page_title: Heber J. Grant
section_title: Church president
hierarchical_section_title: Heber J. Grant / Church president
caption_attribution_description: English: LDS Church president Heber J. Grant, 1919
context_page_description: Heber Jeddy Grant was an American religious leader who served as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Grant worked as a bookkeeper and a cashier, then was called to be an LDS apostle on October 16, 1882, at age 25. After the death of Joseph F. Smith in late 1918, Grant served as LDS church president until his death.
  The first president born after the exodus to Utah, Grant was also the last LDS Church president to have practiced plural marriage. He had three wives, though by the time he became church president in 1918 only his second wife, Augusta Winters, was still living.
  In business, Grant helped develop the Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake City. In 1884, he served a term as a representative to the Utah Territorial Legislature.
context_section_description: Grant succeeded Joseph F. Smith as church president in November 1918. He was not sustained in the position by the general church membership, however, until June 1919 because of the influenza pandemic of 1918, which forced a delay of the church's traditional springtime general conference.
  During his tenure as church president, Grant enforced the 1890 Manifesto outlawing plural marriage and gave guidance as the church's social structure evolved away from its early days of plural marriage. In 1927, he authorized the implementation of the church's "Good Neighbor" policy, which was intended to reduce antagonism between Latter-day Saints and the US government. Grant dedicated the first temples outside of Utah since Kirtland. The first was the Hawaii Temple, followed by the Alberta Temple, the first outside the United States, and the Arizona Temple. The church also began the Idaho Falls Temple, which was not completed until after his death.
  Also under Grant, the first stakes outside the Intermountain West were organized. The first stake in Los Angeles was organized in the 1920s. Grant still operated on old methods, such as personally asking LeGrand Richards to move to California with the intention of calling him as a stake president there. He also personally negotiated the purchase of the land on which the Los Angeles Temple would be built.
  In the 1930s, stakes were organized in New York and Chicago and in the 1940s in Portland, Oregon, and Washington, DC. Grant presided at the dedication of an LDS chapel in Washington, DC, in 1933, which was seen to mark a new phase of nationwide expansion in the church.
  In 1935, Grant excommunicated members of the church in Short Creek, Arizona, who refused to sign the loyalty pledge to the church that included a renunciation of plural marriage. That signaled the formal beginning of the Mormon fundamentalist movement, and some of the excommunicated members went on to found the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
  One of Grant's greatest legacies as president is the church's welfare program, which he instituted in 1936: "our primary purpose was to set up, insofar as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift and self-respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people help themselves." Grant also placed strong emphasis on the importance of sacrament meeting attendance and oversaw expansion of the seminary program and the creation of the institute of religion.
  His administration also emphasized the practice of the LDS health code known as the Word of Wisdom. During the early 1900s, general authorities differed in their observance of the proscription against beer, wine, tobacco, coffee and tea, but among the apostles, Grant was one of the most vocal in opposing such substances. In 1921, Grant's administration made adherence to the health code compulsory for advancement in the priesthood or for entrance to temples. Grant also spoke out in favor of Utah's Prohibition movement, which occurred around the same time.
  Despite being a Democrat, Grant was opposed to the election of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and wrote a front-page editorial for the Deseret News urging church members not to vote for him during the 1936 election. Grant shared the view of J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay that the New Deal was socialism, which they all despised. Roosevelt greatly alienated Grant also for opposing Prohibition, another subject.
  Roosevelt still won Utah in each of his four presidential elections. Grant regarded that as "one of the most serious conditions that has confronted me since I became President of the Church." Later, when Utah voters agreed by plebiscite to become the 36th state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus completing the process of ratification and repealing prohibition, Grant was devastated. In a general conference, he told the Latter-day Saints, "I have never felt so 
caption: Grant upon becoming church president (late 1918 or early 1919)
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