Correlation

The mid-century administrative movement within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that centralized church programs, departments, and reporting lines under priesthood — and specifically apostolic — control. In Kyle’s Mormon-history reading, Harold B. Lee is its chief architect: he pressed David O. McKay to “formalize a system of correlation,” against McKay’s preference for “a loose governing structure based on agency rather than control.” Though “Lee’s vision of a completely correlated church was not to be,” correlation still “enabled the church to continue its rapid growth through the 1960s.” Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History records the institutional consequence that mattered most for Arrington’s History Division: after McKay’s death, “Lee had used the Correlation movement to bring church departments under the direct supervision of the Quorum of the Twelve,” so that “the Priesthood thus controlled everything — even the telling of church history.” The History Division’s loss of autonomy traces directly to this centralization.

Context: Correlation refers to the LDS Church’s program (most associated with Harold B. Lee and formalized through the 1960s–70s) of standardizing curriculum, publications, and organizational structure under priesthood leadership, aiming for doctrinal consistency and centralized administrative oversight.

Where this appears

• Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History — Correlation as the mechanism by which church departments (including history-writing) came under the Quorum of the Twelve, costing the History Division its autonomy.