Testimonies

I was born a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the so-called Mormon Church), descended on both sides from ancestors who joined the church in its earliest days. All of which means, with respect to my own membership in the Church and adherence to its teachings, absolutely nothing. Every faithful member must obtain his own testimony, or witness, of the Church and its teachings.

The basis of my own testimony, as it is for the testimonies of many others, is the Book of Mormon. This book was published by Joseph Smith, the first prophet—I do not say “founder”—of the Mormon Church, when he was a young man of twenty-four years. He claimed that he did not write the book, but rather that he translated it, by the power of God, from golden plates that had been delivered to him by an angel. The angel, named Moroni, was in life a prophet in ancient America. His father, another prophet named Mormon, wrote most of the book as the history of his people, who were an offshoot of the house of Israel. The first ancestors fled from Jerusalem a few years before the city was destroyed and its inhabitants sent into exile by the Babylonians, in 587 BCE. Led by God, they made their way to a new Promised Land, in the Americas, where they settled. Soon, however, they divided into warring factions, with the Nephites generally observing the Mosaic Law and preserving its traditions, including the promise of a coming Messiah, and the Lamanites rejecting the old ways.

The high point of the Nephite history was the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ, who taught the people the fullness of the Gospel and organized His church among them. There followed a long period of righteousness and peace among the Nephites, but eventually the people declined into wickedness and the society into factional conflict. When Mormon was a young boy, war broke out between the Nephites and the Lamanites, and it continued on and off with genocidal ferocity through the rest of his life. He was a political and military leader as well as a prophet, and he could see the final destruction of the Nephites coming, so he gathered together all the people’s records and labored to condense them into one book. He wrote the book on golden plates—gold does not corrode—because he intended to hide it in the ground until God in His own time should bring it forth, to remind the house of Israel of His covenants with them, and to convince all the peoples of the earth that Jesus is the Christ. Unfortunately, Mormon was killed in battle before he could finish his book, so his son Moroni was left to complete it and hide it away, sometime around 420 CE.

The Book of Mormon made Joseph Smith famous, or infamous, by giving material form to his claim to divine revelation. Without it, he would perhaps have been one of the many self-professed prophets who might gather a few followers, but who otherwise are generally ignored. With it, he could be—and indeed he was—vilified as a fraud or dismissed as a madman, but he could not be easily disregarded. The popular appellation for the Prophet and his followers, “Mormons,” clearly demonstrated what it was that stirred the interest, along with the suspicion, of outsiders. No sooner was the book published than newspaper articles about the “gold bible fraud” appeared, and these were followed by books and pamphlets attacking the Prophet as an impostor. For his part, he held that the book proved “that God does inspire men and call them to his holy work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old; Thereby showing that he is the same God, yesterday, today, and forever.”¹

I recognize that everything about the Book of Mormon—both the story the book itself tells, and the story that Joseph Smith tells about how it came to be—can appear as strange and even outlandish. They do not fit the rationalist and materialist sensibility of modern man. Ironically, the book itself refers to this problem: Nephi, the first great prophet in it, says that when his writings shall appear, many will reject them saying, “A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible,”² while Moroni, the last prophet in it, says that his work will come forth at a time when people will “deny the revelations of God, and say that they are done away, that there are no revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor healing.”³ Because it is so strange, the Book of Mormon has become one of those books that many people dismiss without ever reading it. They assume that it must have been written by Joseph Smith, or by someone else and then appropriated by him. At the same time, many of these same people will confidently affirm that the Bible is the word of God, even though it is no less full of stories about prophets and divine revelation, and little is known for certain about how and by whom it was originally compiled. Apparently it is easier to believe the words of ancient prophets than modern ones.

I have some sympathy for this reaction; to a degree, even though I grew up in the LDS Church, it was how I felt about the Book of Mormon when as a teenager I first thought seriously about what I really believed. I did not simply dismiss the book, however, but actually read it, in part, as I remember, to fulfill some kind of requirement for the Mormon religious life award in Scouting. At the same time, in Seminary—an early morning religious education program for high school students—I was studying the life of Joseph Smith, so I knew something about his education (or lack thereof) and early life experiences. I also had heard numerous times the counsel of Moroni—“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost”⁴—so I tried it out. At first nothing happened, but then one day, walking home after playing tennis, with my mind wandering, I received an extremely strong impression—so strong that I still remember it quite clearly—that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon, and it was exactly what he said it was, an ancient book of scripture that he had translated by divine power. At the time, I had not heard of theories that the Book of Mormon was written by someone else of Smith’s day, but on examination they are no more convincing than the theory that Smith himself, with his few months of formal education, wrote it: no one ever claimed to have actually written the book, and no original source has ever been found.

I have read the Book of Mormon a number of times since my first experience with it, and each time I have discovered new things that deepen my understanding and strengthen my testimony of it. I mention only one small example. The second or third time I read the book, I found the last part of it to be quite ragged, with a number of passages that seemed to bring the book to a close, only to be followed by more text.⁵ For some time this section of the book bothered me, until I realized that I was looking at it wrong. I was not reading it sufficiently literally, as the work of Mormon and Moroni. I needed to ask what was going on in their lives as they wrote this section. When I looked at it this way, the solution to the problem immediately appeared, and it made me feel personally close to the two ancient prophets. They were fighting in the great war against the Lamanites that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Nephite people. Every time they faced a battle, they had to assume the worst, that they would be killed, so they had to conclude their book and hide it. They could not leave it to be found by the Lamanites, who would undoubtedly destroy it. When they survived a battle, they could recover their book and continue writing, until the next battle loomed. If Joseph Smith had really written the Book of Mormon, the ragged ending would have been a subtly brilliant literary device, although to the best of my knowledge he never drew attention to it.

For me, the most important effect of the Book of Mormon has been to increase my understanding of, gratitude to, and love for the Savior, Jesus Christ. It includes, in the book of 3 Nephi, what deserves to be recognized as a fifth Gospel, different from but complementary to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament. Like these, it tells the story of Jesus’ birth, teachings, passion, and resurrection, but it does so from the point of view of the Nephites in the Americas. In this way, it affirms even more powerfully than they the universality of the Savior’s mission. The Book of Mormon also contains what I consider to be the most moving explanation of the Savior’s atonement in all of Scripture. It comes in a sermon by the prophet Alma, who in his younger days was a rebel against the church, and had something of a Paul-on-the-road- to-Damascus conversion experience, so he knew first-hand the need for repentance and the atonement. As he explains it, the Savior would “go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled, which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.”⁶

Calling the Book of Mormon “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion,” the Prophet Joseph Smith claimed that “a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”⁷ That has been my experience. There are many great books, and, life being short, no one can read them all. I would say, however, that it would behoove anyone to read, and seriously consider, this particular book.

Notes:
¹ Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. Brigham H. Roberts, 2nd ed., Rev., 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1974) 1: 65. (Doctrine and Covenants 20: 11-12.)
² 2 Nephi 29: 3.
³ Moroni 9: 7.
⁴ Moroni 10: 4.
⁵ See 3 Nephi 29-30, Mormon 3: 17-22, 5: 8-24, 7: 1-10, 9: 31-36; Ether 4-5; 12: 6-41; Moroni 10: 2-34.
⁶ Alma 7: 11-13.
⁷ History of the Church, 4: 461.

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Roger M. Barrus is Elliott Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where he has taught since 1982. He received his bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Michigan State University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in Government from Harvard University. He has published articles and contributed book chapters on American government and politics, American foreign policy, and political philosophy. He has co-edited two books on American government. He reviews books on Mormonism and Utah for the Western Historical Quarterly, and recently posted a long essay on Mormon history and Utah politics on Square Two. His most recent publications are translations (with a colleague in the Classics Department) of Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras. At present, he is working on Dante’s political philosophy and his Comedy. Barrus fulfilled a mission for the LDS Church in Spain, and has served as a Sunday School teacher, elders quorum president, bishop, high councilor, counselor in a stake presidency, and counselor in a mission presidency. He has taught an Institute class since 1998. He was one of a small group of educators and business people who founded Southern Virginia College, in Buena Vista, VA, as an independent four-year institution, dedicated to serving the LDS community.

Posted October 2011

[Click to read English version.]

ブルース・K・ゲール

わたしは，この15年間の大半を科学者らしい考え方を身につけることに費やしてきました。つまり，聞くことすべてに疑問を投げかけ，自分が持っている証拠や学んできた事柄と一致するかどうか検証するという姿勢です。このような特性を伸ばしてきたおかげで，科学者またエンジニアであるわたしのキャリアだけでなく，宗教についての理解を深める上でも益を受けてきました。正直，わたしは何事もまず疑ってかかります。これは正しいのだろうか。真実なのだろうか。このような問いかけと，末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会が教える福音について自分が経験したことを合わせて考えると，わたしにとってたどりつく結論はただ一つ――末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会の福音と教えは真実であり，それに従えば人は神のもとへ，そしてこの世の幸福へと導かれるということに尽きます。

教会の教えは，時折，受け入れるのが難しいときがあります。14歳の少年が父なる神とイエス・キリストに会って言葉を交わしたのでしょうか？　そうです。その少年が天使の導きによってニューヨーク州北部の丘に隠されていた金版を見つけ，それが翻訳されてモルモン書になったのでしょうか？　そうです。今日も神は地上の預言者と話されるのでしょうか？　そうです。神はわたしたち一人一人と交信し，わたしたちの生活を導いてくださるのでしょうか？　そのとおりです。このような例は数多くあります。どうしたらこれらのことが真実だと知ることができるのでしょうか。説明しましょう。

モルモン書の預言者アルマは神に関する事柄が真実であるかどうかを知る方法を教えています。アルマは預言者たちの教えを種にたとえ，その種を植えて成長するかどうか試してみるように勧めています。はっきりと，彼は「言葉を試し」てみるようにすべての人に勧めています。ちょうど科学者がするように，してみなさいということです。イエス・キリストの教えに基づいて仮説を立て，それを検証するのです。わたしは実際にやってみました。わたしは預言者とイエス・キリストの教えを試してみたのです。その結果，確かに約束されたとおりになりました。わたしは少なくとも自分自身に対して，これらの教えが真実であることを証明したのです。例を幾つか挙げてみましょう。

福音の最も基本的な教えの一つに，神が確かにおられて，わたしたちの必要に応じてくださるという教えがあります。わたしの質問や懇願に神が答えてくださったという証拠はあまりにも多くて，全部を挙げたら多くのページが必要になるでしょう。神に祈るとき，その祈りに答えてくださることを知っています。そのこたえはいつも瞬時に与えられるでしょうか。そうではありあません。こたえはいつもわたしの望んだとおりのものでしょうか。そうではありません。しかし，わたしは神が祈りに答えてくださることを知っています。道に迷ったとき，神は，多くの場合すぐに，そして劇的な方法で道を示してくださいます。どうしたらいいか思い迷うとき，主は方向を示し，その方向を選択したわたしを支えてくださいます。悩んだり，困難な状況に置かれたりするとき，祈ることができます。そんなときは，ほぼ瞬時に慰めや気遣いを感じます。家庭でも職場でも知識が必要なときには，祈れば主がお授けになることができる知識を受けることができます。願い求めれば神は何でも望みをかなえてくださるのでしょうか。そうではありません。イエス・キリストの教えと一致した生活をしていれば，何を，いつ，どのように願い求めるべきか知ることができるということを，経験を通して学びました。わたしの願いが聖文に約束されている事柄に添うものであり，わたしがへりくだった気持ちでそれを願い求めているならば，望む祝福が与えられます。ほんとうに神はわたしの祈りに答えてくださいます。わたしがそれを信じるまでに，神は何度わたしの祈りに答えてくださる必要があるでしょうか。

末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会には，世の中のほとんどの人と違う行いを会員に求める教えが幾つもあります。例えば，教会の会員はアルコール，コーヒーまたはお茶を飲んだり，喫煙や有害な薬物を使用したりすることを避けるように教えられています。実際のところ，この教えに従えば大変気まずい思いをすることは火を見るよりも明らかな社交の場に出たことが何度もありますが，このような物質を避けることでほんとうに祝福されてきたと感じています。頭脳は明晰であり，健康にも恵まれています。何よりも大切なのは，神を近くに感じられることです。このように，この勧告には多くの身体的，霊的根拠があります。この教えは明らかに真理なのです。もう一つ，わたしの生活を大きく祝福してきた「純潔の律法」または「貞潔の律法」という教えがあります。これは，結婚前にはすべての性的活動を避け，結婚後は完全に伴侶への貞潔を守るという教えです。この戒めを守ることで，毎日祝福を感じています。それというのも，この戒めを破ったらどうなるか，友人や世の中の人々の姿を目にしているからです。この戒めを破れば大変な苦痛と悩みと悲しみを経験するのに，なぜ世の多くの人々はたいしたことではないと教えるのか不思議です。この真理を教えられ，理解していることをほんとうに感謝しています。それは確かに神の言葉です。

このほかにも神の戒めを列挙することができます。古代の戒めもあれば，比較的最近に現代の預言者によって啓示された戒めもあります。いずれにしろ，個人的に試してみたものはすべて（つまり知っているものはすべて）真実であり正しいと分かっています。神が確かにおられることを知るうえで重要なのは，物理的証拠よりも霊的な証拠です。呼び求めるとき，神は答えてくださいます。必要なときに方向を示してくださいます。聖文や預言者の言葉について深く考えるとき，喜びで胸がいっぱいになり，その言葉が真実であるという知識で満たされます。明らかにここには一つのパターンが存在します。それは神が現実におられ，今日も預言者に語られており，神の御子イエス・キリストこそわたしたちが神のみもとに戻ることを可能にしてくださる御方であって，主に従うことを選べば，わたしたちは死んでも再び生きることができることを示しています。つまり，末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会がイエス・キリストの真実の教えをすべて有する教会であって，教会は，この教会で教えられている神の計画に従うだけで，わたしたちを神のみもとへ導き，この世においても幸福をもたらしてくれるとわたしは知っています。

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ブルース・K・ゲールは1995年にブリガム・ヤング大学で機械工学の学士号を，2000年にユタ大学から生体工学の博士号を授与されています。ルイジアナ工科大学で生物医学工学の助教として勤務した後，2001年にユタ大学に戻り，現在は機械工学准教授を務めています。

ゲール博士は現在，生物医学マイクロ流体工学ユタ州センター・フォア・エクセレンスのディレクターおよび，2005年に自らの研究室から立ち上げたワサッチマイクロ流体工学社の最高科学責任者も務めています。

ゲール教授はこの10年間，マイクロ流体工学，ナノテクノロジー，および微小化学物質分析システム（マイクロTAS）の分野で研究を続けてきました。特に，様々なマイクロ流体的部品を使った複雑で難易度の高い医学的および生物学的検定法を完成させるのに必要なラボオンチップに関心を寄せています。具体的には，医学的および生物学的検定のためのデザイン，シミュレーション，そして製造のスピードを上げるマイクロ流体工学的ツールボックスの開発に励んでいます。最終目標は，医療の個別化を可能にする基盤を開発することにより，一人一人の患者の必要に合わせた治療を可能にすることです。また，その他の専門分野にはタンパク質やセンサーをナノスケールのパターン形成，ナノ粒子の特性化，およびナノファブリケーション技術も含まれます。

2011年10月掲示

My parents took care to raise me in conformity with Christian principles, with love and encouragement for me to follow my own interests and choose my own path. The Congregational church that we attended encouraged scripture reading and memorization, both of which I pursued energetically.

From an early age I showed great interest in nature and the natural sciences, taxing my parents’ ability to lead me in directions so different from their own interests and experience. At the age of five years, I asked my mother whether the Moon had a face on the other side (I already was well aware that the Moon always kept the same side toward Earth and that the far side was not the mythical “dark side of the Moon”). My mother, a former school teacher, responded with the perfect answer: “Nobody knows.” Thus she opened to me the notion that our knowledge of the Universe was not a settled body of doctrine, but an ever-growing body of knowledge to which even I might one day contribute. During bouts of childhood illness, my father would stop by the public library and bring home a wildly eclectic stack of books, of which I most enjoyed those on nature, exploration, history, and biography. For Christmas in 1954 my parents gave me a newly issued handbook of the heavens, The Little Golden Book of Stars, which I literally wore out and memorized. Two highlights of the book included a table of data on the planets, liberally decorated with question marks, which confirmed that there was still much to be learned. The other was a modest two-page spread headed “Rocket to the Moon,” which began, “Given time and money for research, a rocket capable of reaching the moon will certainly be made.” The author would probably have been astounded to know that the first moon probe would be launched less than four years later. In high school I resolved to study chemistry and physics, which I regarded as a better foundation for the study of the Solar System than astronomy or geology.

Meanwhile my religious self-education continued. In the course of reading the Bible, many points of doctrine struck me quite strongly. The insistence of the Gospels that Jesus Christ was the creator of the Earth implied to me that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the same as Christ. Paul’s warnings about churches run by “hirelings” definitely caught my attention. Although I respected and felt love and appreciation for our minister, the nagging thought kept coming to me that he was without authority and should not be a salaried “hireling”: he was evidently a fully committed Christian and completely sincere, but I doubted his authority. The references to anointing, to the laying on of hands, and to baptism for the dead in the Bible were simply to be ignored. They were dismissed as “practices of the primitive church,” as if we were now too grown-up for that nonsense. The role of the Temple intrigued me. I was aware of the belief in some churches that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit were one and the same person, and I decided that this was untenable in light of the many passages of scripture in which they speak of, or to, each other as distinct personages. When Christ on the cross prayed “Father, forgive them” he clearly was not talking to himself.

Attempts to discuss theology with my parents were not entirely satisfactory. My mother faithfully recited the doctrinal beliefs of the church we belonged to and felt uncomfortable discussing interpretation of scripture, preferring to leave that task for those educated in the ministry. My father, an exemplary Christian who lived a selfless life of service in the YMCA, turned out to have no theology: his willingness to emulate Christ coexisted with a deep impatience with sectarian doctrines and especially with doctrinal differences and disputes. Neither was comfortable with the concept of the Holy Spirit. Yet the Holy Spirit was real: at the age of twelve, I was given a remarkable insight, that I would one day marry a girl named Peg. I knew no girls with that name, and no one wanted to hear about my experience. When, at the age of fourteen, I was invited by the minister to give the sermon on Youth Sunday, I talked about missionary work, not fine points of doctrine.

So it continued until I was nearly forty years old. I was a faithful church-going family man, a professor at MIT, taking my wife Peg and our four children to church every Sunday, teaching Sunday School and singing in the choir. When we told the minister that the Holy Spirit testified to us of the truth of certain things said by him in his sermons, he responded impatiently, “Don’t mock me.” It slowly became clear that he was a hired preacher, not guided by the Holy Spirit, who bought sermons from other hired preachers and read them to us. His true function was as a social worker and a motivational speaker. The Holy Spirit was talking to us, not to him. We left that church on Easter Sunday with the feeling that we were still Christians, but our church had strayed away and left us behind. We never went back. My father’s distrust of organized religion had apparently bred true.

A few weeks later two young Mormon missionaries knocked on our door when we were out on errands. Peg’s mother, who was visiting and knew nothing of our decision, answered the door and told them that we were “perfectly happy with their church.” But the missionaries were strongly impressed to come back to speak to us personally. They did, and I set up an appointment with them to come by the next Sunday afternoon. Peg, hiding behind the front door, was appalled: “But we decided not to follow organized religion!”

The next Sunday afternoon the missionaries arrived. We hustled our children out of the room lest they be contaminated by these unproved proselyters. We sat down, Peg with her arms folded and a less than inviting look on her face, and I threw out a nearly equally cordial challenge: “I must warn you that we have a very negative view of organized religion. We are Christians, but we have come to the sad conclusion that there is no church out there that has any real authority or power. We fear that the true church was lost in the century or so after the death of Christ and the Apostles.” Much to our astonishment, the older missionary smiled back at me and said, “Have we got news for you!”

The next few weeks were an intense blizzard of activity. The missionaries visited us daily, usually staying for dinner. All the questions about religion that had been haunting us for years, polished by reading, among many others, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, the Popol Vuh, the Book of the Hopi, the Upanishads, the writings and lives of John of the Cross, Teresa de Avila, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Søren Kierkegaard, and the inspirational Christian works of C. S. Lewis, were aired. Usually the missionaries had a ready and satisfactory answer. Sometimes they confessed ignorance, went to study out the issue, and returned with answers. Never once did they shoot from the hip with unsatisfactory answers, as the Holy Spirit testified to us of their truthfulness. Here at last, in full integrity, was the true Gospel of Jesus Christ we had found in the Bible, trimmed of the inventions of uninspired men. All the purity of truth that pervades and underlies Christian belief was laid out as a seamless, clean, unblemished cloth. All the sectarian dross was washed away. Paul’s vision, in I Corinthians, of a single, united Church free of doctrinal contention alone remained. And the doctrinal foundation of that true church could only be known with certainty by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, as prescribed by the Epistle of James. Through that testimony the strength and integrity of Christian doctrine was restored to me, based on the firm foundation of the Bible and building a single coherent, harmonious Church upon that foundation, free of the divisive doctrinal disputes of the other churches I had studied. Biblical scholarship, however important, was an artifact of the intellect, rarely capable of resolving doctrinal disputes. Faith, by contrast, was the key to salvation; not just belief in anything, but belief in things not seen which are true – and the truth could be known spiritually. The intellectual and legalistic Talmudic and Midrashic pilpul that engulfed the Old Testament had been illuminated by the New Testament’s gift of the Holy Spirit, which threw light into the darkest corners of scriptural commentary. The Holy Spirit was truly a “guide for the perplexed” with greater authority than Maimonides.

As a professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT, I was on the forefront of the exploration of the Solar System. Much of my work centered on the earliest history of the Solar System, essentially on the mechanics of creation. I was intimately familiar with the evidence, from the chronology of planetary formation through the geological history of Earth, the cratering record on the planets, the composition and evolution of their surfaces and interiors, and the relationships between ancient small bodies (asteroids and comets) and the planets. I was also familiar with the literature of “scientific creationism,” which I found to be appallingly bad, full of glaring factual blunders and astonishing lapses of logic. I found their personal interpretations of scripture to be indefensible in the face of overwhelming evidence. Their mindset seemed to be that science was the opposite of religion; that their interpretations of scripture were right and anyone who disagreed with them must be evil, intent on destroying religion. But the geological record is as much the work of God as the scriptures are. They together constitute two independent witnesses, satisfying the Old Testament requirement that two or more independent witnesses are required to attest to truth. That the two witnesses, science and scripture, should see different things is no surprise. After all, your own two eyes see different scenes; each eye sees things the other does not see, but by combining the witness of your two eyes you can see in depth, something neither eye can do alone. To assume that one witness is correct and the other is lying is to lose all perspective. It is to become half-blind. As the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin expressed it, “Science and religion are two complementary faces of one and the same underlying reality.”

I see no conflict between science and religion. I see many conflicts between the misunderstandings of science and the flawed interpretation of scripture of men who lack both scientific knowledge and guidance by the Holy Spirit. I invite any person who desires to strengthen his understanding and testimony of creation to study both the scientific and scriptural evidence prayerfully, with the goal of learning and understanding. Properly understood, this study will provide you with a rich and deep perspective. Science will tell you the when and where and how of creation; the scriptures will tell you who and why.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with its long tradition of free inquiry and of individuals prayerfully testing every point of doctrine for themselves, is fully compatible with the scientific method. The priesthood is held by every worthy male, and any may be called to positions of authority and responsibility in the Church. There is no paid clergy. The Church is led by Jesus Christ, as its name clearly attests. There is not and has never been a “Mormon Church,” a phrase originally invented by enemies of the Church to avoid acknowledging what it really is. We have the priesthoods held anciently by Aaron, by Abraham, and by Jesus Christ himself, restored in our time. We have temples, restored by divine direction, in which the ancient ordinances of salvation, including baptism for the dead, are carried out. We believe in the reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in purpose and three in number. They are no more one person than Paul and Apollos (I Cor. 3:6-8) were the same person.

I testify that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of mankind, which I can say only by the witness of the Spirit. I further testify that the Book of Mormon is another witness of Jesus Christ. I believe in the words of Christ, when he said “be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This is our challenge and commandment. I know of no other church that believes that these words of Christ are literally true.

 
 
See Dr. Lewis’s video testimony at http://lds.org/pages/we-lived-with-god?lang=eng.

———————————————-

John S. Lewis (Jr.) is Professor Emeritus of Planetary Sciences and former Co-Director of the Space Engineering Research Center at the University of Arizona. He was previously a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Most recently, he was a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing for the 2005-2006 academic year. His research interests center on the application of chemistry to astronomical problems, including the origin of the Solar System, the evolution of planetary atmospheres, the origin of organic matter in planetary environments, the chemical structure and history of icy satellites, the hazards of comet and asteroid bombardment of Earth, and the extraction, processing, and use of the energy and material resources of nearby space. He has served as member or chairman of a wide variety of NASA and NAS advisory committees and review panels. He has written seventeen books, including undergraduate and graduate level texts and popular science books, and has authored over 150 scientific publications.

In 2007-9 he and his wife Peg served a mission in the International Zone of the Family History Library, concentrating on research and document translation from Latin, French, German, Italian, and Dutch sources.

Family:
Dr. Lewis is the son of John S. Lewis and Elsie Vandenbergh Lewis. He has one sister, the former Linda Vandenbergh Lewis, wife of John Lloyd Samuelson. Dr. Lewis is descended on his father’s side from early settlers of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and immigrants from Sussex, England, and on his mother’s side from early Dutch and French religious refugees who settled in Nieuw Amsterdam in the early 1600s. He is married to the former Ruth Margaret Adams of Darien, CT. They have six children and, at latest count, 30.6 grandchildren.

Education:
Dr.. Lewis received his high school education in Melrose, MA, and in Camp Hill, PA. He studied chemistry and astrophysics as a National Merit Scholar at Princeton University, doing undergraduate research supervised by Prof. Robert N. Pease (Physical Chemistry) and George B. Field (Astrophysics). After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Princeton in 1962, he was a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Dartmouth College, receiving his MA in Inorganic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Alexander J. Kaczmarczyk in 1964. In 1968 he received a Ph. D. in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) where he held a National Defense Education Act (NDEA) research fellowship. His dissertation research on the geochemistry of Venus and on cosmic-ray-produced noble gas nuclides in iron meteorites was supervised by Prof. Harold C. Urey, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

Academic Positions:
In 1968 Dr. Lewis was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Assistant Professor of Geology and Geophysics at MIT. He was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Department of Chemistry in 1972 and received tenure two years later. He was a Visiting Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences of the California Institute of Technology in the spring semester of 1974. In 1979 he was promoted to Professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT. In 1982 he spent a sabbatical year at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) of the University of Arizona and accepted a position as Professor of Planetary Science in LPL. He was Co-Director for Science of the NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center for Utilization of Local Planetary Resources from 1988 to 2007. He spent the academic year 2005-2006 as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and retired to Professor Emeritus status at LPL in 2007.

Business and Consultation:
Dr. Lewis was a consultant for AVCO Corporation and Dynatrend on planetary entry probe design, and in the mid-1970s for Martin Marietta Aerospace (MMA) on spacecraft science capabilities for missions to Venus and to the outer planets. He joined the Board of Directors of American Rocket Company (AmRoc) in 1987 at the invitation of its President, George Koopman. AmRoc developed critical proprietary designs for hybrid rocket engines until the tragic death of Mr. Koopman in an automobile accident in 1989. Space Development Corporation (SpaceDev) was founded by James B. Benson and acquired AmRoc’s hybrid rocket technology at the suggestion of Dr. Lewis. One of these hybrid engine designs was used to propel SpaceShipOne on the first fully private journey into space.

He has lectured at over a hundred colleges, universities, and research centers around the world. He has made a number of television specials for the Discovery Channels in the United States, Canada, and England, the Science Fiction channel, the History Channel, and German and Japanese educational television, in addition to some sixty television interviews. In recent years he has been a commentator on China Central Television (CCTV9) for manned spaceflights (Shenzhou 6, 7) and unmanned lunar missions (Chang’e 1, 2).

Posted October 2011

[Click to read English version.]

なぜわたしは教会に所属し，その教えを信じるのか
クレイトン･M･クリステンセン、ハーバード･ビジネススクール教授

年齢を重ねるに従い，末日聖徒イエス･キリスト教会に対するわたしの思い入れが深まっています。そこには二つの理由があります。一つは，わたしが組織としての教会に所属していることから来る理由です。教会が組織であることから，わたしには毎日の生活の中で，人々に助けの手を差し伸べる機会が与えられています。このことは，キリストの教えを単に信じるだけではなく，それを実践しようとするわたしの努力を後押しし，時には強いるほどの力を持っています。二つめは，教会で教えられている教義が真実であることを，わたしが信じていることから来る理由です。聖書とモルモン書を研究することを通して，わたしは，これらの書物にイエス･キリストの完全な福音が記されていることを，御霊の力を通して理解するに至りました。そして，これらの書物を学び，天の御父の御心を行う努力を傾けることにより，この確信はさらに深まりました。

より良い人生を個人として追求するのではなく，組織だった宗教である末日聖徒イエス･キリスト教会に所属する選択をしたのはなぜでしょうか。それは，キリストの教えの本質を理解し，実践するうえで教会が助けになるからです。この目的を果たすため，教会には専任の聖職者を置いていません。また，教えたり，世話をしたりする牧師や祭司を雇っていません。そのため，わたしたちは相互に教え合い，助け合う必要があります。わたしの考えでは，それがキリストのお教えになった，クリスチャンとしての暮らしの核となるものなのです。わたしは，専任の聖職者が雇われている教会に所属している友人のことを，気の毒に思うようになりました。彼らは，教会員の間で教えたり助け合ったりすることを特別な訓練を受けた専門家に「外部委託」することで，どれほどの喜びをふいにしているかに気付いていません。

数年前，あるニュース雑誌の記事を読みました。そこには，急激な春の訪れによって大量の雪解け水が押し寄せ，西部諸州が洪水に見舞われたことが書かれていました。掲載されていた写真には，地元の教会指導者からの電話でほんの数時間のうちに集結した，ソルトレーク・シティーの何千人というモルモン教徒の市民が写っていました。彼らは氾濫した水の流れをせき止めるために土のうを積んでいました。難局の最前線へと人々を配置する，まるで軍隊のようにみごとな指揮管理に対し，驚嘆の意が記事に記されていました。ところが，翌週のある記事の別の写真には，同じく洪水に見舞われた他の州のある町の30数名の居住者が写っていました。彼らは，州兵が土のうを積んでいるそばで，庭の椅子に腰掛け，本を読んでいました。その記事の執筆者は，その違いが末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会の「組織としての効率性」によるものだと結論づけていましたが，大切な要素を完全に見逃してしまっています。何千もの人々がそうすることが本能であるかのように集まり，作業に取りかかりましたが，その理由は，彼らがモルモンだからです。彼らは世界中の100以上の国で，時を選ばず，毎週，そのような活動に携わっています。写真の例は何も特別なことではありませんでした。モルモンの典型的な日常なのです。

これを説明するために，過去数年の間にわたしが行った教会員としての一般的な活動を考えてみましょう。ボストン地区では，大学院生や若い家族の引っ越しが頻繁にあるため，何週かごとにリストが回覧されます。そして，次の土曜日に，ある家族の荷物の積み込み，あるいは荷下ろしを手伝える人がいるかどうかを確認するのです。わたしと子供たちはいつも名前を記入し，ほかの5－15人の男性や子供たちと2－3時間肩を並べて，引っ越しの手伝いをします。また，最低でも月に1回，必要に応じてさらに数回，お年を召したラテン系のご夫婦を訪問するように割り当てを受けています。奥さんは体調に問題を抱え，ご主人はアルコール依存症と闘っています。彼らは市内の荒れた地域にある，老朽化の進んだアパートに住んでいました。その年の間に，ある教会員が彼らのアパートを改修し，電気回線を修理し，じゅうたんを敷き直しました。また，ワシントンD.C.での彼らの特別な家族パーティーに，他の地域で暮らし経済的に苦労している彼らの子供たちが参加できるよう，旅費を出し合いました。毎週日曜日には，わたしは教会の託児クラスで1歳半から3歳までの14人の子供たちを2時間世話しました。両親たちが安心して日曜学校に参加できるようにするためです。妻のクリスティーヌも同じように働きました。彼女が受けた割り当ては，出産した人や病気の人がいるとの知らせを受けたときに，1日，1週間，あるいは数か月間，彼らの手助けをしてくれる人々を電話で募ることでした。すぐ食べられる食事を運んだり，掃除や洗濯をしたりして助けてくれる人を探すのです。

前の段落で述べたことで重要なのは，わたしたちの経験が何ら特別なことではないということです。会員のだれもが同じように奉仕活動をしています。単に割り当てを待つのではなく，自分から人助けの機会を探しています。わたしたちはいつも与え，そして受け取っています。例えば，わたしたちが家を手狭に感じるようになってしばらくしたころ，それまでよりも大きな家を見つけ，引っ越すことにしました。そこで，引っ越しのトラックの積み下ろしを助けてくださるようにお願いをしました。その朝，助けに来てくれた人の中にはミット･ロムニーがいました。彼は現在のマサチューセッツ州知事ですが，そのときは米国上院議員選挙に落選したばかりのときでした。彼は鎖骨を骨折していましたが，ゆっくりと家とトラックを往復して片手で持てる荷物を運んでくれました。モルモン教会にはいつもこのような心があります。強きが弱きを助け，弱きが強きを助けますが，だれが強く，だれが弱いかなどと考える人はどこにもいません。こうして，驚くほどの相互の愛情が築かれます。助けを必要としている人に手を差し伸べることで，彼らに対する愛と尊敬の気持ちがはぐくまれるのです。

わたしの子供たちは親であるわたしと妻だけが育てたのではなく，すばらしい人々の集う共同体で育ちました。世界の第一線で活躍する物質科学者，ハーバード･ビジネス･スクールの学部長，足病医，そしてアメリカンエクスプレス社の副社長などの肩書きを持つ人々が，息子たちのボーイスカウトの隊長たちでした。このような資産家や地位の高い人々が，無私の心で息子たちに応急手当や市民権について教え，雪の中でともにキャンプをしてくれました。子供たちは高校生のころ，「早朝セミナリー」に参加しました。これは，平日の午前6時30分から7時15分まで教会員の自宅に集まって聖典の勉強をするクラスです。教える女性たちは，宗教学や神学の学位を持っていたわけではありません。芸術，法律，看護，あるいは文学などを学んできた人たちです。彼女たちはクラスの前日に数時間かけて準備をし，翌朝眠たげな高校生が福音の原則をより深く学び，正しいことを行うという固い決意を持って学校に向かえるように知恵を絞ります。クリスティーヌとわたしは子育てをしませんでした。無私の精神を持ったクリスチャンの共同体が彼らを信仰深く，有能な大人になることに大きな役割を担ってくれていました。このような男性や女性に感謝の意を表すると，彼らは例外なく，奉仕の機会が与えられたことへの感謝を述べるだけです。奉仕をすることで，彼らが成長できるからです。

専任の牧師を雇わないため，教会におけるすべての説教やレッスンは老若男女を問わず普通の教会員が行います。すなわち，わたしたちはお互いに学ぶ機会をいただいているということです。個々人の人生において神に従おうと懸命に努めている，あらゆる階層の人々からです。事実，わたしのこれまでの経験では，イエス･キリストの福音の最も深遠な事柄は，社会の基準から言えばそのような奥深さを有しているとは言い難い人たちから学んできました。例えば，10年ほど前のこと，わたしはボストン地区の大学生たちの集う教会で監督として働いていました。いわば素人牧師です。ある日曜日の集会で悔い改めについての話をするよう，大学2年生に割り当てました。いまだに彼の話を忘れることができません。「わたしたちは時として，悔い改めがゆっくりと進むものだと考えがちですが，それは間違っています。変化は一瞬です。時間がかかるということは，変化していないということです。」そのときまで，わたしはある悪い習慣を克服しようと努力を重ねていましたが，すぐその場で「変化しない」ことを捨て，行いを改める決意を固めたのです。この教会以外で，若く，経験の浅い学生が，それほどまでに深遠な教訓を監督にもたらしてくれるところがあるでしょうか。

上述のようなモルモン教徒が，ほかの宗教を信じる非常にたくさんの人々よりも愛情に満ち，無私の気持ちが強く，優秀であるということではないと固く信じています。しかしながらほかと異なるのは，奉仕されるのではなく，奉仕をするという特質を生かす環境にわたしたちが置かれ，行動していることです。そして，それを生かすことで，さらにそれがわたしたちの身に付いていきます。

成功した裕福な人々には並はずれた才能やすばらしい心根を持つ人々も多いですが，彼らを困らせている悩みの一つは，彼らは，同じように成功し，裕福である人々とともに過ごす時間が多いということです。そのために，助けの必要な人々と接する機会がありません。クリスチャンとしての生活の基盤であるモルモン教会に感謝を感じるのは，わたしが助けの手を差し伸べることのできる人々と接する機会をいただいていることです。以前に友人にこのように話したことがあります。「キリストが教えてくださったとおりに生活を送りたいとほんとうに考えているのであれば，モルモン教会に来てください。わたしたちの信じていることを信じる必要はありません。しかし，もしもキリストの教えを実践したいなら，本来の教えはここで実践されています。」これが，わたしが末日聖徒イエス･キリスト教会に所属することを決めた理由です。

次に，なぜわたしが教会の教えを信じているのかということについて述べたいと思います。わたしはすばらしいモルモン教徒の家庭に生まれ育ちました。成長するに従って，教会の教えを信じない理由がほとんどないと感じるようになりました。両親は教えに対して深い信仰を持っており，彼らの模範と励ましは力強いものでした。わたしは両親に信頼を寄せ，彼らがイエス･キリストの福音を信じていることを知っていました。しかしながら，自分自身でそのことを知ったのは24歳になってからでした。

わたしはイギリスのオックスフォード大学でローズ奨学金を受けました。それまでのように守られた環境から遠く離れて数週間暮らしたときに，新しい環境ではモルモン教の教えに従うことが非常に不都合だと感じました。この記事の前半部分で述べた事柄をオックスフォードのモルモン教徒として行うことは，同じ奨学金を得た人々がオックスフォードでの経験を価値あるものとしてきた数々の事柄に参加する機会を奪ってしまうことを意味していました。そのため，モルモン教の教えが疑いなく真実であるかどうかを，自分自身で確かめる時が来たと判断しました。

わたしはそれ以前にモルモン書を何度か読んでいました。正確には7回ですが，いつも両親や教師から課題として与えられたために読んだだけでした。しかし，このときには，その書物が真実なのかまやかしなのかを確かめるという目的を持っていました。そのため，夜11時からの1時間を，クイーンズカレッジの冷えた自室の暖炉の脇でモルモン書を読む時間として充てました。毎回ひざまずき，声に出して祈りました。この本が神の真理であるかどうかを知るためにこの書物を読んでいることを，毎晩神に訴えました。そして，この質問に対する答えを必要としていることを伝えました。もしも真実でなければ，この教会のために時間を無駄にしたくありませんでしたし，ほかの大切な事柄を探求するつもりでいたからです。しかし，もしも真実であるなら，人生をかけて教えに従い，ほかの人々も同様にできるように助けていくと神に約束していました。

そして，椅子に腰掛け，モルモン書を読みました。1ページずつ立ち止まり，書かれていたことについて考えました。そのページの教えが，人生を送るうえでどのような意味があるかを自分に問いかけました。それから再びひざまずき，この書物の真実性を教えてくださるようにと声に出して祈りました。そしてもう一度腰掛け，ページをめくり，残りの時間，同じことを繰り返しました。毎晩このように続けたのです。

こうして何週間かたった1975年10月のある晩，祈ってから椅子に腰掛け，本を開くと，驚嘆すべき御霊が部屋に満ち，わたしの体を包んでいることを感じました。それほどに強い平安と愛の気持ちを感じたのは生まれて初めてのことです。涙があふれ出し，それを抑えようとは思いませんでした。そのときわたしは，それまでの人生で感じたどのようなものよりも強力な理解の源泉によって，自分の手の中にある書物が真実であることを知ったのです。涙で視界がぼやけていました。しかし，本を開き，再び読み始めると，それまでのわたしには分からなかった，わたしたちのための神の計画の明瞭さと偉大さを行間に見ることができたのです。その時間の間，御霊がわたしにとどまりました。そして，その後毎晩，モルモン書を手にして祈り，椅子に腰掛けると同じ御霊が訪れました。この経験を通して，わたしの心と人生が永遠に変わりました。

このことは，地平線に向かってできる限り遠くを見渡し，見える範囲の事柄だけで十分だと満足してしまっていたかのようです。そのような気持ちでモルモン書を読み始めましたが，古い地平線の向こう側には，わたしたちが何者であり，神がわたしたちのために何を準備してくださっているかということに関わる，すばらしいものや真理がもっとたくさん隠れていることが分かりました。わたしは，自分が何も分かっていないということを，分かっていなかったのです。

わたしはオックスフォードを訪問するのが好きです。世界で最初の大学の美しく，歴史的な町並みには学生や観光客があふれていますが，わたしにとっては神聖な土地です。実にモルモン書が真実であること，そしてイエスがキリストであり生ける神の子であるという，根幹となる答えを受けた場所なのです。そして，その土地で，確かに神がわたしの天の御父であられることを知りました。わたしは神の子です。神はわたしを愛し，わたしの名前さえもご存じです。また，ジョセフ･スミスについても学びました。モルモン書を翻訳し，末日聖徒イエス･キリスト教会を組織したその人は，ペテロとモーセが預言者であったと同じように，神の預言者でした。オックスフォードを訪問し，わたしの心に宿ってこのような答えをもたらしてくれた，美しく力強い御霊を思い起こすことが好きです。

大人になってからの生活では，数多くの奇跡を目にし，自分でも経験をしてきました。聖典で言うところの「御霊の賜物」によるものです。神の力によって病人を癒しました。異言の賜物で語ったこともあります。永遠に関する示現を見るという祝福にもあずかりました。そして，知っておくべき将来の出来事が明らかにされたこともありました。これらはまさに神からの賜物であり，わたしの人生にとって偉大な祝福です。しかし，このような出来事がわたしの信仰や思い，そしてイエス･キリストに従うとの決意に及ぼした影響について考えると，オックスフォードでモルモン書とともに過ごした夜更けの時間の重要性と力強さの前では色あせたものに感じてしまいます。

この出来事は，もう四半世紀も前の話です。それ以降，わたしと家族がこの地上にいる間に神が何をするよう望んでおられるかをさらに深く知るために，体系立ててモルモン書と聖書を学び続けているとお伝えできることを誇りに思います。わたしは自分が学んできたことを人々に伝えるために非常にたくさんの時間，全力を傾けてきました。そして，キリストが望んでおられる方法で人々に奉仕してきました。オックスフォードでわたしの心に染みわたったと同じ御霊が折々訪れることをお伝えできるのも大変な喜びです。そのようにして，わたしが力のかぎりに進もうとしている道が，父なる神とその御子イエス･キリストがわたしに望んでおられる道だということについて，再度確信を与えてくれます。このことが，わたしに深い幸せをもたらしてくれています。これが，わたしがこの教会に所属し，その教えを信じている理由です。皆さんが，同じように幸福と真理を探究されるよう，お勧めいたします。

著者の許可を得て翻訳・掲載しています。

Posted September 2011

At Dr. Alexander’s suggestion and, of course, with his permission, we offer this opinion column, which he first published in the Salt Lake Tribune on 2 September 2011, as his entry for “Mormon Scholars Testify”:

Mormon Myths That Aren’t

One hopes that Eric Johnson does not misinform his students the way he misinformed Salt Lake Tribune readers in his August 28 guest column, “Battling myths about Mormonism, creating new ones.”

An analogy equating the difference between Mormons and other Christians with the difference between Buddhists and Hindus would be laughable if he were not serious. An educated person should represent the views of opponents as they would represent themselves. Johnson fails miserably.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not consider themselves Christians just because they try to be moral. As he observes, many who are not Christians are moral. Rather, Mormons are Christians because they believe in and try to practice New Testament Christianity.

The LDS Church’s prophet, Joseph Smith, restored New Testament Christianity and some aspects of Old Testament practice. As Christians, every believing Mormon subscribes to Paul’s testimony: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Mormons and other Christians believe that Christ is the literal Son of God, that he was crucified for our sins, that he arose from the dead and that through His grace all humans will be resurrected.

Since they are New Testament Christians rather than traditional Christians, Mormons do not believe in un-biblical doctrines like Trinitarianism. Would Johnson exclude from the body of Christians those believers who lived before 325 C.E. even though Trinitarianism does not appear in the New Testament?

What he says about post-mortal polygamy is essentially correct. That is, however, irrelevant to charges of the continued practice of polygamy today. The belief that Mormons continue to practice polygamy is pervasive. It is not just “some” who believe this. In part, the erroneous belief has persisted because some folks simply have not taken the time to study the matter. They are the “ignorant” whom Johnson mentions. I have run into quite a number of them.

More seriously, however, the persistence of this belief has resulted from media sloppiness, sensationalism, or dramatization. Because the media often use the general term “Mormonism” for groups that continue to practice polygamy, otherwise well-informed people frequently associate the practice with the LDS Church. Moreover, I would expect that because of LDS President Wilford Woodruff’s Manifesto of 1890, President Joseph F. Smith’s Second Manifesto in 1904, and persistent teaching, Mormons would remain monogamists even if the courts overruled current law.

Unfortunately, Johnson is right in his belief that most Mormons are conservatives. He assumes, however, that a Mormon president would follow the dictates of the prophet. I ran into the same brand of bigotry in 1960. I was living in California at the time, and one of my friends said that he would never vote for John F. Kennedy because Kennedy was a Catholic. He believed Kennedy would take orders from the pope.

If nothing else, the recent public dispute over immigration should lay that argument to rest. Many right-wing Mormons have openly disputed the church’s views on the question, in part by asserting that the church leaders simply did not mean what they said. In addition, in numerous other cases of historical note, church members have ignored or opposed public policy supported by the church leadership.

Now, I understand that I may have misinterpreted some of the things Johnson has written. If so, I apologize. On the other hand, he should seek in the future to represent the views of those he opposes as they would represent them.

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Thomas G. Alexander (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley), is Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr., Professor of Western American History, Emeritus, at Brigham Young University. He has also taught at Utah State University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Southern Illinois University, and the University of Utah.

Dr. Alexander has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited twenty-five books and over a hundred and fifty scholarly articles, among them A Conflict of Interests: Interior Department and Mountain West, 1863-1896; The Rise of Multiple-Use Management in the Intermountain West: A History of Region 4 of the Forest Service; Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930; with James B. Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City; Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet; Utah: The Right Place (commissioned by the Utah state government as the state’s official centennial history); Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine; Grace and Grandeur: A History of Salt Lake City; The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past; edited, with James B. Allen, Manchester Mormons: The Journals of William Clayton, 1840-1842; edited, with Dean L. May, Reid L. Neilson, Richard Bushman, and Jan Shipps, The Mormon History Association’s Tanner Lectures; edited, with Richard Poll, Eugene Campbell, and David Miller, Utah’s History; “Historiography and the New Mormon History: A Historian’s Perspective,” Dialogue 19 (Fall 1986): 25-49; “Relativism and Interest in the New Mormon History,” Weber Studies 13 (Winter 1996): 133-141; with David R. Hall, “Honest History: A Conversation with Thomas G. Alexander,” Mormon Historical Studies 8/1-2 (Spring/Fall 2007):108-135; and “Brigham Young, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-Day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Arrington Annual Lecture, Utah State University, Paper 11 (2006).

Professor Alexander received BYU’s highest faculty award, the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award and, in 2001, was given the Emeriti Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award from Weber State University. From the Mormon History Association, he received the Best Bibliography Award (1968), the prize for Best Article by a Senior Author (1976 and 1980), the Best Book Award (1986 and 1991), the Grace Fort Arrington Award for Historical Excellence (1989), and the T. Edgar Lyon Award of Excellence (1999). The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies bestowed its Evans Biography Award on him in 1991.

He was president of the Mormon History Association from 1974-1975, and has also been president of the Pacific Branch of the American Historical Association; president and fellow of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; president of the Association of Utah Historians; chair of the Utah Board of State History; chair of the Utah Humanities Council; national president of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society; fellow of the Utah State Historical Society; and chair of BYU’s Faculty Advisory Council.

As a young man, Dr. Alexander was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany, and he later served as a bishop. After his retirement in 2004, he and his wife, the former Marilyn Johns, served a mission for the Church Educational System in Berlin, Germany. They are the parents of five children.

Posted September 2011

One July, I disembarked from a train along the beautiful woodland Tyne River valley at Hexham. I travelled alone, in the rain, to see the Anglo-Saxon crypt at Hexham Abbey and compare it with its sister-undercroft at Ripon Abbey, which I had visited a few days before (http://www.hexhamabbey.org.uk/visits-history/crypt/). After a decade of studying Anglo-Saxon England, this was my first trip to England to experience Anglo-Saxon monuments and artifacts in person. Seeing and touching traces of this distant culture made the abstractions of scholarship tangibly real and deepened my deep affection for these ancient people.

Hexham Abbey was initially constructed in 674 by the Anglo-Saxon bishop Wilfrid, who wanted to identify this northern tip of Christendom with the centers of Christian authority and tradition. The early Anglo-Saxon Christians repurposed stones hewn by Romans at the nearby fort in Corbridge for their new place of worship, where they modeled the crypt after the catacombs of Rome and the shrine of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem. With the prior’s permission, I descended the uneven stone steps into the crypt to the ante-chamber, where I could see a light flickering from alcoves in the inner chamber. Passing through the vaulted archway, I stood in the shrine next to the altar where the relics of a Roman martyr once rested. I felt a sense of abundant sacredness. This place was symbolically arranged for worship and communion with the divine, a place where heaven and earth meet. I felt echoes of the awe and wonder of newly converted Anglo-Saxon Christians, the reverence of the centuries of pilgrims who prayed for protection and forgiveness, and the pastoral care of bishops who sincerely accepted their responsibility to teach and preach the recta fides, the riht geleafa. The visceral nature of my emotion shifted my attention from the past to my own faith and future.

I was then and am now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a young religion that emerged in New York in 1830. A few weeks after visiting Hexham, I would become an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, America’s largest religiously-affiliated university, whose campus nestled along the bottom slopes of the sheer Wasatch Front in Provo, Utah, and was sustained by the legacy of Mormon pioneers. I had been hired to teach medieval literature to Mormon students. Yet I knew that my students’ associations with the Middle Ages would be shaped by ignorance, at best, and hostility, at worst. At the heart of Mormon religious community, not only would I be regulated to the fringe socially because of my marital status, but I would also be suspect for my education and professional scholarship.

My experience in Hexham was not the first time that I felt tension between dimensions of my childhood faith and academic interests. My scholarly and spiritual lives began intersecting profoundly in the generous ecumenical environment of the Catholic university where I did my doctoral work and the generous inclusivity of the local Mormon ward. There I encountered saintliness and learned that dialogic engagement with multiple religious traditions generates new insights, sincere commitment, and visions of possibilities and potential. Studying medieval Catholicism, playing Lutheran chorale preludes on the organ, and reading contemporary relational theology has strengthened, enriched, and enhanced my religious identity.

As I have studied the history and function of confessing the faith in early medieval Europe, I have learned that the act of confession or profession is an act of communal identification as well as an articulation of belief through propositional statements of doctrine, the transmission of tradition, and participation in narratives of salvation. In my confession of faith, I choose to identify with centuries of faithful Christians as well as my contemporary community of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I will follow the structure of the Apostles’ Creed, long revered as the fundamental distillation of the tenets of Christian faith. According to tradition, it was composed by the apostles before they separated to evangelize Christ’s gospel message across the world. Yet I choose not to use the language of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, or Chalcedon but rather the simple language of my Mormon childhood in my exegesis to articulate my conceptions of relations between divinity and humanity. (I translate the Latin text of the Apostles’ Creed in italics.)

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae,

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe that God is the father of my spirit and that He loves me. As his daughter, I seek His guidance and understanding of the plan of salvation that He designed for His children to learn faith, hope, and charity.

et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum,
qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine,
passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus,
descendit ad ínferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,
ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris omnipotentis,
inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.

And I believe in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born from the virgin Mary; he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the infernos, on the third day rose from the dead; he ascended to heaven, is seated on the right-hand of Father Almighty, whence he will come to judge the living and dead. I believe that Jesus Christ was born on earth as the literal son of God and of Mary and that He is my elder brother. He came to earth to suffer pains of humanity to succor and heal us, to atone for our sins, to orient us through His example of service, compassion, and love to our heavenly parents and each other.

Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,

I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the source of divine inspiration. In my limited mortal state, I seek His guidance and comfort as I seek to develop divine and human relations.

sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem,

The holy catholic church, the communion of saints. I believe that God loves all of His children and desires us to be gathered in loving relations in mortality and in eternity. These relations are strengthened by priesthood power manifest in ordinances restored by Joseph Smith. Participating in these ordinances permits me to make sacred covenants that build an eternal relationship with my Heavenly Father. I believe these relations also include enjoying friendships, sharing belief in Christ’s gospel, unifying ecclesiastical identity, as well as being sealed in eternal family bonds.

remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, vitam aeternam.

The remission of sins, the resurrection of the body, life eternal. I believe that these are the gifts of salvation, gifts that my loving Father in heaven extends to me and all of His children, which are made possible by Christ’s willing, atoning sacrifice.

Propositional statements are not adequate to convey my belief that God’s love is far more expansive and radical than humans can conceive. Our understanding of the divine is mediated through our limited mortal perspective, our cultural assumptions and expectations. God understands this; He is patient and wise, and He works through human history and culture, through spiritual inspiration, through religious institutions, through scriptures, through symbols, through natural beauty, through loving human relationships, to communicate His love for His children.

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Miranda Wilcox received a BA from Brigham Young University in Honors English; she completed a MMS and a PhD in Medieval Studies at the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She is an assistant professor in the Department of English at BYU. Her research focuses on how Anglo-Saxon communities constructed Christian identity using narratives, metaphors, and ritual discourses. In 2007, she participated in the NEH Summer Institute at the York Minister. She is currently writing a book titled Confessing the Faith in Anglo-Saxon England and editing a collection of essays exploring Mormon conceptions of apostasy. She enjoys running, playing the organ, and making art.

Posted September 2011

[Click to read Japanese version.]

As I reflect on what I can add as a natural scientist to the many testimonies that have already been given, I think it useful to discuss not only of what my testimony consists but especially how I received it. In many ways, my faith is based on a process that has worked over and over in my life rather than on any one particular fact or set of facts that I have come to accept as truth. I testify that it is possible to receive inspiration and revelation from God and to do so continually. It is my firm belief that this process will work for all who wish to find out. Being a scientist who works in both the physical and biological sciences, I also affirm that I am entirely comfortable with being a practicing, believing Mormon and a biophysicist without feeling the need to compromise on either side.

Prayers with answers

For me, the journey towards faith in Christ started not unlike a scientific experiment. When I grew up as a Lutheran in Germany, I did appreciate the teachings of Christ, but I simply could not begin to imagine that the resurrection happened, that Jesus Christ was anything more than an interesting man. I also felt that there was a great disconnect between the high ideal of “love your enemy” and other teachings beautifully presented in the Sermon on the Mount and what I might be able to live day-to-day. So, I turned to more down-to-earth role models as ethics guides.

When I met the Mormon missionaries for the first time fifteen years later, as a Ph.D. student in central Illinois, I am fairly sure I was not looking for a faith. My office-mate and dear friend had set up a meeting with them out of curiosity and, not being quite sure what to expect, asked me whether I could be a chaperone (after all, we have all heard things about Mormons, and this was the first meeting with them for either of us). At that meeting, I told the missionaries about my misgivings about the divinity of Christ and life after death. Rather than teaching about the importance of these concepts or telling me I had to believe them, the missionaries asked me to experience that they are true by praying about them. They cited some scriptural passages, and promised me that if I would ask God, he would answer my prayer and confirm to me that Christ was indeed resurrected. In short, they prescribed an experiment: If I was to meet certain conditions, certain results would happen. So I prayed, and when I met the missionaries again a week later, I reported that nothing had happened. It appeared that God did not answer after all. The missionaries read scriptures with me again and we discussed some of the specific pre-conditions required for the promise of an answer to be fulfilled, among them to “ask in faith, nothing wavering.” I have come to understand this passage as meaning to pray with an expectation of an answer, even if the answer may not be what I am looking for. It also means to come to God in prayer on his terms, not ours. I repeated the prayers and in the following week, for the first time in my life, I could believe that Jesus Christ indeed rose from the dead and is alive. I did not know for sure that this was the case at that time, but I could believe it without doubts or emotional turmoil, a huge difference to my previous certainty of it being impossible.

This experience was like the opening of a door into an unknown room. I had not expected this door to open, but now that it was open, my inborn curiosity nudged me on to explore the room behind it further. The fundamental revelatory process of praying and receiving answers to prayers is the primary source of my testimony. I find that such revelatory experiences are just as real and empirically reproducible as are some sensory experiences. I do not know a single practicing member of the church who cannot recount a similar experience in his or her life, in which they have received a revelation in response to a prayer. For me and many others, the first such experience has been followed by many more.

Observing service in the church

Since personal revelation plays such a central role in my faith, one might expect that one person can receive one answer to a particular question, and another person can receive a different, contradictory answer. Unless there is a God who provides the answers and a reliable mechanism for us to obtain the answers, disagreements about doctrinal, social, or practical issues will, over time, erode any common foundation of faith. In reverse, every time when different people come independently to find the same answer, this will build and strengthen faith. It is my experience that this happens and that revelation is most reliable when it is sought in the context of trying to best serve others.

I maintain that if it were possible for a person to neutrally observe the service to one another in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over a sufficient period, to participate in the relevant councils and visits, this person would be led to the conclusion that there is a divine influence guiding and directing those that work in the church. I witnessed many experiences where different persons received the same answer when praying about a question relevant to service or where they were led to an answer that initially did not appeal to common sense, but later turned out to be right. I have seen the extra energy and enthusiasm that enters into the lives of people engaged in this work.

Good things happen whenever people meet to think of the needs of others, but in the councils of the church, there is often an influence beyond the good will and ability of the people in the room. There are as strong and conflicting personalities among the members of the church as I have seen anywhere (after all, Harry Reid and Glenn Beck might sit on a church council together). Nevertheless, the solution that is found and approved after reasoning and prayer in a church council to me has always felt like an answer that supersedes personal viewpoints, an inspired understanding of what needs to be done. To see that strong personalities and, sometimes, egos can regularly be left at the door and to see consent be formed by enlightenment and not by compromise is nothing short of miraculous. I have been privileged to witness many such small miracles.

While I am still far away from the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, I have now some hope that there is a path to them. In my best moments, when engaged in service to my family or within the church, I get glimpses of understanding of what it means to grow from “grace to grace” or to be filled with the pure love of Christ. I have seen moments where I was given compassion, patience, understanding, or just a feeling of being connected to a person that helped me approach them better. I know that these feelings were gifted from the same source as other revelations and were not simply coming from within myself.

Finally, and most importantly, I witness that I have seen the very real, and sometimes very practical and tangible, blessings in the lives of people who were served through such actions or prayers.

An interacting God

Among scientists in the physical sciences, it is not uncommon to find appreciation for the beautiful construction of our universe and to assume some form of intelligence in its creation. Albert Einstein is said to have expressed this sentiment as follows: “What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.” In many cases, when natural scientists believe in the existence of some creative spiritual force, they think of a deist God that established the laws of physics and now lets the universe run its course. For me, belief in such a God is a rather feeble approximation of the real God and suggests that we may not have tried hard enough to interact with him.

At my Physics department in Irvine, neutrino research is a strong point. This is in large part due to the legacy of Frederick Reines, who worked and researched here. Neutrinos are elementary particles whose existence had been inferred from the laws of physics. However, to infer the existence of a particle is much less satisfying than to observe it experimentally, and Frederick Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize for being the first to do the latter. Today, we expend enormous efforts in technology, finance, and manpower in trying to observe other elementary particles. At the heart of the experimental observation is, in all cases, the interaction of the particle in question with the experimental setup. Seeing the energy we spend in trying to interact with particles, I find it quizzical that we should be satisfied with a God whose existence we can only infer, rather than expending at least equal efforts in trying to interact with him.

I believe in the God of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, in God the Father and Jesus Christ, and I believe that he interacts with us personally. I know him through these interactions and, quite frankly, I would find a God whose existence could only be inferred at best of interest for historical reasons, but largely irrelevant for my life here and now.

Faith and science

If one believes in an interacting, intervening, personal God, how can this be reconciled with the scientific laws that seem to suggest a rather independent universe? After all, scientists have not found God in any experiment.

Perhaps most of all, this requires a willingness not to actively resolve seeming contradictions while we have imperfect knowledge, but to allow them to be resolved in due course. Humility in assessing our true state of knowledge, an appreciation of the various processes with their inherent challenges, and an understanding of the nature of the questions they answer also help.

By the scientific process that I apply daily, I learned that sensory capabilities of animals are operating close to physical limits, that evolution occurs and is a key element in understanding the biological world, that our world is many million years old. At this point in time, to not accept these statements as truth would require me to dispense with the scientific process. I do not intend to do so, since I’ve found this process to be sound and based on good fundamental principles, such as reason, keen observation, or thoughtful experimental design.

Likewise there is a spiritual process through which I learned that God created our world, that He loves us, that He supports my family and me in a personal way. I have attempted to describe some elements of this process above and I have found this process to also be sound and based on good fundamental principles, such as reproducibility, matching reason and experience with inspiration, and observing the results in my life and the lives of others.

Just because I do not have the intellectual ability to see how both of these truths will ultimately resolve into one or be superseded by a higher truth does not make it right for me to cut short either of these important processes. I have full trust that as we follow the scientific process and the spiritual process, we will be led to one ultimate truth that is far beyond what we can comprehend now. The only thing that can prevent us from getting there is to stop following either process: either stop doing science, or stop seeking for spiritual inspiration. Doing so would deprive us of many essential and enriching parts of life.

I testify that my joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been a tremendously enriching experience. More importantly, it has helped me to grow by moving me out of my comfort zone in many ways and added joy, energy, peace, and perhaps a certain measure of wisdom through experiences I would have missed in my life otherwise. God lives and has given us the gospel to guide us during our existence here on earth before we return to him. It is worth every effort to come to know him and to find out where we will be led by following his gospel.

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Thorsten Ritz is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He studied Physics at the JW Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and went to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Ulm, in Germany, earning a Ph.D. in Physics in 2001. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in April 2003. His main research focus is in biophysics, in particular the study of magnetic sensing in animals, for which he has received national and international recognition. He was named Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation (UK), Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Cottrell Scholar of the Research Cooperation, and Distinguished Assistant Professor for Research at UC Irvine.

Brother Ritz joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1997, in Urbana, Illinois, where he met his future wife, Brooke. They and their two children live in Irvine, CA. He has worked with the youth, taught and administered in congregations, and served in Church Public Affairs and as High Councilor. Currently, he serves as Bishop and on the Board of the UC Irvine Interfaith Foundation.

Posted September 2011

Writing was always a part of me in some form. The most significant protective factor in my childhood was: my mother was a medical librarian. I learned to crawl in her library. I learned to walk in her library. I learned to love words in her library. My children’s stories were medical journals, and my teenage adventure books were textbooks from all over the world. This was the development of my love for words.

When I was young, I copied words I did not know. I looked them up, and wrote out their definitions and examples of their usage. I made flashcards of the words, and spent hours quizzing myself. I collected words like other children collected baseball cards or Barbie dolls, and I devoured books like other children devoured hot dogs.

I was hungry to know.

I loved biographies, and read about people’s lives and what made them succeed. I studied other cultures and learned about the world as my family moved often. I struggled with current fiction, but was able to enjoy the classics from ancient philosophers to the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Victor Hugo, and C.S. Lewis.

Then I discovered poetry. The classics became my heroes with whom I was enchanted: William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Lord Byron, William Blake, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Keats, Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, E.E. Cummings, Lewis Carroll, T.S. Eliot, George Eliot, Robert Frost, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson.

My teachers were random and ancient. I learned from Geoffrey Chaucer how writing can help process what one is learning or knows to be true. I learned from Mawlana Jaluddin Rumi that poetry can express emotion through comparisons in efforts to help define it. Li Po taught me that sometimes succinct phrases express most powerfully. William Dunbar showed me that even fancy words can become a lilting sing-song. Francois Villon demonstrates how to be brave enough to play with repetition for emphasis. From Louise Labe, I learned how to make my phrases cycle in rhythm with the experience I am describing. Sir Walter Raleigh taught me how to describe, and then describe further, and then describe some more. Thomas Carew taught me how to tell stories. Sir Thomas Wyatt showed me how to integrate other languages and other cultures into my own words. Anne Bradstreet was an example of how my writing could communicate to those I loved. Lady Mary Chudleigh taught me to use my head as well as my heart. Anne Killigrew showed me women could be masters of the arts. From Isaac Watts, I learned poetry is song. Ann Taylor taught me that sometimes naughty children get what’s coming to them. Khalil Gibran taught me to search for meaning, while Julia Ward Howe taught me to use that meaning to fight for justice.

I knew these names like other children knew football teams or cabbage patch dolls. For me, books were people whom I hugged by smelling their well worn pages. All of them taught me words were power, that words held meaning, that words helped express what was inside of me so that I was not drowning in my experience. Words were my lifesaver, something that helped me find one more breath and then the next and then the next. Words helped transform me from being stuck in an experience to overcoming that experience, and then finding meaning from my experience. This was my love for literature as a child.

The first thing I discovered from the missionaries was what seemed an endless supply of books in a realm into which I had never before ventured. I finished Jesus the Christ and the entire set of The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ before we finished our six discussions. By the time I was baptized, I had read through the Journal of Discourses. By the time of my endowment, I had my own copy to study. I study them every day to gain a deeper knowledge from them. But in that moment, in the beginning, I devoured them in my hunger to understand.

Words are such a gift. For so long, words were all I had. When I was young, words were where I sought comfort and nurture and guidance. In a cold world of chaos and cruelty, words were what promised me different, promised me more, promised me better. Words were where I learned about God.

My favorite poetry is still that of Emily Dickinson. In her poetry, she discovers God through nature. It is beautiful and fun and silly and romantic, like a butterfly dancing in the summer breeze. The irony is, of course, that she struggled consistently throughout her lifetime in regards to whether she should join a church by professing Christ the way her friends urged her to do. She stood by her conviction not to, and yet continued to worship in her little world that was creation itself. It was my experience with her poetry and my love for those words which brought me to my own love of nature as a way of understanding aspects of God. It was my understanding of her story of struggling with whether to join her local church or not that laid a foundation to help me later understand the story of Joseph Smith, and those moments of struggle that brought him to pray in the grove.

It was a struggle I understood for my own reasons as I grew up.

As a therapist, I understand that no relationship is ever a “done deal.” All relationships take work on both sides, and so my later understanding of the covenant relationship made sense to me from that perspective.

When I was in second grade, my grandmother gave me a little white Bible that zipped up. It was a King James version, no longer given to children in most churches these days, but for me it was the epitome of poetry. I fell in love with the words and the rhythm and the stories. I spent hours copying verses and pasting them to my walls. I worked on memorizing them while swinging and playing outside, and then marched in circles reciting aloud once I knew them. Something inside of me knew these words were alive. Except it was not enough, and I felt guilty for thinking it seemed incomplete. Later, as an adult, tears would stream down my face as I held that same Bible—now falling apart—next to my first Book of Mormon, comparing Scriptures and feeling as if someone had finally given me the rest of the story.

As a young adult many years ago, I lived for a time with a family that participated in a religion that celebrated Mass. Something in me felt there should be some formal setting where appropriate rituals were part of our work in our relationship with God. This seemed right; this seemed ancient. This had always been, and while I understood Jesus had been the ultimate sacrifice, what of those holy places for sacred moments with God? I sensed it, but could not explain it and did not have words for it. I knew the Mass was not the answer, because I could feel something was missing, but there was something formal that felt like it was on the right track. What relief and joy I felt years later, to enter the Temple for the first time and perform ordinances in the correct way with the proper authority! What tears I cried to feel the Spirit in those moments, and to see the things I saw!

These were my experiences that helped open my heart to the understanding of Joseph Smith’s struggle for which church to join, and the hunger within me to find that true church. I understood the context: I knew about the Great Awakening from my Christian high school and my seminary studies. I knew about the traveling preachers and the beautiful sermons. I collected writings of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and Alexander Campbell, and read the account of Joseph Tracy. I had memorized the famous thunderbolt sermons, and so understood in that way the emotions of the time. Every day as an adolescent and in undergrad, I read my designated chapter from My Utmost for His Highest. I loved history, and the historical pieces of Joseph Smith’s time I understood and I enjoyed reading avidly.

All of this is how literature helped prepare me for Joseph Smith. Or, rather, how Heavenly Father used literature to help prepare me for Joseph Smith. My love of words and my enjoyment of history combined to prepare me for already having a context for the time period and cultural issues of Joseph Smith’s lifetime. His quest made sense to me as a human being, and I could see even as a therapist how his searching was a natural and appropriate response to the context of the world surrounding him.

Through studying the history of the Church, I developed an appreciation for the way these early pioneers endured through persecution. When I read the stories of the persecution, the tarring and feathering, and the trek out West, I understood this was not a church that was mighty from its riches and abuse of power, but a church that was strong from its experiences of endurance. I understood this was not a church with its leadership so far removed from its people to understand the real world, but rather a church where its leaders were servants who communicated regularly with the people. This was not a church far removed from the trenches of real life, but a church actively involved in the everyday lives of everyone. This is a church that understood what it meant to be abused, to be silenced, to be hunted down. This was a church that understood me, as a real person, and a church that had a real human person as its founder and leader. That is how I came to love Joseph Smith.

I found the Church because of a random text one day from my ballroom dance teacher, saying he was at a job fair at his church and asking did I know of any jobs for sign language interpreters. I answered the question, but also asked which church he goes to that does such an amazing thing for so many people in these difficult economic times? He replied to me in that moment, saying his church was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

When my ballroom dance teacher texted me the name of his church, I did not even know what it meant. It seemed like an awfully long name for a church. I didn’t even yet realize that it was the same thing as “Mormon,” or that what I thought was “Mormon” wasn’t at all. So I really didn’t know yet to say “LDS” instead of “Mormon.”

I did what anyone does who doesn’t know what something is: I googled it.

I read everything I could on the mormon.org website. My initial response to the mormon.org website was just an overwhelmed excitement. Professionally, I was impressed. It was utilizing the latest technology, it had clean formats, and it was user friendly. I got the impression that it was trying to keep things simple and clear and non-distracting, so that I could understand the answers they were providing. I kept clicking. The concepts unfolded before me, as if they had been there all along. They were words for what I had always known, always sensed, but had no language for and no guidance for how to put it into words.

The most fun thing about the mormon.org website was that they had a chat program, where I could click and then type to talk to someone and ask my questions about the church. This was so Deaf friendly! I was not having to call, and I was not having to lipread or try to understand. We were both typing, and I had the freedom to ask anything I wanted and be able to read answers I could understand. I could get on most any time of day or night and connect to someone ready to help me find the answers I was looking for and needed so badly. I loved it!

This is how I played it cool, while secretly starting my research into a church with such strong social justice as to be hosting a job fair. I didn’t ask more questions of my dancing family yet, but I started watching them really closely. What I saw was that in all of their humanity, they really tried to live what they believe with an integrity I have never known from any Christian group. I was impressed.

I became friends with my ballroom dance teacher, his wife, and their family. They gave me a Book of Mormon with their testimony in it, and invited me over to dinner to meet the missionaries. They promised no pressure from the missionaries, and that it would just be a fun dinner where I could ask questions if I decided I wanted to. I agreed, and before our dinner the next week, I read through the Book of Mormon again, – this time really marking it up with questions and underlining and references to passages from the Bible I already knew.

The discussions went so well, and I had such a good time, I eagerly accepted when they invited me to come back the following week. My formal discussions began almost without me realizing it. Jon and Cassie provided such a safe environment in their home, and the missionaries working with me were gentle and kind and funny. They all began to learn some sign language, and always kept me laughing. It was that very positive experience that helped me return each week for more. I loved the little pamphlets: Gospel of Jesus Christ, Word of Wisdom, Tithing and Fasting, Chastity; my missionaries soon realized I was devouring any reading materials I could find, so they and my friends started digging up books for me to read. This is when I read through Jesus the Christ and the set of Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ and many others people could find. I loved that the church had its magazines, so we knew what the leaders were saying and teaching. When the missionaries gave me my own little book called True to the Faith, and I saw it was a dictionary-encyclopedia type book of Mormon words, then I knew I had found the best church EVER.

But with my focus on “sincere heart and real intent,” this presented a new problem for me. I could not join a church just because they had great literature. I could not join a church just because I fell in love with their families. I could not join a church just because the missionaries were cute. I had to do some serious soul-searching, praying, and studying to discover what I knew to be true.

I parked outside the simple square building, and found which door would let me inside. I avoided eye contact with these strangers, because they did not yet know I could not hear them. Inside, I walked around the circle that is the square hallway outlining the rooms until I found where everyone was for the first hour. I was so relieved to see interpreters already set up and ready for me! Jon and Cassie and their kids saved me a seat, and so I slipped in and was ready to go.

This room that was a chapel was so soft and comfortable! It was not grotesque with art that bordered on scary, and it was not so filled with riches and fancy things that I wanted to keep my money instead of handing it over. It was simple and non-distracting. I sat on the left side, in the front, with a good view of my interpreters and what was happening behind them. There were songs, some of which were even familiar to me! Then, as Cassie had explained, instead of one or two speakers, anyone could go up and speak as they felt led to do so as part of Fast Sunday. There was communion that they called Sacrament, and it was bread and water: literally. I did not participate because I did not yet feel comfortable doing so. No one had told me I couldn’t, but I wasn’t ready.

The time seemed to pass quickly, and Jon showed me the way to my second class, Gospel Principles. My interpreters were again there, ready for me when I arrived. Jon sat with me in this class, while Cassie went to teach a class. My class was a doctrine kind of class, except it was presented in a discussion format where everyone there got to ask questions and share ideas. I was glad to see this, because I have been to churches where questions are not allowed and did not think this was healthy or good. So I was relieved to see we could ask questions, and oh! The questions I had! So many questions! Our lesson talked about the veil, and the only veil I knew about was the one that tore in the temple when Jesus died on the cross. So I had to ask what that meant, and the teacher drew on the board and taught my first lesson about premortal life. I was astonished, and pondered the implications. I felt as if the more I learned, the further away my life was before discovering the church. Everything was starting to shift, as if I had discovered the meaning some part of me had known all along, as if I was somehow settling into that “home” space I had been so hungry for my entire life.

My third hour class was with Cassie and all ladies, which I later came to understand is called Relief Society. But I called it Housewife Class. Not in a derogatory sense, or to imply that they are all housewives, or to say that there is anything good or bad about housewives. But I said that because those ladies could multi-task and get their business done like nothing I have ever seen, and then relax into a serious girl-talk kind of conversation about such deep things!

And then they asked about birthdays. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassie raise her hand. I started to shrivel, as much as one can shrivel in her long skirt in a new place with everyone looking at her. Cassie declared it had just been my birthday, which was true. I told them I was thirty-two, and they did not believe me. Then this woman, who was this dignified and elegant lady, clearly the boss of Housewife Class, brought to me a little fancy sack of candy for my birthday! I was so excited!

And then my heart sank.

Because it was Fasting Sunday.

And so for the whole hour of my first visit to Housewife Class, I sat there starving to death with a little sack of candy in my lap.

I thought it was cruel and unusual punishment, but otherwise my first visit to church was a success. Everyone had been very kind, and they had been welcoming without being weird. No one was pushy, and the Deaf thing was not a big deal at all. In fact, many of them knew a few signs or lots of signs! It was so neat!

That is the story of how I discovered the Church. It took me nine months to get baptized, like birthing a child. I had a lot of repenting to do, and a lot of changes to make, and a lot of heart-softening to work through. But the more I let Him work in me, the more He defined my life, and explained my history. The more I learned from Him, the more I became me. The more I studied His story, the more I understood mine.

I know that Heavenly Father loves me and knows me.
I know that His Son, Jesus Christ, lives. I know He is my Savior.

I know that the Holy Spirit corrects, instructs, and guides me.

I know that the Book of Mormon is true, and that it was translated by the prophet Joseph Smith.

I know that Thomas S. Monson is our prophet today.

I know that there is power in the priesthood.

I know that the Temple is a House of Learning, and that we can go there to enter the
presence of the Lord.

I know that as we are obedient and faithful, the Lord heals us and strengthens us to endure whatever lies ahead, so that we can accomplish the work He has called us to do.

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Emily Thomas was baptized in 2009, and is currently serving her thirty-month mission with the international research team of FamilySearch Worldwide Support in the Family History Department (September 2010-March 2013). She is Deaf, receiving bilateral cochlear implants in 2010, and will always love sign language. She chooses books over television, and organics over processed. Her favorite things to cook come out of the garden she greets each morning. She observes her world through photography, and shares it through blogging. She thinks nothing is as close to flying as ballroom dancing. She enjoys playing outside, running, kayaking, and cycling. She is in love with words, and writes every day no matter what. She has two ugly puppies that enjoy sunset walks around the neighborhood lake. The best thing about Emily World is that it’s always an adventure, even when (not so) grammatically precise.

Dr. Thomas earned her B.S. in Human Development, her M.S. in Professional Counseling, and her PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy. She has been in private practice since 2004, with a focus on forensic trauma, Native American, Deaf, and inner-city childhood services. She has worked the crisis unit in a psychiatric hospital, and has worked in long-term residential care with adolescent sex offenders. She began working for LDS Family Services in 2011, with a focus on adult, marriage, adoptions, and missionary services.

Dr. Thomas is a frequent guest lecturer at local schools, the local community colleges, and community organizations, and has presented for Grand Rounds in Tulsa. She has given numerous presentations, workshops, and seminars both nationally and internationally for a variety of professional organizations. She has served on the Board of Directors for the NW Arkansas Rape Crisis Center, and on the Board of Directors for TSHA (serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in Oklahoma) since 2006, and on the Deaf Advisory Council for the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in Oklahoma since 2008. She is a certified volunteer for the Language and Culture Bank disaster response team, serving after 9/11, Katrina, and, most recently, the 2011 tornado in Joplin.

She writes a monthly Mental Health article for the Deaf community in TSHA’s statewide newsletter since 2007. Several book chapters and professional research articles for peer-reviewed professional journals are in process of publication. For fun, on the side, she repeatedly submits manuscripts to Deseret Book.

Posted September 2011

I am a sixth-generation Latter-day Saint; Mormonism is practically part of my DNA. Many of my ancestors were personally acquainted with Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, and wholeheartedly embraced his teachings, sometimes at great personal sacrifice. As I was growing up, Mormonism required no sacrifice of me. Instead, it provided a warm and safe cocoon; its doctrine of eternal families endowed my relationship with my siblings, parents, and grandparents with cosmic significance. I was mentored and nurtured by my parents and by a rich array of congregants who taught my Sunday School and weekday religion classes and served as my scoutmasters and priesthood advisors. Most shared at least an hour of their time each week with me, teaching me scriptures and hymns, sharing faith-promoting stories, taking me on youth outings and campouts, and helping me earn Boy Scout merit badges. They contributed over one-tenth of their income in tithes and offerings to the Church and devoted Sundays and even some weeknights to church work. Many had devoted two years of their lives to missionary service at their own expense. They assured me that they knew Joseph Smith was a prophet of God who had restored Christ’s true church to the earth. Because they sacrificed so much for the Church, I knew that their beliefs were sincere and deeply rooted and found it easy to believe them.

When I was a teenager, my parents and church teachers encouraged me to pray, fast, study, and obtain my own spiritual witness of Jesus Christ and His teachings, Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling, the Book of Mormon, and the role of living prophets. Most people did not believe in Mormonism, they reminded me, and I would need my own experiences to sustain my faith in times of opposition and adversity. Through many small sacred experiences involving feelings and thoughts as I prayed and studied I came to feel that the church was “true” and that I should share that knowledge as a missionary with others. My knowledge developed largely as a result of quiet impressions, although on one occasion I enjoyed a brief but undeniable epiphany as I sat atop the rim of Bryce Canyon in southern Utah and watched the sun rise.

Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one, I served as a Mormon missionary in French Polynesia and frequently witnessed to others that Mormonism was “true.” My knowledge that the church was “true” entailed in part a conviction that God spoke through Joseph Smith and through living, modern prophets and that the Book of Mormon as scripture contained the word of God. My witness also drew strength from the happiness and emotional healing that came into the lives of those I taught who embraced Mormonism. As a teenager and undergraduate student, I tended to think of God’s communication with prophets as direct and unambiguous, as if the prophet could pick up a telephone and get God on the line. I perceived the Book of Mormon as God’s language as well as His doctrine.

Roughly three decades have elapsed since my stint as a missionary. Following my mission, I returned home, received my bachelor’s degree, married, and devoted eight years to graduate studies in American history. My worldview changed in the process, allowing me to perceive and evaluate my Mormonism and spiritual experiences in broader contexts. Although I remained proud of my religious heritage, my certitude about being a member of God’s true church receded. But as I toyed with disbelief, the warm memory of undeniable spiritual experiences in my past pulled me back, and I rediscovered God’s tender mercies.

As I approach my fiftieth birthday, I know the church is “true” with at least as much conviction as I had as a young missionary, but in a more nuanced and complex way. Mortals—even prophets—see through a glass darkly, as the apostle Paul taught. We struggle to know God’s mind and will; distinguishing it from our own desires, emotions, and thoughts is exceptionally difficult. God directs His church through prophets and revelation, but revelation is relayed through imperfect human beings, and it is conveyed in the parlance of the recipient. Thus I am not surprised to find a mixture of sublime, ordinary, and awkward language in Joseph Smith’s revelations, other prophets’ teachings, the Book of Mormon, or other sacred texts. Nor am I surprised to find that prophets and apostles have disagreed with each other at times, even on such foundational doctrinal matters as the nature of God, or that their prognostications have not always materialized exactly as they expected they would. I am disappointed but not disillusioned by the failure of Mormons historically and today, myself included, to always live up to Christianity’s high ideals.

Despite its inescapably human elements and cultural baggage, Mormonism remains my connection to God. I have sensed supernatural power in its rites, have been physically and emotionally lifted and healed by the profound power of its priesthood ordinances, have keenly sensed God’s love and guidance while worshipping in its temples, have been edified by reading its expanded canon of scriptures, and have thrilled at the majestic prospect of an eternal destiny that its doctrine encompasses. I am a better person because of Mormonism and my life is more fulfilling because of my association with the Latter-day Saints. These are some of the pivotal experiences that undergird my witness that I belong to the “true” church of Jesus Christ.

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Brian Q. Cannon (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is professor of history at Brigham Young University and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. He serves on the editorial board of BYU Studies and as president of the Agricultural History Society. He is the author of two books and over two dozen scholarly articles. He has received awards for his research and writing from the Mormon History Association, the Western History Association, the Agricultural History Society and the Society for History in the Federal Government. He and his wife Anna Lea are the parents of five children.

Posted September 2011

[Click to read English version.]

父が少年のわたしにこう言いました。「何を学ぼうとも，信仰を使って飛躍しなければならない場面に遭遇する。それが科学であれ，宗教であれ，他の何であれ，人がさらに高い知識を得るには，信仰に頼らなければならない。」

わたしは父の考えを拒みました。そのようなアプローチは思考力のない人のものであり，父が言った「信仰」はスキルや教育のなさ，怠惰への口実だと考えたのです。わたしは「信仰を告白」したくありませんでした。真理を知りたかったのです。そこでわたしは科学者になりました。天文学者です。でも，宗教の研究も続けました。信仰を事実や論理性と区別しながら，その信条を頭で検証していました。わたしの科学へのアプローチも同じです。推論と既知の事実を常に区別するように心がけています。そのようにしながら，いくつかの簡単な真理は理解できるようになりましたが，それは，わたしが期待していたものとは違っていました。

わたしは間違っていました。好きか嫌いかは別問題として（わたしは嫌いでした），信仰は科学の進歩も含むこの世の進歩の基礎をなすものです。わたしたちは他の人々が発見したことを信じていますし，人から教わったことを信じています。また，五感で知覚したことも信じていますし，理性自体も信じています。この世の人は皆，気付かないうちに信仰によって歩んでいるのです。誕生の瞬間，わたしたちは自分が生きていて知覚ある存在であるものの，知識がまったくないことを知ります。そのような無知の状態からの学習には，信仰を用いるしか方法はありませんでした。今，選択肢があるとすれば，どこに信仰を用いるかだけです。

わたしの場合，科学でも宗教でも，常に十分な量の信仰を用いてきたかと言えば，そうとも言えません。1つの例はブラックホールです。ブラックホールの存在はあまりにも非現実的で，他の多くの天文学者もその存在を疑問視していました。ところが，銀河系に中心が存在することを仮想した研究チームが銀河系の中心に小さな，強力な重力を有する何かが存在することを証明したときから，その考えは変わりました。これは現在のブラックホールの説明が完璧であることを証明するものではありませんが，方向性が正しいことは明白です。

では，わたしはブラックホールの存在に対して信仰を持つべきでしょうか。結局のところわたしには，結論を導き出すに十分な相対性理論に関する知識もありませんし，ブラックホールの存在の証拠もありません。でも，わたしは存在を受け入れています。なぜなら，研究をした人たちの人格や彼らが用いた方法，そして得た結果を信じているからです。

天体物理学は努力なしには習得できません。福音も同じです。若い宣教師として非キリスト教国である日本の人々にイエス・キリストについて教える準備をしていたわたしは，出発前の1か月間をかけて，新約聖書を入念に読みました。でも，パリサイ人的な読み方でした。「『このイエス・キリストという人物は何者なのか。みずからを神の子と呼ぶ非常識な言動をどうして受け入れることができるだろうか』と。そのような心境の中で，わたしはマタイ9：5-7の聖句に遭遇し，その聖句に展開されている人々を萎縮させたイエスの論理に目を留めました。足の不自由な人の罪が赦されたと言うイエスを危険な愚か者と考えた人々に対抗して，救い主はただこう言われただけでした。『あなたの罪はゆるされた，と言うのと，起きて歩け，と言うのと，どちらがたやすいか。しかし，人の子は地上で罪をゆるす権威をもっていることが，あなたがたにわかるために』と言い。中風の者にむかって，『起きよ，床を取り上げて家に帰れ』と言われた。すると彼は起きあがり，家に帰って行った。」これよりも明白なことがあるでしょうか。

さて，この奇跡に関するマタイの記述，そしてわたしたちのだれよりも偉大なこの一人の御方が罪を赦されたという見解に対して，わたしは信仰を持つべきでしょうか。結局のところわたしはその場で出来事を目撃したわけではありませんし，それがどう記録されたかについてよく知りません。でも，わたしはイエス・キリストの実在を受け入れています。なぜなら，イエスを知っていた人たちの人格や彼らの証の真実性を信じているからです。さらにわたしは，イエスの教えに従うことによって自分の罪が赦されたことを知りました。このことから自分がどれだけのことを学び続けているかを考えると，驚くばかりです。

わたしはモルモン書についても同じように感じています。教育を受けていない一介の少年には書けない内容です。簡単に言えば，神の力によって翻訳されたのです。現代の預言者についても同じように感じています。わたしはジョセフ・スミスが真理を語ったと信じています。同様に，現代の預言者たちも真理を語っていると信じています。

人生のこの時期になって，わたしには回復された福音の真実性を試す必要はなくなりました。わたしにとって，ディベートは終わったのです。ただ福音を実践することにより，その実を刈り取りたいと思うだけです。

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J・ウォード・ムーディは1980年にBYUで物理学学士号を取得，1986年にはミシガン大学で天文学で博士号を得た。ミシガン大学宇宙物理学調査研究所で4か月間研究員として勤務，次いで，ニューメキシコ大学天体物理学研究所で2年間，博士課程修了後の研究者として働く。その後，ウィーバーステート大学で2年間教鞭を執った後，1990年にBYUの物理・天文学部の教員となった。優れた教育者である彼は，教科書として使われているPhysical Science Foundations『物理学の基礎』の共著者でもあり，アルキン賞ならびにカール・G・メーザー一般教育プロフェッサーシップを獲得した。双方とも一般教育への優れた貢献に対して付与される賞である。

ムーディ博士は天文学や天体物理学に関する100以上の論文の著者ならびに共著者である。多くは低密度体積における星雲の構造ならびに星雲の核をテーマにしたもので，散光星雲をさらに大きな構造体の探索に用いる方法は，彼の発案によるものと評価されている。ムーディ博士を有名にしているのは，天文学に関する研究論文の出版事業で，天文学会に関する出版としては世界最大の Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series『太平洋天文学会シリーズ』の編集主幹を6年務めた。現在は米国天文学会の出版担当理事の職にあり，天文学に関して世界で最も権威のある2つの出版物，The Astrophysical Journal『天体物理学ジャーナル』とThe Astronomical Journal『天文学ジャーナル』の内容の指導に当たっている。

Posted September 2011