38 Disciplinary Cases and Settling Disputes

Only a few disciplinary cases requiring high council action occurred during Andrew’s twenty-six years as stake president. The bishops handled some others. And there were efforts simply to help members resolve disputes.

There were several cases of adultery during Andrew’s presidency.⁶¹² The high council cut off a former patriarch for living with a woman out of wedlock. He was later rebaptized, but not again made a patriarch.⁶¹³ A woman was excommunicated by the bishopric of the Layton Ward for immorality, although she denied the circumstantial evidence. The ward members unanimously voted to sustain the decision put before them.⁶¹⁴ The high council accepted a “one-time” adulterer’s expression of repentance and returned him to fellowship. Andrew “suggested that it is the spirit of the law rather than the letter that should be followed in saving souls.”⁶¹⁵ But a few days later they learned that the man had boasted to his non-Mormon friends about both his multiple immoralities and how he had “put one over” on the Church court.⁶¹⁶

Property or debt disputes considered by the high council included the sale of a mowing machine and an encroachment on a neighbor’s property.⁶¹⁷ The oddest dispute involved ex-bishop Joseph Cluff of Central Ward. Members of his ward had started building a meetinghouse on property that he had provided. When construction lagged, he finished the building himself and locked the ward out until the people had reimbursed him for his labor and materials. A three-man committee from the high council worked out a plan for payment.⁶¹⁸

Several people received censure for preaching false doctrine concerning the nature of God.⁶¹⁹ Another denied the authority of the Church,⁶²⁰ and still another claimed that Church standards did not bind him.⁶²¹

Justice of the Peace R. A. Allred fined I. P. Robinson $10 for flooding the street with irrigation water. Robinson complained to the ward teachers against Allred for unnecessary harshness and for stirring resentment. When Allred, Robinson, and the bishop met, Robinson offered to pay $5, but Allred refused the compromise. The bishop then ordered the Justice of the Peace suspended until he would agree, but Allred instead appealed to the stake presidency and high council.⁶²²

St. David bishop’s counselor John McRae asked to be released because he disagreed with his bishop’s handling of tithing funds.⁶²³ When the stake presidency and high council sided with the bishop, McRae continued to stir the matter and the council ultimately excommunicated him for his intransigence in refusing to accept the decision. But then the Presiding Bishopric and First Presidency concluded that the bishop had indeed mishandled the tithing funds. Andrew then released the bishop and rescinded McRae’s excommunication, and apologies were made on both sides. However, McRae could not leave the matter alone and after another twenty years he was still appealing to the First Presidency seeking justification. By this time McRae had moved to California, and Andrew felt great relief that he no longer had jurisdiction over the problem.⁶²⁴

Andrew himself occasionally mediated civil disputes,⁶²⁵ as did the high council.⁶²⁶ For example the high council resolved a money dispute by ordering one party to pay the other $77 within a year.⁶²⁷

As a high-ranking ecclesiastical leader during this era, Andrew necessarily resolved many spiritual and secular problems among Church members.