Council of Fifty

In Brigham Young — Pioneer Prophet, the Council of Fifty appears as the governing body Brigham Young resuscitated in response to the revocation of the Mormon charter. Its members sometimes called it the “living constitution” — a phrase the book reads as shorthand for governance of the church by ongoing revelation rather than by any written set of scriptures or laws. It sits alongside Young’s valuation of the “living oracles” above fixed written scripture, making it a concrete institutional expression of the wider Mormon preference for continuing authority over codified text.

Context: The Council of Fifty was a secretive governing council organized by Joseph Smith in 1844 and revived under Brigham Young, intended as the political/temporal arm of the Latter-day Saint movement and envisioned as a theocratic body to administer a future Kingdom of God.

Where this appears

• Brigham Young — Pioneer Prophet — Young revives the Council as a “living constitution,” governance by ongoing revelation, after the charter’s revocation; tied to his preference for “living oracles” over written scripture.