon

He helped to place an individual from the Japanese relocation camp at Topaz in Utah, at a at a hospital, so that he could continue his education. That person wasn't a member of the church, but he wrote to Mackay. Mackay recognized that he could help this person and assist him. So yeah. Mackay. He dignified children and teenagers. He spent time with them.

00;50;07;19 - 00;50;24;17

Brian Cannon

He was an educator and he recognized the importance of those foundational experiences that come to young people. So yeah, those are those are all indications of his interpersonal ministry, I think.

00;50;24;20 - 00;50;59;07

Nicholas Shrum

Absolutely. I know that we're coming close to the end of our time, but there are two things I wanted to address really quick. One, I think that's important. Again, I wasn't aware of that. I think is really important. Is Mackay's involvement with the church welfare plan? I wonder if you can kind of if you can give the audience a taste of why that's important, that we recognize Mackay's role in that and kind of what how is the historiography typically treated that the church welfare plan and the way that we understand that the leaders involved in that kind of thing?

00;50;59;10 - 00;51;25;17

Brian Cannon

Yeah. So the first counselor in the First Presidency was Jay Clark, and he's typically viewed as the founder, the driving force between the welfare program and Mackay as second counselor is seen as being supportive but not playing a very fundamental role. It's it's definitely true, I think, that the welfare program would not have emerged without the vision of J.

00;51;25;17 - 00;51;53;23

Brian Cannon

Reuben Clark. He has this vision of the church taking care of its own. The predates McKay's entrance into the First Presidency, but is something that doesn't go anywhere until Mackay enters, because then you have ideological unity in concerns about the New Deal. Once, once Mackay is in the First Presidency, Clark is away from Salt Lake City for extended periods of time.

00;51;53;23 - 00;52;20;01

Brian Cannon

In the 1930s, he's serving as legal counsel for the Bondholders Protective Corporation. This is a government entity that is trying to get payments back from the World War One era debts. This is important work. It's work that Hebrew Jay grants his church Preston is supportive of. So Clark is away. So Clark has the vision, but he's not there to actually implement the vision.

00;52;20;02 - 00;52;47;18

Brian Cannon

And so there's one example where Mackay and Clark are traveling together to Omaha, Nebraska on the train, and then Clark's going to go on to New York. And they spend all their time discussing Clark's vision for the welfare program. And the idea is, and they're discussing it and figuring out how would it work. But it's Mackay on the ground, who is then tasked by Hebrew Jay Grant with, let's let's talk to people and let's figure out what we actually would do.

00;52;47;18 - 00;53;09;27

Brian Cannon

And it's McKay who sits down with Harold Lee and others, and they come up with the actual mechanics of the welfare plan. And this McKay, who's reviewing the drafts that are being offered by Lee and saying no. This has to change. That has to change. And then he slaps his hand on the table one day and tells whether we now we have a plan that we can take to the prophet.

00;53;09;29 - 00;53;31;18

Brian Cannon

We can take it to the First Presidency. It's announced. And interestingly, it's not Clark who's asked by president Grant to announce the plan. It's McKay, because McKay understands all of the details, the fine grain of it. And then Clark leaves shortly afterward, and McKay meets with the steering committee, and he's the one who regularly meets with them in their meetings.

00;53;31;18 - 00;53;57;13

Brian Cannon

He's the one who's there when they're deciding, should we purchase this property? Should we move in this direction? McKay is the one who actually is involved in the quotidian development of the program and the implementation of it. So the vision is Clark's. Initially, the inspiration comes from Clark, but it wouldn't have developed without McKay's administrative watching and care.

00;53;57;15 - 00;54;37;14

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, I think it's a really important contribution because it again shows just how, leading into my next question about his presidency and questions of age and finances and that kind of thing. But he has been, since 1906, in the highest governing bodies of the church. And he's so involved in this really, really monumental task in the 1930s that, again, kind of my perception of this and some of the scholarship I've read on this, it usually attributes a lot of that to Clark and to Grant and more about, you know, kind of the ideological reasons behind it and, you know, opposition to the New Deal and, and Roosevelt and that sort of thing.

00;54;37;14 - 00;55;01;03

Nicholas Shrum

But that, yeah, McKay is the one that really has to get the ball rolling on that and implementing it. As I was alluding to the final chapter of your book, does an expert job of weaving these, these various themes of, of of age. Again, McKay is called to be the prophet at I think, age 78. So he's he's he's he's older.

00;55;01;05 - 00;55;25;02

Nicholas Shrum

The church goes through a series of really difficult financial situations. And then because of the age and because of the finances and all of these challenges, that has all of these consequences for the way that church administration works with power. And who's called into the to be counselors in the First Presidency. I'm just curious your thoughts and you can take this any direction you'd like.

00;55;25;03 - 00;55;31;08

Nicholas Shrum

What does that chapter reveal about Morton? Excuse me? Modern Mormonism since the postwar period.

00;55;31;14 - 00;56;13;00

Brian Cannon

Well, I think the chapter reveals some of the administrative, hierarchical and bureaucratic dimensions of of the church. It also reveals some of the financial challenges that the church faced as it tried to develop this impressive global footprint, a huge footprint with international temples, international meeting houses, international schools and welfare farms and properties. And it's not that the church doesn't have immense wealth in the mid 1960s, but it no longer has the cash flow, has a liquidity crisis.

00;56;13;00 - 00;56;55;27

Brian Cannon

And in the early 1960s. And so you see those this financial dimensions, it also reveals the advantages and the challenges that come from having an organization where parcels and profits serve for life. So there's no retirement age. And on the one hand, it gives church leaders an immense wealth of experience and institutional knowledge to draw upon. I mean, by by the time that McKay became prophet, he had served in the form of the 12 for 45 years.

00;56;55;29 - 00;57;12;17

Brian Cannon

So he'd been around the block many times. He had served in the First Presidency for the better part of 17 years. So when you come in and you have the health and strength that you need, you really have an immense.

00;57;12;20 - 00;57;37;08

Brian Cannon

Capital of ideas and and institutional knowledge and wisdom to draw upon. But then as your physical health begins to wane or as your mental acuity wanes, it creates the problems of administration don't go away. And so creates a vacuum of sorts. And you have counselors and traditionally you have two, but you can call others if you need more help.

00;57;37;11 - 00;58;04;23

Brian Cannon

But you as the church president are not. You don't have the wherewithal. You don't have the bandwidth to be able to administrate all of these programs and issues. And so counselors are somewhat tied in terms of what can be done without the ascent of the church president. They try to support the church president, but they make some decisions in the absence of the church president.

00;58;04;23 - 00;58;27;26

Brian Cannon

And in president McKay's case, that then led to concerns that he felt that he was no longer in control, that decisions were being made without his understanding. And in some cases, I suspect he was informed and he simply did not remember that he'd been informed. But but in other cases, decisions may have been made, and they neglected to inform him of the decisions.

00;58;27;26 - 00;58;46;01

Brian Cannon

And so he shows up for a meeting one day and finds out that the meeting has been canceled. He didn't know it had been canceled, and the counselors had simply assumed that he was in two poor of a health to to attend. So he begins to draw in other advisors who can assist him and inform him and keep him in touch.

00;58;46;01 - 00;59;16;07

Brian Cannon

And that creates tensions within church leadership. There are also just different people with different priorities on issues with regard to communism, for instance, or regard to racial issues and civil rights. On the other hand, who will try to pull an increasingly infirm prophet and president in one direction or the other? And I think those countervailing forces kind of kept in the K in the middle.

00;59;16;08 - 00;59;50;05

Brian Cannon

But that's not a healthy situation either, to be in where you're potentially susceptible to persuasion by one side or the other. This can include well-meaning church leaders or well-meaning family members, other individuals who are positioned in a situation where where they can influence the outcomes of decisions. So I think it reveals those bureaucratic dimensions and the challenges and opportunities that come with having leaders who serve for life.

00;59;50;07 - 01;00;25;08

Nicholas Shrum

I appreciate that that final chapter. I mean, I really love the chapters on the missionary, his missionary days and the global tour and his mission president in Great Britain. Those were some of my very favorite chapters, but this one I think is so it's so well done in the way that it's able to synthesize and add insights into, like you're saying, these bureaucratic, modern iterations of Mormonism that just when you have life terms as as church leaders at one of the most consequential periods in American history.

01;00;25;10 - 01;00;45;03

Nicholas Shrum

I mean, that that David Omakase, church president in 1968, tells you all that you need to know that there is so much going on. And he, you know, he needed a lot of help and with a lot of help came a lot of opinions. And so it was it's just a fascinating chapter. As we close, I always have two questions.

01;00;45;03 - 01;01;04;25

Nicholas Shrum

I ask the guests on the podcast. The first is about why people that aren't necessarily interested in Mormon studies, why they should read this book, and in what ways does it contribute to our understanding of American religion or religious studies, or in your case, as a history professor, American history? Broadly, why should people read this book?

01;01;04;27 - 01;01;24;28

Brian Cannon

Well, Mormonism. Mormonism is a significant American religion. It's a homegrown religion shaped by and facilitated by constitutional liberty, frontier abundance.

01;01;25;00 - 01;02;06;00

Brian Cannon

American imperialism, a variety of forces. And so I think that one can see reflections of the United States and American Christianity in in Mormonism. And one can also see reflections of, you know, America moving out onto the world stage. The United States has as a global force and how that shapes the US government, but how it also shapes American churches, churches, West Western churches, Euro-American churches.

01;02;06;01 - 01;02;42;25

Brian Cannon

And so I think I think there's a lot to be learned there. I think that religion is fundamentally about engagement with the divine, the supernatural, the ideal. It's about people, as McKay recognized, and interpersonal relations. And it's about human motivation. It's a force that ideally can motivate people to sacrifice for ideals, to move beyond themselves, to become better than they currently are.

01;02;42;26 - 01;03;08;10

Brian Cannon

It's not the only force that does that, but it's a powerful force. And I think McKay and his story can help us understand those motivational and interpersonal dimensions of religion. As we were just saying, religion is also about power. It's an organization, and it's about how power is distributed, how it's wielded, how it's contested. And there are all sorts of different approaches.

01;03;08;10 - 01;03;33;00

Brian Cannon

But you see some of those approaches in the life of McKay and in his interactions with a variety of, of church leaders over the course of most of the 20th century, actually. So so I think that from that standpoint, it also is valuable to scholars in religious studies and religious history generally.

01;03;33;02 - 01;03;56;23

Nicholas Shrum

I would absolutely agree. I think that I love biography as a genre within history, and then I really, really value it when it comes to the study of religion, because I think that the close examination of an individual's life, especially a very prominent and influential one, that you get to see the interactions with other people, that you get to see the motivations as you're speaking, that you're talking about.

01;03;56;23 - 01;04;25;18

Nicholas Shrum

And then, of course, it's intersections with power and a very, you know, vast bureaucracy and ever expanding church religion becomes it becomes clear how complex religion is. And so I think that this is a great book for people that are interested in those questions. To to dig into my final question for you, just as we close as what's next for you on the docket, what projects or things should we be looking out for in the future?

01;04;25;20 - 01;04;50;17

Brian Cannon

So I've got a couple of projects, one of them related to latter day Saint history and one related more broadly to to rural history and American social history. So the one I'm working on, a social history of Mormonism in Montana, and I'm doing that with a colleague, Fred Woods. I had done some work on the church in Montana, published an article on it years ago.

01;04;50;17 - 01;05;26;27

Brian Cannon

I don't have any personal connection. In terms of familial connection to Montana, but it's a really interesting case study. There are a lot of dissidents from Utah who made their way up into Montana early or in the 19th century, and the Brigham Young era. And so, you know, the there are some the more sites established a Zion in Montana, and then many missionaries from the reorganized church made their way into Montana and capitalized upon the descents that they encountered there among former Latter day Saints.

01;05;26;27 - 01;05;49;21

Brian Cannon

But there were also lots of latter day Saints varying levels of devotion who made their way up to the gold fields in Montana and the mining boom and logging and so forth. There's a there's a lot of wealth is generated there. And so and then the railroads recruit latter day Saints to go because of their familiarity with irrigation.

01;05;49;21 - 01;06;12;05

Brian Cannon

So a lot of irrigation farming communities, the church develops a sugar factory there in northern Montana on the High Line. So so there are lots of interesting dimensions. And then the Alberta temple is just across the line. And so there are temple caravans. So it's so it's intended to be a case study of Mormonism in the mission field environment.

01;06;12;05 - 01;06;47;11

Brian Cannon

But a really fascinating one I think, with some interesting wrinkles. And then the other thing I'm working on is a history of migration out of rural America into urban and suburban areas, particularly in the Great Plains in the American West from 1940, beginning with World War Two up until about 1970, the countryside nationwide hemorrhages population in those years, and many people are able to make the shift quite easily in terms and comfortably in terms of economics.

01;06;47;14 - 01;07;09;19

Brian Cannon

But there are pockets of of poverty that attract a lot of attention. In the 1960s as part of the war on poverty. These include African Americans who have moved West American Indians who have moved off reservations into cities. Latinos who have moved out of the Rio Grande Valley and have moved up into moved west and north on a national level.

01;07;09;19 - 01;07;26;04

Brian Cannon

It also includes people from Appalachia who move out of of that region and move into northern manufacturing centers. But anyway, that's that's a big project to sink my teeth into.

01;07;26;06 - 01;07;40;21

Nicholas Shrum

Those both sound absolutely fascinating, and it would be great, you know, let me know when the the Montana work is, is, is coming out. So we can have you back on the podcast to talk about that. That sounds like a really fascinating case study.

01;07;40;23 - 01;07;41;19

Brian Cannon

Well, thanks.

01;07;41;20 - 01;07;57;04

Nicholas Shrum

Well, thank you so much, Professor Cannon, for being on the podcast. Again, listeners, this has been Professor Brian Q cannon talking about his recent book with Signature Books published in 2025, Building a Global Zion The Life and Vision of David Omak. Thank you so much, Professor Cannon.

01;07;57;05 - 01;08;00;18

Brian Cannon

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

01;08;00;20 - 01;08;17;08

Nicholas Shrum

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversations soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production, editing, and to Ben Allington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit Mormon Guitar. Thank you for listening.