Ezra Taft Benson
Ezra Taft Benson served as the 13th President of the Church between 1985 and 1994. He was born on August 4, 1899, in Whitney, Idaho, the oldest of Sarah and George Taft Benson’s 11 children. From early childhood, Ezra worked on the family farm, and as a young man, developed a deep interest in the theory and economics of agriculture. He graduated from the Oneida Stake Academy and continued his studies in agronomy at Utah Agricultural College (later Utah State University), where he met Flora Amussen, a friend of one of his cousins.
During their courtship, Ezra and Flora determined to marry but first serve missions. Ezra left for the British Mission in 1921, and Flora left to serve in the Hawaiian Islands in 1924. Ezra graduated from Brigham Young University shortly before Flora’s return, and the two were married in 1926. After Ezra graduated with a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Iowa State University in 1927, he and Flora returned to Idaho, where they oversaw a farm and started to raise their own children.
As the Great Depression of the 1930s shattered the farming industry across the United States, Ezra assessed the whole system of farming and concluded that deep problems of mismanagement, poor marketing, and disruptive agricultural technology had driven family farms to bankruptcy. He worked for local government agencies in Idaho to train owners and operators of small farms in management and cooperative marketing campaigns. State officials soon approached Ezra to oversee cooperative organizations across Idaho. The Bensons moved to California, where Ezra studied agricultural economics at the University of California at Berkeley between 1936 and 1937. Once back in Idaho, Ezra served as a stake president for a time until the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives (NCFC) offered him a position in their headquarters offices in Washington, D.C. Soon after the Bensons relocated, Ezra was again called to serve as a stake president in the newly organized Washington Stake.
While Ezra toured farming cooperatives in 1943, President Heber J. Grant met with him and extended the calling to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The Bensons made arrangements to move to Utah, Ezra left the NCFC, and in October, he was sustained along with and ordained after Spencer W. Kimball as the newest Apostles. Among Elder Benson’s first assignments was to preside over the European Mission and supervise the Church’s welfare efforts there in the devastating aftermath of World War II. The poverty Elder Benson witnessed stunned him. In 11 months, he traveled more than 61,000 miles (98,000 kilometers) across war-torn areas of Europe and coordinated poor relief in excess of 4,000,000 pounds (1,800,000 kilograms) of supplies.
Max Zimmer and Elder Ezra Taft Benson inspecting supplies bound for Latter-day Saints in Europe, 1946.
Conditions in Europe strengthened Elder Benson’s convictions that the United States of America and its Constitution represented a “cradle of liberty” and a beacon of freedom for the world. In many speeches he addressed the political ramifications of world affairs at the time, commonly known as the Cold War. He frequently warned against the spread of communism and “coercive man-made systems” of government and urged Latter-day Saints, civic leaders, and regular citizens to study the lessons of the Book of Mormon that foretold pernicious threats to free societies.1
In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the newly elected president of the United States, nominated Elder Benson to serve as the secretary of agriculture, the highest administrative position over agriculture in the federal government. In the months leading up to his formal confirmation by the United States Senate, Elder Benson sought the counsel of Church President David O. McKay, who encouraged him to accept the position. The intense political environment subjected the Bensons to high scrutiny and criticism, but Elder Benson embraced the chance to serve the people of the United States and manage the Department of Agriculture with efficiency and concern. His duties included protecting and managing national forests and grasslands, regulating food inspections, overseeing welfare programs, and administering rural infrastructure projects. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he frequently took opportunities to proclaim his apostolic witness. In 1954, the prominent television reporter Edward R. Murrow interviewed the Benson family on his live program Person to Person, during which the Bensons observed their weekly family home evening for the nation to see. When he concluded his term of service in 1961, Elder Benson looked forward to returning “to the only thing I love better than agriculture”: his ministry.2
Elder Ezra Taft Benson as secretary of agriculture in a meeting with government officials in Washington, D.C.
After President Spencer W. Kimball passed away in November 1985, President Benson was set apart as the President of the Church. During his presidency, he greatly emphasized the Book of Mormon, urging members of the Church to study and embrace its teachings. In his opening address at the April 1986 general conference, he gave a call to action—not only “to say more about the Book of Mormon, but we need to do more with it.”3 The following year, he offered a prophetic blessing to the Latter-day Saints of an “increased desire to flood the earth with the Book of Mormon.”4 In his remaining years, President Benson took every opportunity to testify of the divinity of Jesus Christ and the witness of the Book of Mormon. He notably stressed combating pride by nurturing Christ-centered lives. His declining health paralleled that of his wife, Flora, who passed away in 1992. President Benson passed away less than two years later, leaving a legacy indelibly tied to the Book of Mormon. “Will any generation … look back on the administration of President Ezra Taft Benson and not immediately think of his love for the Book of Mormon?” asked his successor, President Howard W. Hunter. “Perhaps no President of the Church since the Prophet Joseph Smith himself has done more to teach the truths of the Book of Mormon, to make it a daily course of study for the entire membership of the Church, and to ‘flood the earth’ with its distribution.”5
For more information about the life of Ezra Taft Benson, see the Prophets of the Restoration videos on history.ChurchofJesusChrist.org or in the Gospel Library app.
Related Topics: Great Depression, Welfare Programs, Family Home Evening, Outmigration, Political Neutrality