John W. Taylor (Mormon) - Church Service and Conflict

Church Service and Conflict

Taylor was ordained as a deacon around 1872 and as a teacher in 1874. He also served as missionary in the United States, Canada and England. Taylor was asked to be an apostle and member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the church by his father. He was ordained on May 15, 1884, his 26th birthday.

Taylor was a staunch believer in the doctrine of plural marriage, and had six wives and thirty-six children. Although the church officially forbade the practice with the 1890 Manifesto, Taylor continued to privately marry additional wives and consequently resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve in October 1905. Matthias F. Cowley also resigned from the Quorum over the plural marriage dispute. The following February, Marriner W. Merrill died. The three new vacancies were filled in the April 1906 General Conference by George F. Richards, Orson F. Whitney, and David O. McKay.

Taylor disputed with the Quorum of the Twelve often after his resignation. He was finally excommunicated from the church in 1911, but he remained a believer up to his death. He died of stomach cancer at his home in Forest Dale, Salt Lake County, Utah, at 58 years of age. He was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

In August 1916, Taylor was posthumously baptized by proxy and reinstated into the church by two stake presidents. However, a year later, the First Presidency officially stated that the reinstatement was null and void. He was later officially rebaptized and on May 21, 1965 received the ordinance of Restoration of Blessings (and Priesthood) by proxy under the hands of Joseph Fielding Smith, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, with the unanimous approval of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.