The Counter-Hippie-Counter-Culture

Beards have been considered fashionable on and off throughout history. A fair number of our beloved prophets were adorned with marvelous beards. The Old Testament contains restrictions against trimming beards (such as in Leviticus ), and let's face it, Samson received his strength from his hair. Nobody would have batted an eye at a long-haired bearded fellow for the first hundred years or so of the church, although by the early Twentieth Century facial hair was waning in popularity, and eventually a bearded man would've had to have been born in Victorian times for his facial hair to be considered acceptable. But George Albert Smith had a nice goatee before he passed away in 1951 during the height of our most recent clean-shaven era, so even then facial hair didn't impact one's worthiness.

But everything changed when the fire nation attacked hippies hit the scene in the 1960s. It was then that the church decided that having a beard was a sin. Well not exactly, but evidence suggests some people were denied temple recommends for having facial hair, so close enough.

Not only did beards become unacceptable within the church, but so did long hair on men; the Church was unhealthily obsessed about it in the 1970s. Just type in "long hair" in the search bar on lds.org to see what we mean. Some of the policies and opinions implemented and stated during this period were astonishing (you may need to dig around to find them, because they aren't always easily accessible. But the Church magazines during that time are a great place to start).

Beards are still considered "unfashionable" and looked down upon in high-class conservative society (hence the fact that pogonophobia is still prevalent in the Church, especially at CES schools and for temple workers and missionaries). This may be changing, though, since facial/long hair is no longer associated with rebellion—among the younger age groups, that is. In all honesty, unless beards become associated with neo-Nazis or other deplorable groups, they probably will become acceptable in the Church in the future—that is, after everybody who had been alive during the 1960s is either dead or vastly outnumbered by the younger generations.