Testimonies

I was born in the United States to Canadian parents and at the tender age of two months moved with my family to Ottawa, Canada. There were eight children and two often tired but loving parents in our family. My parents had been converted to the Church eight years earlier in Alberta and have remained not only active members but powerful examples to everyone with whom they come in contact.

In Ottawa, Mormons were largely unknown. We were the only LDS family throughout most of my school years. By high school, with its larger student body, we were joined by a couple of other LDS families. Growing up away from any church members outside of the home forced me to decide early on whether I would stay true to the “faith.” There could be no middle ground, no hedging.

By the time I reached junior high school, my friends were starting to notice that I was different. Really different. They pressured me to drink, smoke, take drugs, and party. The good thing for me was I was never drawn to these activities. I was different. I had always felt this way. Not in a negative, feel-sorry-for-myself kind of way. It was just a reality. And it was one that I kind of liked. What was hard, however, was seeing my non-member friends gradually withdraw from me. I couldn’t understand how they could change so much and turn their backs on so many of the values we seemed to share when we were younger.

It is at times like this that you start to wonder where your life will take you and whether your testimony is real or imagined. When I was thirteen years old, I had my first strong desire to test it out. It wasn’t that I ever doubted. But I started to wonder if it were possible that my parents were wrong and whether I had been somehow brainwashed. I remember one Sunday when I was visiting a family as part of a church assignment with an adult leader. I told him about my growing concerns, and he asked if I had ever prayed about it. He told me I should just ask God. I had heard about people doing this for years, and somehow it never seemed to apply to me. But this time, the suggestion made to “just ask God” hit me with incredible power. So I put it to the test. That night I knelt by my bed and prayed my heart out. When it was over, I opened my eyes expecting a vision or at least some audible words. Nothing happened. Zilch. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t get a response, but this was my reality. So I tried again the next night. Again, nothing. For over a month I repeatedly prayed to our Father in heaven, and every prayer ended in what to me seemed like abject failure. Could no response mean that there was no God? Could it all be a hoax? No doubt these suspicions began to build in me. And then, in what to me was one final burst of effort, I prayed a prayer more of desperation than anything else. And then it came to me. I was enveloped in a spirit of calm, of knowledge, and of complete certainty that the gospel was true. That Joseph Smith was a prophet. It was a feeling like no other. It came not from within me, but was a Spirit that came from outside of me and entered my very soul. My life would be impacted forever by this event. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

That event, now over forty years ago, has blessed and strengthened me immeasurably. The knowledge I gained provided me with an unwavering anchor to the commandments and strengthened my commitment to gospel principles. I have known what I need to do and how I need to live my life.

I had always planned on a mission, and when I was nineteen I received my mission call to serve in the Paris, France mission. These two years of missionary service were the toughest and yet the most incredible years of my life. I matured ten years while gone. I flourished as a missionary. My testimony strengthened even more. And I developed a love for the bigger world out there. Indeed, my missionary experiences pushed me off the medical doctor track and into international relations, and later international business strategy.

The gospel teaches us the importance of learning and education. To be honest, my parents had instilled these values in me since I was a young boy. I have always looked for ways to better myself and improve and, over the years, have come to realize that the path forward is long and not always easy. My eight years of university education, culminating with my PhD, never detracted from my testimony. Not one bit. In contrast, the wisdom I gained through gospel truths and my experience serving in the church provided me with many advantages in my studies. Taking Sundays off to attend church and otherwise keep the Sabbath day holy, while often ridiculed by other students, meant that I could get some rest, restore balance, and improve my overall learning and performance. I never once felt disadvantaged.

My faith has been challenged on a few occasions. But it has been strengthened far more often than it has been challenged. I have come to see miracles in my own life, and in the lives of my children and wife and many others. I have participated in too many of these miracles to ever doubt that they exist.

My faith in the gospel and the knowledge I have gained have provided me with insights and wisdom that far exceed my natural capacities. My professional work puts me in contact with some of the smartest and best-educated people in the world. Because I have an eternal perspective, and because I know who I am and who others are, I have never felt threatened or disrespected. My teaching and research almost always involve cross-cultural issues. My testimony has given me a deeper, richer appreciation that we have much we can learn from faithful people of other religions and from good people everywhere.

The gospel has defined who I am and has been the single most important source of blessings in my entire life. I would not be who I am today, I would not be married to the wonderful wife I have, and I would not have such a happy and blessed family were it not for the gospel. It is true. Jesus Christ lives. We are the children of a literal God, who loves us and has blessed us in ways we cannot begin to understand.

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Allen J. Morrison is a Professor of Management Practice in Global Strategy and Leadership at INSEAD (formerly the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires). He has an undergraduate degree (B.A.) in International Relations from BYU, an MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in International Business Strategy from the University of South Carolina. He has authored or co-authored over sixty articles and case studies, and eight books.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dr. Morrison served as a missionary in the France Paris Mission. He also served as a bishop of the London Ontario Third Ward and as first counselor in the Lausanne Switzerland stake.

He is married to the former Angela Wolf, and they are the parents of four children and one grandchild.

Posted September 2011

A few years ago, while my wife and I were having dinner at a restaurant with an LDS member and her non-Mormon husband, the latter suddenly asked me, “out of the blue,” the following question: “Dan, as an academician and someone who teaches a variety of subjects, have you ever found anything in all your years of study and research that has made you doubt your belief in the Church?” I answered, “No, actually quite the contrary. The more research I’ve done, the greater my testimony has grown of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel.”

This affirmation may come as a surprise to those who may read these words, yet such a conviction has always been with me, even from my earliest memory as a child. Being a fifth-generation “Kentucky Mormon” and the only active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in my high school, I had numerous opportunities to discuss religion and my own beliefs with my peers of other Christian faiths. Now, as an academician, I have continued to have similar interaction at times with my students who come from very diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, from Islam to Buddhism. Yet I have always known that the Book of Mormon was true, along with the Bible—a knowledge obtained through much study, but most importantly through the convincing witness and influence of the Holy Ghost.

Columbus assured King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in the late fifteenth century that it was through the influence of the Holy Spirit that he had learned the basic skills of cartography and maritime skills by which he successfully made his voyages to the New World. I too have gained a personal and peaceful witness that the Book of Mormon is indeed the “word of God,” and that Joseph Smith, Jr., was a true prophet of God in these latter-days, the same as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and other famous biblical personalities.

As I served a two-year, full-time mission for my church in southern California and then completed a B.A. in history and a minor in anthropology, an M.A. in history, and a doctorate in folklore and folklife, that same conviction has continually stayed with me and buoyed me up in a world steeped in doubt and confusion as to the meaning of life.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught within Mormonism, has made me appreciate my wife, five children, and, now, thirteen grandchildren more abundantly, when I realize that we can be together forever as a family. One of the very reasons my second great-grandfather, Edward Callahan Rolph, converted to Mormonism in Kentucky in 1897 was because of his own fervent belief that families should be together forever, and that the Lord’s Church should have apostles and prophets as did the ancient Church, as recorded within the Bible. I cherish the fact that, as a middle-aged man, he strongly believed such doctrine, even though he was “tied to a tree and whipped” for his convictions.

The diversity and subject content of the courses I’ve taught or currently teach continue to convince me of the truthfulness of the Gospel message, be they ancient, medieval, early American or non-Western world classes, etc. I have always been a true Renaissance Man when it comes to learning, as witnessed by my own personal library, my filing cabinets, and the material found within my own home, besides almost one hundred boxes in public storage, centered on every subject from entomology to Islam.

When my five children were growing up in our household, like most children they would occasionally complain of being bored. I’d scold them and say, “If every library was burned to the ground, and nothing was left but what is in my study, you would be able to reconstruct the ‘History of the World’ and even part of the Cosmos from the information contained within my books and files.” They may still have been bored after the lecture, but at least they eventually quit complaining! My poor wife, as well, though a scholar of religion in her own right, objects at times to seeing every edition that exists of Beowulf in our bedroom bookcase!

For the past twenty-six years, I have worked not only as an historian but also as the “Head of Reference Services” at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (or HSP) in Philadelphia, where I serve primarily as the Civil War scholar, though I also help patrons with their varied dissertation topics and with family history. At HSP, some 21 million manuscripts, 700,000 books, and over 500,000 graphic items, which include many primary sources written by our nation’s Founding Fathers, are housed for the benefit of both scholars and the general public. There I also pen a monthly sketch entitled History Hits, as well as a blog called Hidden Histories, both being derived from our vast collections. My topics are as diverse as “Antarctic exploration” and the “Signatures of Muslim Slaves” in antebellum America.

The point to all the above is that, regardless of the fields of enquiry, many of which I am acutely familiar with from an academic or scholarly perspective, I strongly feel that the principles and doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not opposed to any truth, but reinforce it more abundantly. I am not in any way opposed to empirical evidence, but I do question what is often taught as fact but upon scrutiny is found to be simply opinion or even what happens to be “academic fashion.”

“Mormonism” is not in any way opposed to rigorous research. In fact, it invites and encourages such investigation by its membership. I would invite all who truly epitomize the Greek word potheo (“to yearn”) to begin to search out why it is that educated Mormon scholars emphatically embrace the Mormon “belief-system” and still retain their faith. I would encourage all to seek out for themselves the answer to that question, which is so puzzling to many. To myself, and to others like me, there is no doubt, only peace of mind and a stronger desire to learn even more.

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Daniel N. Rolph is Historian and Head of Reference Services, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where has worked since 1985 and where he frequently lectures, offers presentations, writes newspaper articles, does media interviews, and prepares displays. He is also Senior Lecturer in History at Montgomery County Community College in Bluebell, Pennsylvania, and he has taught at Gwynedd-Mercy College and at Hahnemann University, both in Pennsylvania.

He was born in Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky, in 1953. After earning a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in anthropology from the University of Utah, he went on to earn an M.A. in history from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Rolph is the author of “Kentuckians and Mormonism: An Historical Overview: 1831-1931” (M.A. thesis, University of Kentucky, 1985); “Kentucky Reaction and Casualties in the Utah War of 1857-58,” The Journal of Kentucky Studies, (1987): 89-96; “Family Folklore and the Civil War: The Search for an Elusive ‘Rebel’ Soldier,” Genealogy Digest (Summer 1988): 25-28; “Wooden Signal Horns of Southern Appalachia: Provenance and Function,” Material Culture (now Pioneer America) 21/3 (Fall 1989): 9-25; “Folklore, Symbolic Landscapes, and the Perception of Southern Culture,” Southern Studies 1/2 (Summer 1990): 117-126; To Shoot, Burn, and Hang: Folk-History from a Kentucky Mountain Family and Community (Knoxsville, TN: University of Tennessee Press., 1992); “Prophets, Kings, and Swords: The Sword of Laban and Its Possible Pre-Laban Origin,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2/1 (Spring 1993): 73-79; and My Brother’s Keeper: Union and Confederate Soldiers’ Acts of Mercy During the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), in connection with which did over 150 presentations at bookstores, historical societies, and Civil War roundtables.

Dr. Rolph is married, with five children and thirteen grandchildren.

Posted September 2011

[Click to read Japanese version.]

I have spent most of my last fifteen years learning to think like a scientist: questioning everything I am told to see if it matches with the evidence that I have and those things I have learned. Developing these traits has served me well as a scientist and engineer, and has likewise served me well in my religious understanding. I must admit that I question everything. Could this be right? Could this be true? Using these questions and my experience with the gospel taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leads to only one conclusion for me: The gospel and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are true and will lead a man back to God and to happiness in this life if they are followed.

The teachings of the church can sometimes be hard to swallow. A fourteen-year-old boy saw and spoke with God the Father and Jesus Christ? Yes. That same boy was directed to gold plates in a hill in upstate New York by an angel and those plates were translated to become the Book of Mormon? Yes. God speaks with prophets on the earth today? Yes. God will communicate with each of us and help guide our lives? Yes. And there are many more similar statements. How can I know these things? I will tell you.

In the Book of Mormon, a prophet named Alma tells us how we can learn that the things of God are true. He compares the teachings of the prophets to a seed, and encourages everyone to plant the seed and see if it grows. Specifically, he encourages everyone to “experiment upon the word,” just as you might do if you were a scientist. Form a hypothesis and test it, based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. I have done this. I have tried the teachings of the prophets and of Jesus Christ and found that they do exactly what they promise. I have proven to myself, at least, that these teachings are true. Let me share a few examples.

One of the most fundamental teachings of the gospel is that God is there and responsive to our needs. I have so much evidence of God responding to my questions and pleadings, that I could fill many pages. I know that when I pray to God, he will answer my prayers. Will the answers always be immediate? No. Will the answers always be the ones I want? No. But I know God answers my prayers. When I am lost, God shows me the way, often quickly and in dramatic fashion. When I don’t know what to do, the Lord whispers to me the directions I should go and supports me in that choice. When I feel distressed and am in difficult circumstances, I can pray and the comfort and care I feel is almost immediate. When I need knowledge, whether at home or at work, I can pray and receive that knowledge that the Lord can provide. Can I just ask for anything I want and God will provide it? No. I have learned that if I keep my life in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ I will know what to ask for and when and how to ask for it. If my requests are in line with those promised in scripture, and I am asking with a humble heart, I receive the requested blessing. Truly God answers my prayers. How many times does he need to do it before I believe?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a number of teachings that ask members of the church to act in ways that are different from how most people in the world act. For example, members of the church are taught not to drink alcohol, coffee, or tea, or use tobacco and other harmful drugs. I must admit I have been in many social situations where this injunction was quite awkward, yet I feel I have been truly blessed by not getting involved with these substances. My mind is clear and my health is good; most importantly, I feel closer to God. Thus, there is ample physical and spiritual evidence to follow this counsel. This teaching is clearly a truth. A second teaching that has blessed my life is what we refer to as the “Law of Chastity,” which means that we avoid any sexual activity before marriage and are completely faithful after marriage. I have feel blessed every day for keeping this commandment as I watch friends and others throughout the world deal with the aftermath of breaking it. So much pain, suffering, and misery is tied to breaking this commandment that it is a wonder that most in the world teach it is of no consequence. I am extraordinarily grateful that I have been taught and understand this truth. It is truly the word of God.

I could recite numerous other commandments of God. Some of these commandments are ancient. Some have been revealed only relatively recently by prophets in our day. Nevertheless, all those that I have tried (which is all that I know of), I have found to be true and correct. Even more than the physical evidence I have received, I know that God is real because of the spiritual evidence I have received. When I call upon God, he answers. When I need direction, it is provided. When I ponder on the scriptures and the words of the prophets, my heart is filled with joy and with a knowledge that these words are true. Clearly there is a pattern here, and that pattern points me to know that God is real; God speaks to prophets today; God’s son, Jesus Christ, is the one who makes it possible for us to return to God if we choose to follow him; and I will live again after this life. In short, I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the church that has all the true teachings of Jesus Christ and that the church will lead all of us back to God and bring happiness to us in this life, if we will but follow the plan of God taught in his church.

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Bruce K. Gale received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University in 1995 and his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah in 2000. He was an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University before returning to the University of Utah in 2001, where he is now an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Gale is currently Director of the Utah State Center of Excellence for Biomedical Microfluidics. He is also Chief Science Officer at Wasatch Microfluidics, a company that was spun out of his lab in 2005.

Professor Gale has been working in the area of microfluidics, nanotechnology, and micro-total-analysis systems (μ-TAS) for the past decade. His interests include lab-on-a chip devices that require a variety of microfluidic components for the completion of complex and challenging medical and biological assays. Specifically, he is working to develop a microfluidic toolbox for the rapid design, simulation, and fabrication of devices with medical and biological applications. The ultimate goal is to develop platforms for personalized medicine, which should allow medical treatments to be customized to the needs of individual patients. He also has expertise in nanoscale patterning of proteins and sensors, nanoparticles characterization, and nanofabrication techniques.

Posted August 2011

I Am a Believer, but I Don’t “Just Believe”

I am a believer, but contrary to the Tony award winning Book of Mormon musical, I don’t “just believe.” My convictions derive from a more complex blend of study and faith than the musical suggests when the fictional Elder Price sings, “I am a Mormon and a Mormon just believes.” In addition to being a Mormon, I am also an historian who teaches and researches Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U. S. West. I am a believer, in part, because of my profession, not in spite of it.

I fully recognize that there are those who delve into the Mormon past, poke around in the sources, uncover inconsistencies, unsavory actions on the part of past leaders or followers, find too much human and too little divine, or otherwise encounter aspects of LDS history that disturb them. For some a messy historical record overpowers belief and convinces them to abandon their faith. Some even suggest that knowing the “truth” about Mormon history undermines the very foundations of Mormonism and will inevitably lead any rational person with a devotion to empirical evidence outside the fold, never to return. Those who stay, according to this version of things, either ignore the evidence or are ignorant of it and “just believe.”

I understand this argument, understand the evidence, and even understand the human fallibility bound up in the Mormon past, but I reject the conclusion that faith and messy Mormon history are incompatible. I embrace the fallible founders and followers of Mormonism, the faithful and faithless, the defenders and the detractors, in all of their complexities, just as I hope Jesus will one day embrace me in all of my human complexities, my unprofitable service despite my doubt, and my too frequent misgivings despite His offering ample reason for confidence. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

In shaping my personal cosmology, I don’t “just believe.” There are guiding principles that I employ to keep the intersections between my faith and my profession in check. In some circumstances the tools of my profession provide intellectually satisfying answers, even to religious questions. In other instances, my faith offers compelling and spiritually fulfilling solutions to some of life’s most challenging problems. Both have limitations as systems of comprehending the world. A healthy understanding of the limits of my profession helps to keep me grounded in my faith. A healthy understanding of the limits of faith helps to keep me grounded in my profession.

As an historian I don’t “just believe.” I am always confronted with the limitations inherent in my profession. History is incomplete. It can never fully capture the hearts and minds of past peoples or completely recreate past events. Reconstructing the past from the trace fragments left behind is the thrill of the profession to me. Incomplete stories; gaps in the historical record; inconsistent or conflicting sources; single sources; the vagaries of memory; the lapse of time; the happenstance of the creation or destruction, the altering or amending, of historical documents; the biases of my fellow historians; and ultimately my own biases and cultural baggage all impact the craft of history to shape various versions of the past. Mormon history seems to engender its fair share of competing narratives from sometimes antagonistic camps, perhaps because in the minds of some people, the stakes are so high, the very truth claims of Mormonism hang in the balance.

As an historian this can be especially problematic because those truth claims are so tightly interwoven into Mormonism’s historical narrative. Mormonism’s genesis miracle and the subsequent cast of heavenly visitors Joseph Smith claimed to encounter form a veritable who’s who of the Bible and Book of Mormon (the scripture, not the play). It is an otherworldly cast of characters that interrupt and disturb enlightenment Christianity, especially as they breach the boundaries of time and space to insert their very bodies—and golden plates and other relics—into the recent historical record.

The rational mind is correct to be skeptical. Yet it is in that very moment of skepticism that the Book of Mormon (the scripture, not the play) encourages empiricism of an otherworldly kind and suggests a different way of “knowing.” The book’s last author presents all readers with an experiment in which he promises that God will actually answer prayers that are offered “with a sincere heart, with real intent” and that He will confirm the “truth of all things” unto the seeker. Mormonism contains, at its core, an empirical test grounded in rational methodology but confirmed by the supernatural “power of the Holy Ghost.” For me it is a beautiful blend of the best aspects of my life as an historian and as a practicing Mormon. This alternate way of knowing forms the bedrock of my faith. Empiricism leads me to the ultimate source of truth, and it is there, at the very margins of what is knowable through rational means, that I fall to my knees and crawl into the darkness, my faith replacing knowledge and sometimes leading me down less-traveled roads.

I first applied this test in my own life, as an insecure and wavering nineteen-year-old. I studied, I pondered, I questioned, I asked, and eventually God reached down to envelop me in His love. He also answered my questions. I had my own otherworldly encounter which continues to speak to my soul and nourish me when spiritually weak. In the intervening years I have learned a significant amount of Church history, more academic than devotional: polygamy, polyandry, treasure digging, first vision narratives, race, blood atonement, Mormonism and women, Mountain Meadows Massacre, curse of Cain/Ham, blacks and the priesthood, blacks and the temple, post-manifesto polygamy, correlation, and other topics that were unknown to me when I was nineteen. If I accept God as an omniscient being, then He obviously knew about these potentially prickly issues when I was an insecure and wavering nineteen year old, and He still confirmed my path. His knowledge did not change His answer to me, nor does the new information I learn somehow negate that same answer. The new awareness does not change the old answer, it only broadens my perspective and adds new twists to a more complex narrative, one that I find wonderfully fulfilling and intensely compelling.

Even then, I don’t “just believe.” As an intellectual, my reliance upon faith is an important check against the excesses of smug self-assurance and the temptation to counsel the Lord, steady the ark, or think I know better how to minister a global gospel outreach than those whose burden it is to actually consider the weight of the world. The prophet Isaiah perhaps expressed it best when he warned, “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isaiah 5: 21) or as Paul puts it in an epistle to the Romans, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1: 21-23).

My profession also provides a rational check on my faith. An academic approach to Mormon history brings my understanding of that history into agreement with my professional understanding of history in general. As the American Historical Association puts it, “multiple, conflicting perspectives are among the truths of history.”¹ Understanding the nature of those varied perspectives makes my study of the past much less about concrete and immutable “facts” and much more about capturing a multiplicity of voices. It is my task to try and listen to those voices—on their terms, not mine—and then represent them in an evenhanded manner.

History introduces me to a variety of complex and sometimes contradictory individuals. Thomas Jefferson, whose ideals helped to establish a nation, led a personal life that did not always conform to those same ideals. Jefferson declared that “all men are created equal” while simultaneously owning slaves. He fathered at least one child with one of his slaves, his wife’s half sister, Sally Hemmings, a girl about thirty years younger than he. How should history judge such a man? Can we remember him both as a revered founding father as well as someone who struggled with personal peccadilloes?

For people of faith, the stakes can be even higher than how to best remember an admired founding father. For the faithful their cosmology is intertwined with sometimes flawed individuals. At times, crises of faith for members of the LDS Church arise because the narratives they have heard in Church settings are challenged by new information, sometimes from polemical sources, and the disparity can be jarring. In this regard, my professional training kicks in and desires, even craves, a more complex narrative, one that allows Mormon leaders and followers to be three dimensionally human. For me such complexity offers a more satisfying version of the past that is intellectually sound, sometimes cautionary, and frequently inspiring.

God seems to follow a pattern of selecting fallible yet gifted women and men through whom to work. It is not clear to me that he has an alternative. Moses murdered an Egyptian and then hid the body in sand. God later spoke to him face to face. Noah was drunk and naked in his tent; Elijah killed four hundred of the priests of Baal and then complained when Jezebel sought his life. Eve ate the forbidden fruit, Sariah murmured, Laman and Lemuel rebelled, Judah slept with his daughter-in-law who was dressed like a harlot, the missionary Corianton left the ministry to chase after a harlot, and the harlot Rahab hid the spies at Jericho and “by faith” “perished not” (Hebrews 11:31). Peter denied Jesus three times, and Judas, one of the original twelve apostles, betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. The list could go on, but the message seems clear: God is accustomed to working through fallible folks.

Given such a less than stellar historical track record, is it any wonder that the Lord’s preface to the Doctrine and Covenants anticipated similar difficulties among leaders and followers in this last dispensation? Jesus, in fact, made ample provision for the “weakness” of “my servants,” stating that “inasmuch as they erred it might be made known . . . and inasmuch as they sinned they might be chastened, that they might repent” (Doctrine and Covenants 1: 24-28). Jesus Christ himself saw the “weaknesses” of His servants and predicted our errors and sins. He has a long history of working with weak, error prone, people. His great atoning sacrifice would have been a useless exercise otherwise. If Jesus is willing to accept the weaknesses of His servants, I believe our historical narratives can too?

The wonder of Joseph Smith for me is his willingness to view himself as a “rough stone rolling,” to declare himself a prophet and still publicly grapple with his flaws. He printed and published a revelation that announced “how oft” he had “transgressed the commandments and the laws of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 3:6) and another that declared that he had “not kept the commandments and must needs stand rebuked before the Lord” (Doctrine and Covenants 93: 47). These were hardly messages one would expect from a charlatan, fraud, or megalomaniac.

I find significant hope in learning about women and men from Mormon history who struggled with emotions, failings, doubts, or weaknesses, because in their striving they become real to me, people with whom I can identify. They come down from their unreachable pedestals to walk with me, rather than away from me, singing as they walk, and walk, and walk. Even those who sought solace and solutions outside of Mormonism and left the faith altogether have lessons to share that don’t all come from a place of moral superiority simply because they left and I stayed. They teach me of the vulnerability of faith and its need for nurture, but they also teach me of tolerance and respect for the personal paths that others choose. They help me to value a religiously pluralistic society and to honor diversity of thought. They help me to learn that many people are seeking the divine through different means and that what is satisfying for me might not always be satisfying for others. Ultimately, they motivate me to protect and defend humankind’s freedom to worship “how, where, or what they may,” because in doing so I protect and defend my right to do the same.

Studying the Mormon past prompts new questions and constantly motivates reassessments and rearrangements of old assumptions. It makes me less certain and more open to new ideas and perspectives. It makes me less dogmatic about absolute knowledge and more invested in what I believe. Ultimately it deepens my faith, and it is there at the margins of historical evidence, where the tools of my profession give way to my commune with God, that it will always be just that, a matter of faith. When I’m tempted to think otherwise, I’m constrained by the Lord’s gentle but pointed reminder to Oliver Cowdery: “Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:23). Apparently there is no greater witness than from God and so I choose to believe.

Ultimately my profession and my faith come together in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I believe in Jesus, but I don’t “just believe.” For me, He is the definitive historian. Only He can understand the past in its totality, mesh and merge the various perspectives, and weigh the evidence in the balance. He can capture what historians only grasp at, the thoughts and intents of the hearts and minds under question (Doctrine and Covenants 6:16). I am satisfied that at judgment day we will all receive a fair hearing, and that all people will be accountable before God, leaders and followers alike. I am willing to let Jesus be the judge. In the meantime, I attempt to be balanced and to see the past as clearly as possible through the eyes of those who lived it, knowing that one day my own history will be open for review. On that day I hope for an historian who will take into account all of the various forces that came to bear upon my decisions, failings, and fortunes, and their vagaries across time and space. I hope for a merciful and compassionate treatment of my sources, just as I suspect historical figures would want of theirs.

In the end, I am a believer, but unlike the fictional Elder Price, I don’t “just believe.”

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Note:
¹ Visit http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm to view the American Historical Association’s “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct.”

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W. Paul Reeve (Ph.D., University of Utah) is an associate professor of history at the University of Utah and formerly the Associate Chair of the history department. He is on the board of editors of the Utah Historical Quarterly and previously on the governing board of the Mormon History Association. He is the author of Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes (University of Illinois Press, 2007), winner of the Mormon History Association’s Smith-Pettit Best First Book Award in 2008. He is co-editor with Ardis E. Parshall of Mormonism: A Historical Encyclopedia, published by ABC-CLIO in 2010, and co-editor with Michael Scott Van Wagenen of Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore (Utah State University Press, 2011). In 2007 Reeve was awarded a Mayers Research Fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and a Virgil C. Aldrich Research Fellowship at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. He is researching nineteenth-century notions of Mormon physical otherness, including ways in which outsiders racialized Mormons and a corresponding Mormon construction of whiteness. His book on the project, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Posted August 2011

While I was attending college in Minnesota in 1983, I had a good Lutheran friend with whom I had animated religious and philosophical discussions. Our friendship was secure enough that I disclosed to him my sincere opinion that the Roman Catholic Pope had to know on some level that his own authority was fraudulent. My friend was incredulous that I could believe this. I had come to this conclusion (astonishing, in retrospect) despite my inclination to acknowledge truth wherever it is found, because of two mistakes. First, I felt erroneously that I had a sufficient understanding of Roman Catholicism to address its internal coherence. Second, I had applied the all-or-nothing reasoning I had often heard Latter-day Saints use as a proof for the restored gospel: the proposal that the truth or falsehood of a key point necessarily determines the truth or falsehood of everything else in the belief system. (I have since come to recognize this as a common but potentially misleading approach to all types of religious and quasi-religious understanding.) During my mission service in Southern Germany, I had met countless cultural Catholics who did not inspire much respect in me for their own faith experience or commitment, especially compared to many German Latter-day Saints that I knew.

Fast forward eleven years, and I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience of shaking hands with Pope John Paul II. Because of my research in natural approaches to family planning, I was invited by a Catholic mentor to participate in a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Perhaps half of the participants were believing Catholics, and all had distinguished careers in biological, medical, and/or social sciences. Many associations related to that and similar meetings are among my valued professional associates and personal friends today. Some of my most significant mentors in science and medicine are devout Roman Catholics who have shown me how to seek the light that faith and science can bring to each other, as well as how those of different faiths can learn from each other. And I have been greatly inspired by the life and writings of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), particularly in relation to what he called the Culture of Life.

As Latter-day Saints, we invite others to come and add to the truth they already have, by learning of the restoration of the gospel. We may sometimes be less diligent in seeking the truths they can bring to us (Moroni 7:19; Article of Faith 13). We often say that Latter-day Saints have no monopoly on goodness, and this is true. I have also learned that we do not have a monopoly on testimony, nor are we the exclusive conduit for all truth that God is bringing to the earth in the fulness of times. This is not to say that I believe in a multi-cultural understanding that is based on moral relativism. But the truths that we are all children of God and that the light of Christ is available to all of us mean much more to me now than ever at any time before in my life.

At this point in my mortal journey, I find that there are many things about which I have become less certain and some about which I have completely changed my views. I have increasingly learned the value of suspending judgment, being open to new understanding, and acknowledging the limitations of my own human perspective (Mosiah 4:9). I recognize the inevitable human propensity to place one’s own cultural and personal interpretation on the revelation one receives. Faith and belief have become more valuable to me than knowledge. Learning from fellow travelers is more important to me than knowing absolutely. Questions and perspective are more important to me than certainty. Faith, hope, charity, repentance, and covenant are more valuable to me than a well-packaged belief system, where every matter seems appropriately explained and resolved. The path of faith does not become easier as I get older, but the nature of the challenges changes, and the vistas and rewards are greater.

There are a few things that have become more certain to me through sacred experience: God lives. God loves His children and gives personal revelation, grace, and virtue to those who seek. All human beings are God’s children, and of equal value to God. This life is part of a continuum of existence in which we choose who we are becoming by what we do with our opportunities and circumstances; which society we choose and which associations we cultivate; which thoughts we cultivate in our conscious mind; where we place our hearts and our actions in relation to God (Doctrine and Covenants 137:9). Man’s sinful nature in his separation from God and God’s reconciliation of man with Himself through the atonement of Christ are the central reality of the relationship between God and man (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). I believe that covenant and authority are an essential part of receiving the atonement in our lives, even though, as humans, we tend almost universally to overestimate and abuse authority. Likewise, covenant and fidelity are the antidote to the near universal human tendency to spiritual lassitude. The Book of Mormon, the Bible, and revelations received by Joseph Smith have been and continue to be instrumental in my spiritual growth, even as my understanding of them changes over time. I accept and honor the prophetic calling and authority of Joseph Smith and his successors in bearing witness of these realities and bringing the new and everlasting covenant to mankind. That my faith in these sacred truths is necessarily socially formed and culturally interpreted does not make it any less valid or important in my life.

Beyond this core understanding of truth, I find it necessary to suspend final judgment about religious, historical, and scientific truths of every kind. I value the marvelous opportunity of life to consider all evidence, all hypotheses, and all honest perspectives. I love Henry Eyring’s statement, “I believe whichever way it turns out to have actually been.” Future revelation will certainly surprise everyone in transcending current understandings (Doctrine and Covenants 101:32-34).

As a physician and epidemiologist, my clinical work and research in natural family planning and restorative reproductive medicine has opened vistas of inquiry that I never could have imagined had I trod the mainstream path of the secular and popular approaches to sexuality, family planning, and fertility. Faith and fidelity can change the questions that are asked and hence the truths that are discovered. In my research, I have found great value in seeking dialogue and conducting research with honest scientists of many different viewpoints, including different underlying moral assumptions. I have learned from them, and I hope they have learned from me.

It has been my privilege to provide medical support for many couples who seek a different approach than the ones on offer from the world to the most intimate aspects of their marriage, and to research into effective fertility treatments that avoid the moral dilemmas and pitfalls of “assisted reproductive technology.” I have been able to make small contributions to scientific understanding that support an ennobling understanding of human sexuality and fertility, and promote a full respect for the earliest stages of human life. I am humbled and grateful that couples and health professionals have thanked me for helping them live their faith—including Catholics, Latter-day Saints, and some of other faiths. I am grateful for the grace of Christ, and the complete support of my wife, which has made this possible.

Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is of inestimable value to me. It gives me the opportunity to repent and be forgiven (Isaiah 1:18), to seek virtue, and to grow in faith (2 Peter 1:2-8). The Church gives me the opportunity to make and renew covenants, individually and with my family. It gives me the opportunity to serve. It renews my hope to come into the presence of God (1 Corinthians 13:12; Doctrine and Covenants 93:1).

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Joseph B. Stanford (M.D., University of Minnesota Medical School) is a professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Utah. He and his wife, Kathleen Barnett Stanford, have seven sons, each of them a success of natural family planning. His academic career is summarized here. He has summarized medical research and moral perspectives on human fertility here. In the church, he has served in a number of callings, but has most enjoyed serving as a home teacher with his own sons.

Posted August 2011

I cannot forget how I picked up a perfect, intact snakeskin, about fourteen inches long, on top of the Hill Cumorah in New York state half my life ago. The memory of it is still brilliant, a treasure! Beautifully it showed that, getting my head in a forward position, I can wriggle my body out of the old, useless encumberments. That transparent snakeskin was significant in my metaphorical keepsakes. There were gentle curves of discarded old materials of living left behind, so life could function as a new, enlarged, unique being. I can testify to a number of things, because each year I live, I learn more, struggling out of old ways in favor of something higher. Examples are precious to me because I have learned the source and purpose of life.

I testify that being raised faithfully in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by two parents who devotedly wanted, loved, and helped me (for Eternal Family religious reasons) opened up religious concepts that to me were obviously true and functioned very well! Those concepts grew in me as I traveled and learned in a multitude of different subjects. I could never get enough of school subjects to study and was in school part of every year of my marriage from 1951 until 1992. “Our earth life is to be an institution of learning, in which we are educated for the more perfect hereafter.”¹

In constantly being involved with schools and education for fifty-six years of my life since BYU kindergarten, I wanted to know everything the various faculty, especially visiting foreign faculty, could teach me. I became aware of the deeper character of each teacher as an example. There were ways I wanted to make virtues more present in my life (the real goal of Godly education). Some teaching was so offensive in shutting out information, it was a warning to me (another purpose of education).

I learned to pray when barely three, each night at my mother’s knee, as she sat under a lamp mending stockings or crocheting bootees for Ward babies—resting her weak heart. How beautiful is the memory of the quietness of our rented home. I can still “see” the Victorian lamp shade with delicate shirring of mauve and pink chiffon in trapezoidal sections of it, like a drooping flower, and soft colors of beaded fringe. I naively associated praying to Heaven with the small beauties around me in those Depression times of the 1930s. Regardless of their low monetary circumstances, both my parents worked hard for sustenance and beautiful arts, tinctured with love. My mother told me to speak to “Heavenly Father,” and in the self-centered world of the three-year- old, I was then to say, “Bless me, thy little child. . . .” ( I can hear both our voices in memory, clearly, even now!) And then I was to thank Him for whatever was of import to me, and say it “in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

“Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices . . . in whom this world rejoices, who from our mother’s arms hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love. . . .”²

In the 1930s, under snow-capped Mount Timpanogos, Provo was a small town, a peaceful place where no one locked up the house—even when leaving for a six-week trip! I was thankful for growing fresh food in a laboriously irrigated, gigantic vegetable garden my parents always planted. Mama gave me the first little “Grapenuts” seeds and I watched them sprout into small, delicious beets! Irrigation water on my bare feet was life-giving, feeling the closeness of the neighborhood environment surrounding me. I almost understood those blessings were of God.

Daily I used the faith of my parents, and the Comforter and Healer of my dreadful sicknesses and of fourteen fractures from an accident when surely I should have died. When I was a child, my Papa’s blessings flowed from those large, warm hands of the Priesthood on my damp hair, and saved my life and the lives of others of his descendants, many times. They restored sight to my niece’s child, and perfect health after a terrible strep infection in my toddler son—within minutes, so we all could leave on an important trip. I could have died at least nine times, but religious faith and the sudden, protecting hand of God totally, physically, intervened. My compassionate mother gave me quarantined nursing care through the 1930s; new medicinal techniques arrived for me just in the right hour. Twice! And my thirteen-year-old son Gerrit pulled me to safety from drowning. My husband, over and over, used his Melchizedek Priesthood and I did not continue to bleed to death, multiple times after operations. I have often pondered why I was not born in a mud hut with no advantages.

I was born four homes away from Provo’s old Fourth Ward on Fourth North. There, I was named by Papa and the bishopric, with a middle name of Rose (for my sweet brown-eyed mother, Rosabelle Winegar). When home for a summer in Utah from Harvard, my husband, Richard, named and blessed our first baby, born in Cambridge, MA, and she wore a dainty, fancy bonnet which Mama had made for my blessing in that same chapel! That was a comfort to me, to climb those stairs with my Roselle to the haven of that particular chapel. My older sisters and I had walked down those exterior Fourth Ward stairs with our Papa, all our eyes red and streaming, when I was only nine, to bury my Mama after her sudden death. How I hated that casket, covered in rose-designed plush in honor of Rosabelle. The drive to and from Salt Lake is still a blackout for me. I watched the casket lowered into an icy grave next to baby William Gerrit, my parents’ firstborn only son, in the Salt Lake Cemetery. I stood there in banks of ice-crusted January snow with no one’s arms around me, in my too-short winter coat, no cap or mittens, freezing and silent.

Work is a balm of Gilead for sanity. Papa lost twenty-five pounds in grief, as he was so faithful to his work on the General Board of the Sunday School and doing too much as dean and teacher at the University. He still took Nola and me on small, deliciously mapped and planned trips all over the West. Papa read to me a history of the world, warmly every night at bedtime, for the year of fourth into fifth grade, after our loss of Mama. He turned my mind out to the world of Doing! I learned eagerly, with wonderful descriptions of cultural geography, and from every class and drama and art project of school I found satisfactions. I was even sewing costumes on Mama’s treadle machine for three of my fifth grade friends whose mothers were “challenged” by sewing, for the annual Spring Jamboree of the grade school. (“What inadequate mothers!” I thought.) Belle, my newly-married sister, generously came home with her husband to live with us—and stayed almost two years managing our home, since Nola was a young teen. Tall, patient Dean Van Wagenen’s cheerful attitude saved me. He was there, every day after work, and told me new things, included me in table games, spoke of his mission with real love, and empowered me to learn how to fly a kite on windy Wasatch days! With his gorgeous, untrained voice he sang with the Symphony playing in our big-box standing radio in those hollow Sunday afternoons when Papa was often out of town. My responsibilities were ever-present in gardening, watering, scrubbing, and dusting “my” golden gumwood stairway. In later years, I would promenade down to boyfriends in my homemade beautiful gowns (some were my sisters’ made-over gowns) of every hue and fabric for dances—where I had usually decorated the ballroom also, in high school and college. In those days we tried mightily for grace in ballroom dancing, but matinee high school dances were for fun, the Lindy and Jitterbug. I relished designing and making most of my own clothes, on the old Singer treadle machine. I felt that, because I had watched my mother’s wonders at making-over, cutting and sewing, anything was possible to make!

Nola married during her time at BYU and was living in California, and she invited a smart, kind, Honolulu Chinese girl to live with us for her starting at BYU. She was the perfect older sister for me, as I was barely fifteen. Papa took me, a high school sophomore, and Jean Fung Char to some places in Mexico .We climbed the frighteningly steep Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan with mission friends there. I imagined all the valley of Mexico full of the dwellings of ancient peoples, feeling the ancient spirits. I lingered so long up in the cool sunshine, they had to call me down. I felt like part of the glorious Cosmos!

For the Sunday School Board, Papa went out to the tiny LDS branches in operation, and I saw the sociological mixing of long-term “Gringos” with Mexican wives, and ate their homemade spicy chocolate mole, and sang with the cheerful missionaries surrounded by rich designs of azulejos. I saw in rural Mexico, for the first time, how the gospel lifts up people of every kind. The Lord gently leads them from their own conversion starting-points, and respects their ethnic and traditional differences. All Latter-day Saints didn’t have to be living my lifestyle in Provo, Utah! That trip was a walk away from ignorance and bigotry and the beginning of universal love for me as a missionary member of the True Church.

For many years I have well known there are evil spirits, with their leader, Lucifer, who fought his way out of his Parents’ influence because of extreme selfishness and desires to control Heavenly Father’s children for his own aggrandizement. I have no doubt of the spiritual effects of evil on conscious and semi-conscious human beings, especially those impaired by alcohol or various drugs or mental illness. Anger alone is essentially a drug that reduces Godly intervention. Evil’s goal is not our eternal progress, but our eternal paralysis. Today, meetings are offered in the newspapers to help us in “Letting Go of God.” What a sad exercise.

I know there is a Spirit World not far from us, which my Grama Rosa Shaw Winegar (b. 1855 in Salt Lake City) often saw. She had many significant dreams and visions guiding her life and foretelling many things that were imminent in her family. Her father, Osmond Broad Shaw, converted in Staffordshire, England, was of the same deeply thoughtful and religious bent, a privileged son of a brilliant chemist, linguist, historian, and schoolmaster who wanted nothing of Mormonism. Osmond worked hard, but joined the True Church through young George A. Smith and John Taylor. Yet Osmond realized with Paul that his faith should not “stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”³ Rosa’s mother, Eliza Wilding, herself a skilled corset maker with hand sewing, found the first apostle-missionaries in England (separately from Osmond) as a dream of hers had predicted, and she brought the gospel to her staunch shoemaker father and seamstress mother. My German-American Winegar Great Grandfather, Alvin, carved the stone of the Nauvoo temple.

Our Gods’ powers have been demonstrated to me in vivid ways. I know with certainty that I have Heavenly Parents, and the most righteous, loving, and creative of their sons is called their Beloved Son, actually my Spirit Brother—a concept that shocks the Evangelicals and that they try to twist against the Church. Our Gods all labor in their concern for every person born on this earth, and a multitude of other earths, some just beginning and some highly glorified worlds without number, unknown to us yet.⁴ The Gods I worship know who I am and what my needs are, both before and after my prayers of gratitude for guidance (or frantic desires for help and comfort!). And their blessings to me have been “heaped up and running over,” in the prophetic words of my patriarchal blessing, given to me when I was fourteen. I had no preparation whatever given me by Papa or the bishopric for my patriarchal blessing, as we try to do for our children. My mother was gone from this life five years before. Yet the man in the Lord’s office knew well by inspiration what to tell me. Patriarch Amos N. Merrill had lived a righteous, sharing kind of life. He knew and told me to “give your mind to much study and reflection,” with the implication that was one of the ways I could honor my Savior Jesus Christ.

I believe that the ancient biblical prophets led mankind toward the God Jehovah (Jesus Christ), whom they knew well, and in many other parts of the world there were philosophers trying to advance their culture—though not understanding Christ’s mission. Every culture had values in the symbology of a “Tree of Life,” expressed in sacral art and texts. Wise ones lived their teachings with a sense of conscience and ceremony. All people have the blessed Light of Christ, whether they understand it or not, whether they suppress it or not, and they often suffer or cause severe damage on earth when it is suppressed. It is a memory of what is right or wrong, divinely there. When a man or woman steps backwards into atheism, he or she is simply casting out the communications of the Holy Spirit and retreating to a position less responsible. A wave of increasing casualties is in our Christian nation, where many political leaders’ lives exhibit a ragged and worn-out form of “Christianity,” or ignore Judaic morality. Babies bring a light, and fading memories, when born. Some things of this life, from ages one and two, my husband and I can remember. We had strong social opinions of right and wrong even then.

At the age of two and a half, my little daughter, Chandelle, the last of our three miraculous adoptions, was alone with me on errands one rainy morning and, as the sun shot glowing rays of light through high cumulus clouds, we sat quietly, parked in front of our home, enjoying the beauty of the sky. She was gazing raptly at the light, and I softly asked her, “What do you remember . . . before you came to us?” Without breaking her gaze, she very slowly said, “Jesus . . . hugged me . . . and hugged me . . . and hugged me!” I paused a long time by this raven-haired messenger, still fresh from the Spirit World. Certain lights in nature, poetry or music help us “almost to remember” our pre-earth life.

The restoration of Godly Priesthood powers was accomplished in the nineteenth century through an earnest, inquiring young man, Joseph Smith, but at first he had not even the early education of his older brother, Hyrum, because of a reduction of the family’s earning power through crop failures, debts unpaid to them, and a common, timeless crime: embezzlement. Succeeding generations in the modern world are blessed exponentially, as are the spirits whose bodies have died on earth in ignorance of Christ’s plan, because of Joseph Smith’s relative freedoms living in America. Prophets of old held the powers of God to exercise them for eternal consequences, and divine messengers came from the Spirit World to educate Joseph Smith, and sometimes other persons were with Joseph when revelations came and they saw what he saw, heard what he heard. Vitally important history and doctrines, and ancient styles of living and worshipping, were taught Joseph privately in visions and conversations, as he and his mother mention in their histories. They needed to teach him the physical and spiritual aspects of particular peoples and places. They were his educators, to enlarge his capacities as a seer. Joseph’s large Palmyra family listened regularly to their middle son, of an evening after work was done. Around their hearth he told them of ancient peoples, travels, and destinations, in great detail, before he ever possessed the golden plates. This was not just a waiting period for him, but an educational period of very specific advancements in spiritual and historical facts, while he performed heavy physical labors of daily life for his family and married a wife in 1827. His family and Emma Hale knew his life intimately, and knew he did not lie or fantasize.

I realize more fully, starting my ninth decade now, how blessed I was to be born into a careful and believing family, a ward, and a stake of the Restoration, which offered me so much cognitive stimulation and opportunity to associate with disciplined people who meant so well! They were attempting to follow closely the refining doctrines and principles of the Bible, the Restored Gospel scriptures, and modern revelation. I realize that they were good because they lived the Restored Gospel.

My spiritual perceptions and expansive travel taught me: Jesus is my Savior, my Redeemer, and the Atoner for my ever-increasing ability to sin! I feel that my sins now, after years of trying to put into action the tenets of my religion, would bring a far greater harm to me than when I was ten or twenty, for my knowledge is greater now. I hope I can endure with a “hearty repentance” until my death.⁵ As a girl of seventeen I stood at the base of Brazil’s gigantic statue of Christ on Corcovado, one of the high hills in Guanabara Bay of Rio de Janeiro, and looked upward in awe at that massive white stone. At that age I realized, though dimly in comparison to now, that in the great events of Christ’s Atonement, there was more power in one drop of Jesus’ blood than in all that beautiful stone—visible from far away in a great airplane. President Joseph Fielding Smith said, “Oh, that we could only understand, that by the shedding of His blood, He bought us!” (Dedication of my Provo Temple site, 1970.)

I lived until marriage in the beautiful dream house that my Parents had built, which (Belle always added, with tears) Mama had enjoyed only four years. I helped Papa with carpentry and improvements in cement outside; I loved to mix with the shovel, and carefully tooled it to Papa’s standards of art. I asked many gospel and linguistic questions all the time (as I do with my knowledgeable husband still) while I built the back wall with mortar and garden rocks for our yard fireplace. Papa was always insightful in doctrine and especially in its application, and was an encouraging teacher for me in languages, musical history, and cutting wood safely with his power saw; I developed strong hands in pruning our fruit trees, played on his baby grand’s perfect ivory keys, and practiced thrilling piano pieces he introduced to me. Long delicious hours a day in my teen years I practiced, with inquisitive joy, for the little black notes were a “code to joy” in great music! Papa gave me lessons any time we could get together for fifteen minutes. It was crystal-clear demonstration and critique.

The University, on lower and upper campus, was my cradle, my youth bed, my playground. The old buildings had shadowy mosses, shiny chestnuts, and fluttering leaves that begged to be watercolored in the sun, and they made imagistic poems of themselves. All I needed was to write the flowing words on paper. And they were soon published. With passion I loved the great trees around my home, Dutch Elms of ancient age, Black Walnuts, huge Ash and very old Arborvitae grown tall, and Catalpas with queenly tiaras of white flowers. It was heaven under their branches, and they were my favorite subjects for art, with architecture and the Creator’s endless flowers.

There was no dancing taught at BYU. However I pleaded, Papa would not let me take the city offerings of dance. “Bad teachers are worse than no teachers!” Wanting it so much and so early, I was in the right family to see the modern dance concerts of renowned barefoot Martha Graham when I was only five, then again at about age eight, on that splintery College Hall stage. I still remember two of her dances. They touched me visually, but very spiritually, as a child. One was a piece augmented by special lighting of lavenders and bluish greens called The Fountain, where Graham never took a single step away from one spot on stage. She was the personification of playful water. The other composition was Judas Iscariot (I knew the horrible story), with Martha Graham dressed in a dark grey robe with maroon striped coat, with a dark turban covering her hair. After the traitorous actions of Judas’ decision to betray Jesus, the “man” realized the intense gravity of it. Moving toward our family’s front seats, into the shadows against the black stage curtains, “he” went into the knotting and jerk of strangulation, swaying slightly from the rope where” he” hanged himself! The red velvet drapes slowly closed. . . . Graham could hang herself with no rope! What power to reach a human heart is in art!

My going with Papa for a year in Brazil at age seventeen in the spring of 1947 was a multi-faceted experience in Santos, one hour away on the beach from the fastest growing city in the world! On the plateau of Sao Paulo, they had only a few members of the Church, and sometimes we could ride the bus up to meetings with Mission President Beck’s family. Gerrit de Jong, my father, was called by the US State Department to make democratic friends with the Brazilians, directing a center of English teaching, with visiting speakers, and American literature. Papa directed the Centro Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos in Santos—one center of many, trying to counteract the dangers of Communism and Nazism penetrating South and Central America. Dean de Jong of Fine Arts was also Portuguese-trained in his field of linguistics, and he supervised my teaching an adult professional men’s class, and teens in a large class. I was hired to be librarian,, and socialized, of course, with the young adult club. Gradually at parties I let myself go, and loved dancing the samba, “Como uma Preta!” (In later years my husband and I could really samba down a ballroom in the early ’60s period of Latin dancing in USA.) There were four lovely men in Brazil seriously courting me, ages twenty-four to twenty-eight, who thought I would make just the right wife at seventeen! I was appalled! “I don’t know enough to be anybody’s wife! I believe in education . . . have many years of university studies to accomplish in the U.S. before marriage!” I would not marry in the Santos Cathedral (where I was an honored bridesmaid) nor under a Jewish canopy in Sao Paulo, but in the Salt Lake Temple in Utah, at an altar of Jesus Christ! We pleaded for missionaries in our smallish city and were finally sent two, so we held the first meetings in Portuguese in our own apartment, with one weak investigator. Five years later in the USA we read there was a chapel built in Santos, as Brazil began to explode with Mormonism.

In 1948, I came home to my graduation from B Y High School because of amassed summer school credits. During university years my heart was set to go away on a foreign mission, but Papa had been a widower for a decade and begged me not to go, but to stay with him in the university until I was married. So, I satisfied myself with a stake mission. And obedience to my parent put me in the right place at the right time to meet my own husband for eternity. The Lord “told me in my mind and heart” that the fall quarter of my sophomore year was the time to take a class from Hugh Nibley. I argued with the Spirit that my program was full! At this constant insistence, though, I found a class, any class, and betook myself at 9 AM to “Oriental History.” What Nibley taught was “Lehi in the Desert,” Arabic/Egyptian/Hebrew research he was currently doing: I lapped it up like my cat! There was a tall, dark-eyed fellow across the room who always sat with a married man. They both made very pithy comments and I said nothing, just drinking in Nibley! But Sidney B. Sperry and Hugh Nibley had brought the returned missionary Richard Lloyd Anderson to teach missionary preparedness at BYU for a scholarship; they pulled him away from Weber College near his parents, after his famous methods brought very fruitful results in the Northwestern States Mission. By extremely convoluted and romantic means, I later began dating this “RM” from Nibley’s class. I “knew” on the first date by means of a story so unbelievable it is not written here. But we spent a lot of courting time sitting on Dr. Sperry’s desk while he filed things and told us powerful anecdotes of his education, as well as standing discussing Dr. Nibley’s latest research in his next door office, where shoe boxes of “his own Arabic shorthand” research cards were piled on the floor, amidst books all over the rest of his walls and floor. I loved these scholars. In ’49 my art-major boyfriends—one classic Californian, a tall German, a red-headed football player, and the gorgeous Persian I had tried to convert—stood on the sidelines and I couldn’t even see them! There was no other person on earth I wanted to spend time with except RLA.

The next ten months we spent untold hours a day together as he taught me and taught me the gospel, making me laugh, making me cry, and most of the time feeling awe for how little I knew and how tremendous the Gospel really was! He knew so much enticing history and doctrine all over the scriptures, from his heavy reading of early Mormon apostolic leaders. He, himself, was a passion and taste I had never before known. He had very little money, no car but an occasional borrowed one, and a very lovable family in Ogden. He gifted me with my first personal scriptures, leather bound, name in gold. Need I say that young women, especially in the 50s, seldom had their own scriptures? I had always relied on our family set. Papa, my continuing language teacher, was saying to me, “You take the Book of Mormon around every day with all your school books!” Very formally, I said, “It is one of my school books. I am reading it through for the first time! And that prophet Ah-bin-ah-di is a hero!” Papa looked at me askance: “That’s a Hebraic name, and you’re pronouncing it in Portuguese!”

I went away to Harvard Law School with my true love in’51. I was encouraged that I had met the lovely lady Papa had fallen in love with on a speaking tour in Idaho, soon after my marriage. A silver-haired, talented educator, Thelma Bonham, was married to Gerrit de Jong in the Salt Lake Temple in the fall, just when we were searching for a place to live in the East. We relished life in New England, and I studied in a Cambridge community art class in gold-leafing designs, a most exacting skill for New England furniture I much wanted. Richard and I studied French together in Harvard night school to add that important language to our tools. The Cambridge Branch was full of lifetime friends, and, with our toddler daughter born in Massachusetts, we came back to BYU. Then, soon after Richard passed the Utah Bar exams, he dumped his JD in law and did an MA in Ancient Greek with Hugh Nibley. He was teaching all kinds of classes in religion at BYU. From our attic apartment I simply crossed the street for remarkable art training in ceramics night classes. After my three-year-old Roselle was early asleep, Richard could study at home some nights of the week, while I gained credits at BYU. When he landed two scholarships for a PhD in Ancient History, we went to Berkeley at the University of California. Right there, with Roselle in her first kindergarten and Richard gone on his bicycle, I could drive to campus for many master classes from a world expert performer in Hindu dancing. I constantly partook of the noon lectures at the University, which exposed me to the ideas of some of the greatest minds even beyond America. In Berkeley First Ward, I designed and helped construct huge extravaganzas for raising thousands for our Welfare Funds all in one night! It was richly rewarding among many resident friends, and we escorted non-Mormon friends to our ward. The year Hugh and Phyllis Nibley moved their whole family for him to teach at Cal Berkeley, he studied more Egyptian language. I spent every Tuesday night at the Ward learning the Old Testament from him. He analyzed the Hebrew Kittel version of the Bible and translated verbally to us in an astounding stream of data not readily apparent in King James English. Genesis on. It changed my entire understanding in new dimensions of Old Testament events and doctrines.

When we arrived back at BYU, we brought our eight-year-old Rosie and our four-month-old blond son, Nathan, from the County Adoptions in Oakland, California. In three more years, while taking a six-month sabbatical we drove in the winter all over the eastern states, always ahead of the ice storms, for Richard’s further ancient studies at museums while the rest of us clambered through art museums. We arrived home to our gift of a big strong ten-month-in-utero son, Gerrit, who had stubbornly waited to be born through LDS Adoptions until the night we were on our way home to Utah. He was brown-haired and brown-eyed like my husband and mother. Three and half years later I woke up one morning with another revelation for our family. That was “the day I should call LDS Adoptions” to tell them they would give us another child, a daughter—minutely specified this time after our two boys had come as the Lord kindly determined. I told the LDS agency to recognize this child when she came very soon, because in five or six years we would be teaching on a BYU semester abroad in Salzburg and, by then, our last child had to be old enough to enjoy her foreign six months. They protested but sent us application papers, telling us “Think years!”

In exactly nine months she was born and they finally re-read our application and, from the whole page of description I had written (e.g., black hair and eyes, very tall height, and what artistic talents would come from her parents, etc.), pronounced, “This is Carma’s baby!” We took her at five years old to teach in the BYU Salzburg Semester Abroad, with all three of the older children already having studied German in their summers or winters. I gave the first credit classes in world art history from a planeload of heavy books to prepare my students for European museums at spring break. Our rarest experiences: string quartet music live in the smaller re-creation of Versailles at the exquisite palace island of Chiemsee, and living in a chalet on a big mountain above Salzburg. But greatest of all was the family attending, in the icy-cold Dom of Salzburg, an ethereal Palestrina mass from the 1500s. Bundled in long coats and full winter regalia though we were, it was still worth it, simply the most divine music I ever heard in my life!

Intermittently, every time we landed back at BYU, I was a faculty spouse with free credit classes! Finally, in ’76, I shared the de Jong Concert Hall stage with Papa in his Stanford PhD blue-velvet-trimmed robes for my BA graduation in art, with a modern languages minor. That was the last time he had the strength to come to the campus before he died of cancer. It was gratifying for him to have one of his daughters finish college. I had spent twenty-eight years doing it in multiple areas of study, every one fabulous to me!

When I received my PhD at age sixty-two, I had driven thousands of miles around the USA, coast to coast, to meet with curators to photograph clothing of the nineteenth century, and traveled in Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales, and in continental Europe, with red carpets laid down for my research and cameras. After using my own money, and grateful for a grant from the Kennedy International Center at BYU, I finished my dissertation and graduated in 1992 wearing my father’s robes, with a black velvet mortar board, and real gold cord tassel. Before my dissertation could actually be published for the world, I insisted on going to Scandinavia to enlarge its time frame. I received $16,000 in grants for Scandinavia, with translator Andrea Darais necessary for our hearts to be at home in those lands of the Great Northernness! I am making quality reproductions of Scandia folk costumes. Fifteen of them were used in the twenty-two Olympic performances in the “Zalt Lake Zity” giant stage of the LDS Conference Center.

The motivations for research have come from seeing so many LDS Visitor Centers around the U.S. and England, and LDS publishing and films for the last 65 years, We often have good painters and good sculptors, but rarely any accurate content! LDS films and all illustrations or fine artworks included little authentic clothing or hairstyles to show how our ancestors really looked. The contents are out of sync with dates claimed in the words, and one single painting or film can have badly jumbled time frames in clothing and artifacts! BYU will publish my expanded, expensive big dissertation on historic clothing and textiles as a necessity for all the various didactic arts of the Church. There will be no royalties for their publishing, nor any for me, from my fifty-five years of research. Adding another decade to my writing to cover the British and Scandinavian hand carters, is like writing three more dissertations, but it will be finished—though overdue. My consolation for having so many “life and death” distractions slow me down comes from a Harvard graduate, the first female President of Liberia. “I believe I am a better . . . person, with a richer appreciation for the present because of my resilient past.” Her speech was at Harvard, for graduation 2011.⁶

Richard and I were working with great effort to raise and educate four precious, precocious children. I was at home most of the time all those years, but driving for short and long research trips all over the U.S. for studying and photographing historic clothing of ethnic forms of early Mormons—while Richard was carrying heavy loads and counseling as a Religion teacher, as a campus bishop, etc. But he was a beloved father who went through the ups and downs of ourselves and our children learning how to live like Latter-day Saints. We were very early gone on research trips, with and without parts of the family, long before the Internet, and our travels opened up new worlds which excited all of us. Added were the chances of death: by Richard’s one, and my two, successful bouts with cancer.

Along with my graduate schooling, I spent thirty-four years restoring Historic Sites for the Church, producing everything of textile construction here in Utah, sewn by hand. All items had to be designed, patterned, and cut out by me previous to passing some things on to my trained women in period hand sewing. From on-site multi-national handling of clothing and 1000 books I gathered on costume and art, I had men make the proper shoes, and hats were purchased or hand made in exact period styles. Some woolens had to be dyed historic colors for draperies, to match window mullions’ paint colors. I have seen thirty-four years of photographs in Church publications of sites done by me and my architectural genius boss, Don Enders. Different design changes of clothing advanced relentlessly every five or ten years through Church history. The Mormon History Association just surprised me with a special recognition award in St. George, Utah, at its annual meeting for 2011, for those difficult works did not happen by a magic wand! That award does not include sculptors, painters, book illustrators, and re-enactors I have worked with individually and constantly, who found they could get trustworthy help in undisputed content for their arts. Now we will begin to restore Harmony, Pennsylvania, for the first translating with Emma as scribe to Joseph, and then the restoration of both Priesthoods by the end of May 1829. No finishing date yet for the Susquehanna site.

Richard and I are living in our eighties. I recognize our families’ lives were directed by God and his inspiring help through our efforts in history research, writing, teaching, and all the arts.. We have personally known great numbers of brothers and sisters, marvelous children of God on three continents, both Mormon and non-Mormon. We are missionaries for Jesus Christ and Restored Living Prophets with Priesthood power, in every way and place and form of communication we can find.

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Notes:
¹ C. C. A. Christensen, The Fine Arts, translated and with an introduction by Richard L. Jensen, BYU Studies 23/4. Carl Christian Anton Christensen was called some years ago, by an expert from New York City museums visiting BYU, “one of the four leading folk artists of America.” He trained a short while in a Copenhagen art school, then emigrated with other Scandinavians to Utah as a newly married man. He was captain of a Danish handcart company to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1857.
² LDS Hymn 95.
³ 1 Corinthians 1:5.
⁴ Benjamin E. Park and Jordan T. Watkins, “The Riches of Mormon Materialism: Parley P. Pratt’s ‘Materiality’ and Early Mormon Theology,” Mormon Historical Studies (Fall 2010) 2/2. This is a most delightful article.
⁵ Steven C. Harper, “Joseph Smith and Hearty Repentance,” Devotional Talk Given at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, November 9, 2010.
⁶ Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “If Your Dreams Do Not Scare You,” Harvard Magazine (July/August 2011): 52. She cautions grads not to become cynical. “The world is still a beautiful place, and change is possible.”

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Carma Rose de Jong Anderson is a great grandmother who grew up in all the arts and music, with awards in poetry, modern dance, choreography, etching, and glass mosaics. Honored in four one-woman shows of watercolors located in Provo and Salt Lake City, she has been a writer, producer, director, costumer, and actress in theater since the age of five. She also learned photography, especially for historic clothing, for its various uses in film, on stage, in pageants, and for close-up views at historic sites.

The daughter of Gerrit de Jong, Jr., the founding dean of Brigham Young University’s College of Fine Arts, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Art and Design from Brigham Young University, and subsequently earned a Ph.D. from BYU in Theater and Film, with an emphasis on historic clothing.

Dr. Anderson has worked for the Church’s Historical Department and for the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City—spending thirty-four years helping to restore Latter-day Saint historic sites—and, as an editor, for the Costume Institute of Utah. For nine years, she taught a class on early Mormon clothing at BYU. Over the course of twenty-five years, she taught on eight distinct subjects at Education Weeks in the United States and Canada, and she has also served as a dance and costume critic for the Provo Daily Herald.

In June 2011, Dr. Anderson received an award from the Mormon History Association, in recognition of her meticulous designs for and artistic productions of hand-sewn clothing and all household or business textiles for more than twenty historic sites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the United States. Her best 6000 items of clothing treasures have been given to the BYU Fine Arts Historic Collection for design research and exhibition. The BYU Religious Studies Center is slated to publish her enlarged dissertation on Mormon pioneer clothing, with hundreds of pictures in black and white and in color.

She took four busy children to Salzburg, Austria, for a Semester Abroad there with her husband, Professor Richard L. Anderson, where she taught art history. Her family, she says, “lived” in world art museums. She sews Scandia folk clothing, and searches for authentic jewelry for it, and she consults on ancient arts.

Posted August 2011

I have known that God is our Heavenly Father, that He lives, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of humankind, and that the Holy Ghost is a revelator of eternal truth for as long as I can remember. That knowledge has been supplemented from time to time by empirical data and by rational argument. However, these things have never ascended beyond the status of supplement; they have never constituted the basis for the knowledge I have of sacred truths. One might ask, “How can you know—or claim to know—that which you cannot directly encounter with the senses?” But the question strikes me as an odd one, since the senses merely mediate one’s encounter with the world. One person might sense a particular phenomenon in one way, and another sense ostensibly the same phenomenon in quite another way. While, as far as workaday matters or “present particulars” are concerned, most of us are largely in agreement on questions of how the world around us looks, sounds, feels, tastes, or smells, still even a young child soon becomes aware that there appears to be room for wide divergence of opinion or interpretation. As for rational argument—as vital as rationality is to our present existence, the conclusions on which such argument is based are only as good as the assumptions which underwrite them. Thus, when it comes to the really big questions—“What is existence?” “What is the purpose of life?” “Does what I do or not do really matter?” “Is there such a thing as right and wrong or does morality merely boil down to personal preference or societal convention?” “Is there life after death?” “Is there a God?”—I have always felt drawn to a search for the fixed points of the universe. It is my certain conviction that such fixed points exist, and my search for the fixed points has led me to feel in my heart that, if indeed I can claim to know anything at all, it is that God lives and that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of humankind. That assurance has both informed my convictions relative to the “big questions” and has directed the choices I have made during the course of my life.

Although I feel that words are inadequate to describe fully life’s most important meanings and concepts, perhaps I can attempt to reduce to words some of the feelings I have had over the course of my life, which have led me to view the universe—and in particular, the answers to life’s “big questions”—in the way that I do. Once, as a new Second Lieutenant in the United States Army, I found myself far from home on a major training exercise in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I was newly married, feeling rather homesick to be with my bride who was expecting our first child, and quite overwhelmed by the scope of the responsibilities that were now mine as an Army officer. One night, I went out of the field headquarters where I was working to be alone and to try to get my bearings. There was not a man-made light to be seen anywhere—only the sky illuminated by more stars than I had ever seen at any one time in my entire life. In the quiet of that night, I sensed very clearly that I was not alone and that a Power above and beyond anything I could lay claim to—a Power that had made the stars I was now beholding—was there to direct me and would not leave me utterly to fend for myself. Then and there was renewed in my soul an awareness of the conviction I had always had that I have a Heavenly Father, Who, although greater and more infinite in power, might, dominion, or influence than all the starry heavens for as far as my eyes could see, was somehow aware of me in intimate detail, and that He loved me. If the account of that experience seems inadequate to explain the verities of the eternities, I wholeheartedly agree. It is nonetheless the case that I have sensed through experiences like this an inaudible whisper to the depths of my soul that says, “Yes, God, your Heavenly Father, does live; Jesus Christ is His Son. He is the Savior of the world.”

It may be that some will respond, “OK, I can see how you might interpret experiences like these to bear witness to the existence of a Supreme Being, but how do you, on that basis, extrapolate to the conclusion that the Man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Supreme Being’s Son Who has saved the world?” That leads me to recall another experience I had as an Army officer many years later. I was now a Major and the Executive Officer of a 430-soldier air assault field artillery battalion. Again I found myself on a training exercise—this time in the dead of an extraordinarily cold winter. I was sitting with my staff inside a field logistics headquarters, huddled with them around a small heater. Again it was night, with illumination provided not by stars but by electric lights inside our headquarters, powered by a small generator. Without warning, the generator went out and our headquarters became pitch dark so that I could not see my hand in front of my face. In the ensuing conversation, a sergeant of mine—apparently taking advantage of the relative anonymity conferred by the darkness—said to me, without a prompt from anything which had preceded in the conversation: “Sir, I have a question for you. The Bible mentions many, many sites which are well documented by archeology. However, The Book of Mormon has no similar documentation. How do you account for your belief in The Book of Mormon?” I responded: “I am quite aware of the substantial archeological evidence of the veracity of the biblical record. In addition to being a life-long student of the Bible, I also had the opportunity to visit and study at first hand biblical sites in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Greece, and Italy while a college student, and I hold an undergraduate minor in Near Eastern Studies. I am similarly aware that there are virtually no archeological sites which are known to correlate with events recorded in the Book of Mormon. However, my knowledge of the truth of the Bible and the events it records is in no way reliant upon archeological evidence. I know that the Bible is true, that the events it describes are true, and that its teachings are true because the Holy Ghost has borne witness to my soul that they are true. Hence, I know that they are true because I have felt that witness in the depths of my soul, independent of any other person or evidence. In that very same way, I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.” From the testimonies of the divinity of Jesus Christ unambiguously recorded in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

To this, one might respond, “OK, I understand why you claim to know that God lives and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of world, but what is this ‘Holy Ghost’ on which you rest your testimony of God and Jesus Christ?” The Holy Ghost is a revelator of truth. He bears witness of God, our Heavenly Father, and of His Son, Jesus Christ. In fact, without His revelations, it is impossible to know of either of them—of that I am convinced. How, then, does one receive revelation from the Holy Ghost? Listen; just listen. His voice is there. It whispers to each of us. And, when we are quietly resolved to act upon the directions indicated by that still, small voice, it whispers again, giving additional guidance and direction. Indeed, countless times during the course of my military career, honest reflection required my recognition that I was in receipt of insights and understandings far beyond any capacity of mine to produce, which directed me in the conduct of my professional and personal life. I am not so bold as to assert that I understand the mechanics of the process; I do not. However, there are countless processes I do not understand which inform and enrich my life. All I know is that it is real, and for me, that is enough. I know that the Holy Ghost guides, directs, teaches, testifies, warns, chides, corrects, comforts, and heals. I know it because I have experienced each of these manifestations, just as I am convinced that anyone who desires to experience them can. (One must, however, be willing to turn off the producers of incessant noise and distraction in the world around us and really listen so that he or she can hear.)

My conviction that God lives, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World, and that the Holy Ghost testifies of Them and of all truth has led me to further understandings, to wit: that the heavens are not closed; that man is not left to function without divine aid; that every member of the human family is literally a son or daughter of God, our Heavenly Father; that life has meaning and purpose; that our present existence in this life is but a drop of water in the ocean of our eternal existence; that life after death is as real and certain as is our present existence, and in crucial ways it is more so; that throughout the ages, God has spoken to men and women who were willing to hear Him; that in this latter age of the history of the world, God has revealed Himself in an extraordinary way by calling a prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., just as He has called other prophets like Noah or Moses or Elijah in earlier periods of history; that He has restored through that medium His “Gospel”—the pattern for happiness in this life and for eternal salvation in the world to come; and that He has institutionalized His Gospel, with all of its ancient blessings and glory, in His uniquely authorized kingdom upon the earth, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The invitation to discover that these things are true is universal; none are excluded from the opportunity to learn these truths. Indeed, the knowledge associated with them is ultimately non-transferrable, such that each must acquire it for him- or herself. But acquire it he or she can, directly from the Source of all truth. I know that is so. I know it by my own experience. I have seen this reality operate in the lives of others. Most importantly, I know that Heaven’s invitation to “come and see,” to come and know for oneself, is freely extended to all who will acknowledge and hearken to the still, small, transcendent voice that leads to vistas of understanding, meaning, and joy to which unaided human agency cannot attain.

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John Mark Mattox (Ph.D. in Philosophy and Semiotic Studies, Indiana University, 1999), Colonel, United States Army (Retired), is the former Dean of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Threat Reduction University and Commandant of the Defense Nuclear Weapons School. He has also served on the faculties of the United States Military Academy at West Point and the University of Maryland and as a lecturer at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) School in Oberammergau, Germany. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Defense University, Washington, D.C. His works include Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London: Continuum, 2006, 2009).

Posted August 2011

I grew up in a small town (Springville) just south of Provo, Utah. My father was a laborer and my mother also worked full-time in a department store. Both were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), though neither was active in my youth. My parents sent me to our nearby ward with my two sisters and I always went willingly. There were no religious discussions, prayers, or blessings in our home. My belief and conviction of the truthfulness of the teachings of the Mormon Church grew steadily, though slowly, through these high school and college years. In these formative years, I had questions regarding some of the church doctrines but I continued to attend church regularly, to serve in the church, and to read the canonized scriptures of the church including the Holy Bible and the Book of Mormon. I have not encountered any church principles that are contrary to my personal beliefs as a scientist. I believe that truth will prevail, whether from scientific discovery or from heavenly revelation. As an advanced college student, and then professional, and a husband and father, my testimony increased, through reading of the scriptures, answers to prayers, seeing the impact of the church on the lives of new members, and hearing testimonies of others. Now, I have an unwavering conviction that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true and that it possesses the priesthood authority of God to provide the essential saving ordinances, including baptism, to all who will believe and repent. I bear witness that this church was restored in the latter days by revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith and that each succeeding president of the church holds the sacred keys of the priesthood. I believe that the Book of Mormon, like the Holy Bible, contains the fullness of the gospel. It has been my studying and pondering of the Book of Mormon and the promised inspiration of the Holy Ghost that the book is true that has had the greatest impact on my testimony. I bear witness that Jesus Christ is the literal Son of God, the Father, and that He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross to overcome death brought about by the fall of Adam and the sins and weaknesses of all humankind, including me. I know He is my Savior, and without His atoning sacrifice I would be hopelessly lost for the eternities. My membership in the church and my family are most important to me in my life.

Post script: In later years, both of my parents became active in the church and married in the sacred temple before passing away.

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I was born in Provo, Utah, in 1934. I was a high school and intercollegiate athlete, graduated from high school and BYU with honors, and earned two college degrees from BYU and two more from the University of Washington in engineering and science. My career has been in university education (professor, director, dean) and in technical consulting in the field of energy. I have traveled and lectured around the world and have received university, industrial, state, national, and international recognition for my work. I served the church as bishop of a congregation (a ward) and as a president of a group of wards (a stake). I am married, have four daughters, and now enjoy grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Posted August 2011

I understand things now that I didn’t before. I also know that this understanding has come because of an enduring pursuit that has led to experiences with the divine that have changed my heart. At times, I have wanted to abandon this pursuit; but I have persevered for a few reasons.

The principle reason is humility. The temple ceremony puts the nature of religion in primal terms: the endowments are empowering. How, then, does having humility about becoming powerful make any sense at all? This is a confusing matter—but confusing for a reason.

There are real limits to human power, including my own. I am humble in the sense that I know I could be doing better. I generally feel this same way about other people, too. I want to believe in God simply because so much about human life falls short of the mark. Smart people are not that smart. Good people are not that good.

The problem with this humility is that to pursue God’s will is to become like God, to share a power that is not available to those who do not seek it. On the face of it, could anything seem less humble than saying, “I know that God lives, and that he loves me”?

Were it not the case that God’s power is good, I fear the humility that propels me to seek it would only leave me in a less redeemed state. But this is not the case. I know that the Spirit actually heals. It inspires. It protects. It guides. It enlivens. It softens anger and resentment. Most importantly, it connects me with other people and other things—family members, neighbors, my colleagues, my students, animals, trees, mountains, and on and on. It is the essence of consciousness.

As Paul put it, God’s empowering love is not aggrandizing. It is not selfish, willful, or manipulating. Human power tends to be all these things—easily abused and self-interested. Yes, “power in the priesthood” can be degrading in this way, as well. But the one thing I can say about priesthood power is that it is generous and compassionate in nature. It is one of a few things we can pursue wholeheartedly and not harm others.

God’s power is easily misunderstood. This is because, by its very nature, it is only partially understood by those who seek and have faith in it. At some level, our misunderstandings and abuses cannot be avoided, because we learn things gradually, line upon line, one experience at a time. We also stop learning. We also forget. As the garden at Ginkakuji teaches us, enlightenment is a matter of daily practice.

The good news is that there are people who actually become thoroughly good. They are rare. But they exist. I know a few, and their presence gives me a lot of hope. The presence of a truly good person takes away my excuses.

When I was a young man, beginning to bump up against the limitations of human frailty, I used to despair. As a high school student, I was filled with an almost paralyzing sorrow—both because of what I couldn’t do, and because of what the world didn’t do. My usual way to gain relief from this sorrow was through art and other forms of escape. My personal tendency was to distance myself from things I disliked or felt uncomfortable with, even to the point of cutting myself off from the experiences that I needed to have in order to find my way as a member of the human community.

Luckily, I was shaken by God’s power. One night I attended the ordination of my brother Warren, prior to his going on a mission, and I tried to distance myself from the good will that President Stewart extended to me. On the way home, I suddenly began weeping, and I kept sobbing uncontrollably for the next two hours. God’s love came as an earthquake. It made me fall to the ground, and to reach out for something to hold on to. The simple message was this. “Don’t harden your heart. So much is at stake.”

Partly because of that experience, I decided to attend Brigham Young University and to go on a mission. In many ways, my two years in Hokkaido were joyous. I gave myself wholeheartedly to the work of seeking out and teaching anyone who might be searching for the things I too was searching for and had found to some degree. What I discovered on the night I returned home from my mission, however, was that I had somehow missed the point of those two years.

In my desire for God’s love, I had forgotten my love for people. The love I had developed was an obedient, pure kind of devotion. But it was empty in its beauty. In fact, it was beautiful because it was so perfectly untouched by the hearts of the people I had interacted with as their supposed teacher. I kept remembering the comments of one man, the husband of a woman Buchanan-chōrō and I were teaching in Sapporo. When we asked him about what he thought of the principles we were teaching his wife, he said, “I would listen to you if I thought you understood the first thing about how my life really is.”

On the night of my homecoming, my parents got a call from some Mexican workers who had fled to town and were calling from a pay phone. Henry Timican, the Paiute man who had spent most of his adult life working for my father, was drunk. He had a gun, and the other workers were afraid he was going to shoot them. Realizing how completely I had forgotten Henry, this man I had grown up with on the farm, I remembered the words of my investigator’s husband in Sapporo. “If I thought you understood the first thing . . .”

Henry was a gentleman. But when he got drunk, he became a different person. I sometimes feared he would kill my father someday. So when my father went to check up on him, I went along. We found the house dark. Henry was wallowing in his vomit. There was a loaded pistol in the drawer of his desk; the gas burner was unlit and turned full open.

I left Utah soon after that. I went to Stanford to learn about the world. Henry died a few months later.

As someone trying to appreciate the world, I made the common mistake of thinking that the intellectual methods I was eagerly learning applied to all questions in the same way. I came to the conclusion that honesty is the most important element of personal integrity, and that if I were honest I would admit to myself that I didn’t really feel perfectly comfortable as a Latter-day Saint.

Wanting to be honest, I decided to leave the church. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the people in my ward. It was just that I didn’t have an answer to the question of how smart people could honestly believe in all parts of the Mormon narrative.

I decided to attend church one last time. I prayed with the congregation one last time. I took the sacrament one last time. I listened to the talks one last time. I sang the hymns one last time.

When the closing prayer was said and the meeting was over, I shuffled over to the aisle. I was eager to leave the chapel, but waiting there to greet me was my home teacher, Dale Nielson. A graduate student in physics, Dale was also a good person. He asked me, “Charles, are you all right?” Apparently, he could tell that something was up. I told him I was fine. In response to that obvious lie, he replied, “If there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know.”

There are a lot of things I didn’t know. But I did know that Dale meant what he said. He really did care about me, and knowing that made it harder to carry out my plan to leave the church. But I was resolved.

I slowly made my way down the aisle to the back of the chapel. The exit was on the other side of the room. I turned right and started making my way through the crowd that had gathered there. But then, Patricia Webb jumped up from the bench that ran the length of the back wall and stood directly in front of me. With tears in her eyes, she blocked my way and said, “Charles, have you forgotten me?”

Patty was my home teachee. And, yes, in my doubt-filled agony, I had forgotten her. When she asked, “When are you going to come and home teach me?” I felt terrible. (For those who might not know, home teaching is basically a program of organized friendships, where the members of a congregation visit one another and make sure their needs are being met. It is a way to serve.) Well, what was I supposed to say? “Sorry, Patty, I’m out of here. You’re on your own now.”

Unable to say anything, I stepped around her and left the building. Once outside, I started toward the parking lot, ready to make my getaway. But then something happened.

It was one of those wonderfully clear Palo Alto days. As I stood there in that gentle sunlight, God communicated something to me with perfect clarity. What had just happened? I wanted to escape, to distance myself like Jonah of old. But I was stopped by one man who wanted to help me, and by one woman who needed my help. That was no coincidence. The message couldn’t be clearer. “Charles, you think you need everything to make sense in an intellectual way; and you demand that knowledge now. But what you really need to learn at this point is how to be loved and how to love. Focus there for a while, and maybe someday things will make more sense.”

I decided not to leave the church. I went back that next Sunday, and I’ve been going back ever since. I’m happy to say that my focus on learning how to love—Mormonism at the level of home teaching—deepened my understanding of many things. After graduating, I went to Japan for graduate school and spent my summers learning Chinese in Shanghai and Taipei. It was on a hot afternoon bus ride in Taipei that I was blessed again. This time, I felt God’s love in all its power. Sitting in that rattling bus, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of being forgiven, and I was filled with an empowering hope. I wanted to hug everyone in the bus. I wanted to tell them how much I loved them, how much God loved them. With tears in my eyes, I knew that my prayers to understand the world had been granted. I saw that God gives us the experiences we need, so long as we ask for them in true humility.

If we ask for God’s love, it is given. But it is given for a specific purpose. It teaches us to learn how to love others. This is how the humility problem that I spoke of earlier gets addressed. In this learning process, first things come first. Only when we master the loving part does the knowledge part come.

In the end, it turns out that my intellectual life and my spiritual life actually did come together in ways I never expected. What I have recently come to understand is that most of my problems with “the church” are problems I have with its modern cultural context.

In the field of literary studies, we call it discourse theory. The idea is simple. If you ask a certain kind of question, you get a certain kind of answer. This is only to say that if you ask the wrong kind of question you don’t get much of an answer. There are these limitations to our pursuit of knowledge. For example, the question “Does God exist?” is a great philosophical question. But it’s not a religious question. A religious question would be more like, “How does God feel about what I did just now?” The archeological evidence of the Book of Mormon is also not a religious question.

The problem most people have is that they learn one set of questions (history, biology, literary analysis) and think that they can apply it to all fields of human endeavor. It’s like having one tool for every possible job. You can take a spark plug out of your car with a pipe wrench. You can even drive nails with one if you have to. But there are wrenches especially made for removing spark plugs, just as there are many different kinds of hammers designed for driving different kinds of nails.

By analogy, there are questions that get you to the heart of what it means to believe in God, and questions that will never get you to a decent answer. The reason we have commandments is because they help us ask the right questions, even when we don’t know what the right questions are yet.

The temple teaches us that obedience is the first thing. We need to be obedient because the way to understand the profundity of God’s love is to receive it. We cannot give what we don’t have. Thus, there is a slight but important difference between the humility that leads to despair, and the humility that asks for help and eventually leads to compassion. In short, it’s all about asking the questions we’re qualified to ask. For slow learners like me, it takes time, patience, and sincere effort.

Now, discourse theory is a fundamental part of postmodern theory. Despite what I once thought, it turns out that Joseph Smith was way ahead of his time in his attempt to restore something ancient to a new world. He went into the grove to ask a modern question (which church is true?), but the answer he received was postmodern in essence (meeting Gods who were visible, embodied, personable, and communicative). That is a wildly unacceptable modern notion, but as a postmodern idea it could not be more on the mark.

I love this idea. It agrees with me, both spiritually and intellectually. I also love the notion that I have something to accomplish while I’m alive, and that I can pursue certain goals with full devotion, not having to worry about any collateral damage that my intensity might cause. (You can’t say that about flyfishing.) My faith has helped me not only understand reality much better, but it has also brought blessings to me, to my family, and to the people I encounter from day to day. Even with regard to my intellectual accomplishments, I can honestly say that my best ideas come to me because I pray every time I lift the lid on my laptop.

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Charles Shirō Inouye is a professor of Japanese literature and co-director of International Literary and Visual Studies at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts.

Educated at Stanford University (B.A.), Kobe Daigaku (M.A.), and Harvard University (Ph.D.), he focuses his research on premodern and modern Japanese literature, especially fiction, and on the role of visuality in the development of modern consciousness.

Among Dr. Inouye’s major publications are In Light of Shadows: More Gothic Tales by Izumi Kyoka (University of Hawaii Press, 2004); Japanese Gothic Tales by Izumi Kyoka (University of Hawaii Press, 1996); The Similitude of Blossoms: A Critical Biography of Izumi Kyoka, Japanese Playwright and Novelist (Harvard University Press, 1998); “Picture Modern Japan: A Semiotic Analysis of the Meiji Slogan,” New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan: Proceedings of the Harvard Meiji Conference (E. J. Brill); and “In the Scopic Regime of Discovery: Ishikawa Takuboku’s Diary in Roman Script and the Gendered Premise of Self Identity,” positions: East Asian Cultures Critique 2:3 (1994).

Posted August 2011

The Rise of Mormonism and the Birth of Modern Society

“Extraordinary claims should be backed by extraordinary evidence.”

Carl Sagan

“A stone was cut out without hands…and…became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”

Daniel 2:34-35

“And, as I, the Lord, in the beginning cursed the land, even so in the last days have I blessed it, in its time, for the use of my saints, that they may partake the fatness thereof.”

Doctrine and Covenants 61:17

In the early 1990s, I picked up a tome with an intriguing title, The Birth of the Modern (Harper Collins, 1991), by the eminent British historian Paul Johnson. His previous work, Modern Times, a one-volume history of the twentieth century, was captivating and significantly changed my view of world history.

What caught my attention about this particular book was the fact that Johnson had written an extraordinary chronicle of over a thousand pages detailing a mere fifteen years that literally changed the course of world history. Johnson states that these fifteen years formed the foundation of the modern world. It was a period when art and music flourished, new ideas and new inventions dazzled the world, and the industrial revolution brought forth rapid economic growth.

What was this period? Johnson’s subtitle was “World Society, 1815-1830.” Undoubtedly most readers might be puzzled and a bit disappointed by the time selected, and in fact, his book was not a bestseller as were his previous works. But members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are amazed by Johnson’s title. For it was precisely during 1815-1830 that the Prophet Joseph Smith established a whole new creed known as “Mormonism.” Joseph Smith’s first vision occurred in 1820 and the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, the same year the Church was founded.

As an economic historian, I too have noticed the dramatic rise in sustained economic growth and standard of living starting in the early 1800s. In the area of science and technology, the vast majority of advances have occurred since 1830. The World Book Encyclopedia, for example, chronicles the major inventions throughout history. Over 70% occurred since the LDS Church was organized. Progress prior to 1830 was slow and plodding. Afterwards, it was dramatic. Material life prior to 1830 was about the same as it was a thousand years earlier. But the standard of living after 1830 has increased incredibly for the better.

Before 1830, inventions included paper and moveable type, the microscope and the telescope, the steam engine and the locomotive, cannon and firearms, and the spinning wheel.

Here’s a partial list of major inventions after 1830: photography, reaper and cotton gin, telegraph, gas refrigeration, rubber tire, sewing machine, elevator, hypodermic needle, internal-combustion engine, dynamite, typewriter, automobile, phonograph, light bulb, airplane, radio and television, anesthesia and Novocain, air conditioning, nuclear reactor, xerox machine, fax machine, computers, and the Internet.

Was this all co-incidence? Or was it related to what the Mormons call the restitution and the fullness of times? According to the Mormons, the Lord spoke through the Prophet Joseph Smith and ushered in the final dispensation, the fullness of times, also known as the last days. It is the final dispensation in mortality, before the great millennial day when Christ reigns on the earth for a thousand years.

According to the Latter-day Saints, Isaiah’s vision of a “marvelous work and a wonder” (Isaiah 29:14) and Daniel’s prophecy that a “stone without hands” (Daniel 2:34) would roll forth to fill the whole earth had specific reference to the Latter-day work. And Peter spoke of the “restitution of all things” in the last days. (Acts 3:20-21). Apparently the Lord’s blessing of abundance and restitution extended to temporal things as well as spiritual things in the last days. He revealed not only religious truth, but truth about science, law, economics, and psychology.

In the preface to the modern-day LDS Doctrine and Covenants, delivered in 1831, the Lord said He restored the “fullness of the gospel,” including new revelations and new scriptures like the Book of Mormon, “that faith also might increase in the earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:21). And faith in free markets (which Adam Smith called the “invisible hand”) has indeed flourished in the “latter days.” The first section of the Doctrine and Covenants is brimming with optimism about the “last days” (normally viewed as apocalyptic). So is Section 61, which talks about the “fatness” of the earth: “And, as I, the Lord, in the beginning cursed the land, even so in the last days have I blessed it, in its time, for the use of my saints, that they may partake the fatness thereof” (Doctrine and Covenants 61:17). I believe that the LDS faith has had a lot to do with the growth of religion and faith in the world since 1830.

The influence of the Mormon Church did not go unnoticed by the historian Paul Johnson, although, being a practicing Catholic, he chose to underplay its significance. On page 821, he wrote a single sentence: “It was a great age for new creeds: In 1830 Joseph Smith (1805-44) had the first of his revelations, in Manchester, New York, about the Book of Mormon, the foundation document for his Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Yet what appeared to be a mere footnote in history has become a whole book of religious work. “And out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:33).

A few years later I came across another fat book, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press, 2007), by UCLA historian Daniel Walker Howe. His book is part of the multi-volume “Oxford History of the United States.” And it won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2008. Like Johnson, Howe is not a Mormon, but, in his exhaustive 904-page work, he spends more than twenty pages describing in detail the growth of the LDS Church.

A third volume, The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created, by financial economist William J. Bernstein (McGraw Hill, 2004), caught my interest. Relying on the data-laden work of Scottish economist Angus Maddison entitled Monitoring the World Economy, 1820-1992, Bernstein pinpoints 1820 as “the” year that economic growth took off in the modern world. The year 1820 has significance in Mormon history—it’s the year that Joseph Smith said he had his first vision when he was only fourteen years of age.

I keep these large volumes in my entryway and welcome the opportunity to explain why to visitors in our home.

Another book of significance is Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Mormonism (Columbia University Press, 2005), wherein Stark (a sociologist at Baylor University) contends that the Mormon faith is a legitimate new “world religion” like Christianity and Islam and is likely to fill the whole earth. In his first essay, written in 1984, Stark made the “crazy” prediction that by 2080 the Mormons would have no fewer than 64 million members and possibly as many as 267 million. Over two decades later, it appears that Stark’s prediction is relatively modest, although the well-known law of diminishing returns could set in.

Stark grew up a Lutheran, but now calls himself an “independent Christian” and is the co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. A non-Mormon, he contends that Joseph Smith was neither a liar nor a lunatic, but a man who genuinely believed that he had been given divine revelation. In the chapter “Joseph Smith Among the Revelators,” Stark compares Smith to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, and finds a common pattern. All four belonged to close-knit, supportive families from whom they got their first converts. From that beginning, Stark finds other striking similarities. Each of the major world religions claims a prophet who claimed personal revelation and authority from God and published a book of scripture (Torah, New Testament, Koran, Book of Mormon). Stark flatly rejects the “Liar or Lunatic” explanation for religious revelation, arguing that the four religious revelators (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and Smith) all honestly believed they had been the recipients of divine revelation. He further goes on to argue that the reality of those revelations cannot be disproven by science, and that it is not irrational to believe that any one of them (or all of them) actually received divine revelations.

Stark is a prolific economic sociologist who has written several penetrating works, including The Rise of Christianity (HarperOne, 1997) and The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Success (Random House, 2006), and co-authored one of my favorites, The Churching of America, 1776-1990 (Rutgers University Press, 1992), where he brilliantly applies the economic principles of competition and choice to the rise and fall of religious faith.

As far as my personal journey is concerned, I have been a part of this religious movement from my childhood, and have been actively involved all my life. I have no doubt that I am a Mormon because I was born into the religion, but everyone must work out his own salvation, and there are no guarantees that one born in a religion will stay in it. Everyone must gain his own testimony of his or her religion, or abandon it. There’s seldom a middle ground.

I was born in 1947, the hundredth anniversary of Pioneer Day—the day on which the Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, also the same year the US government issued its first postage stamps of Washington and Franklin. My mother, Helen Skousen, was a convert and a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin. (Thus my lifelong interest in Franklin and the Founding Fathers.) My father, Leroy Skousen, a lifelong Mormon, was, like his older and better-known brother, Cleon, an FBI agent, a lawyer, and politically conservative in the anti-Communist movement. My parents had ten children—the first three being Royal, Joel, and me. We grew up in Portland, Oregon, a good intellectual environment.

When my father died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 46, my mother moved us ten children (ages 18 to 2) down to Utah, making it easier for us to attend BYU, and soon thereafter I went on a full-time mission for two and a half years (1967-1970) to Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia. It was there that I determined to get a testimony of the Church, having had many doubts prior to going on a mission. I was blessed with several spiritual experiences that confirmed to me that God lives, that there is an afterlife and judgment, and that the Book of Mormon is scripture. This testimony has kept me active since then, even when I’ve occasionally questioned the decisions of Church leaders, the controversial history of the Church, and the various doctrines proposed by members. My testimony is not complete, by any means, and I still have lots of questions. Since my mission, I’ve experienced a variety of spiritual experiences from time to time confirming my testimony. Science has taught me that without repeated demonstrations of evidence, faith in any theory or doctrine wanes. It applies to one’s religion too.

Having lived most of my life outside of Utah, I have also learned to be more tolerant and open minded when it comes to other people’s religions and lifestyles. In this regard, I have gradually shifted over the years from being a staunch conservative Mormon to a more liberal Mormon (politically, I am a libertarian), and have long recognized that people of other faiths are often more dedicated to their religion than we are, and that many of them have experienced profound spiritual experiences in their own faith. As much as Joseph Smith and other Church leaders have revealed new doctrines and ways of improving one’s lifestyle, I don’t think Mormons have a monopoly on all truth, revelation, or the right way of living. I note with particular interest that, according to the Book of Mormon, Columbus, a practicing Catholic, was led by the Holy Spirit to the Americas (1 Nephi 13:12-13). We can learn much from other religions, and I sometimes take the time to visit other services and read works by non-Mormons. God does indeed work in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, and I take seriously the latter-day scripture, “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118), whether those books are written by members or non-members.

At the same time, I believe that Mormon practices and doctrines have had a gradual, profound, and largely positive effect on other churches and society in general. Competition is good, and there is little doubt in my mind that the Mormon practice of tithing and of family home evenings, the welfare program for the needy, and the Church’s health plan (called “word of wisdom”—abstention from tobacco and alcohol) has influenced the world in a positive way.

Prior to going on my mission, and immediately afterwards, I majored in economics, and have always had a keen interest in the subject and its related fields of finance, geo-politics, mathematics, statistics, sociology, history, and journalism. My professional career in economics and history has been intertwined with my Mormon beliefs, although the learning curve has been in both directions. My religion has taught me some things about economics, and so has economics taught me about my religion. For example, my Mormon background, with emphasis on the virtues of thrift, prudence, and independence, taught me to be suspicious of the anti-saving, pro-deficit spending, and pro-welfare state doctrines taught in Paul Samuelson’s popular Keynesian textbook Economics (surprisingly the mainstay textbook at BYU throughout the sixties). Ever since then, I’ve been attracted to the free-market Chicago and Austrian schools of economics, and their confirmation of the classical policies of Adam Smith (the virtues of thrift, limited government, fiscal responsibility, entrepreneurship, sound money, and the rule of law). I have been a tireless advocate of laissez faire economics; a supporter of libertarian think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education (Ezra Taft Benson, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., and Ernest L. Wilkinson were board members; I was president in 2001-02); and the producer of FreedomFest, an annual gathering of free thinkers held in Las Vegas every July.

After my mission, I returned to BYU and took on a variety of jobs, including as an editorial page editor of the Daily Universe (BYU’s student newspaper), and as a teaching assistant in economics. I graduated with a B.A. (1971) and M.S. (1972) at BYU, both in economics, and a Ph.D. (1977) in monetary economics at George Washington University. I met my wife, Jo Ann Foster, at BYU, and we have been partners ever since, producing numerous books (twenty-five) and numerous children (five). We’ve lived in Washington, DC, for twelve years, where I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a financial publisher. We have also traveled extensively to over fifty countries and lived in Nassau, the Bahamas; London, England; Orlando, Florida; and now New York.

My attitude toward the relationship between Mormons and other faiths can best be described in an odyssey. After I gave a talk one time about various religions on money and wealth, a gentleman approached me and asked, “What’s the difference between the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church?” He was a practicing Catholic.

Whenever I’m asked about how the Latter-day Saint religion differs from another religion, I like to start by talking about their similarities. That way we start off with what we have in common. Too often a talk about religion starts off negatively: “We have the restored Priesthood of God, and you don’t. . . . We have the true Church and you don’t. . . . Our doctrine is correct, and yours is false.” Debates ensue, and there’s often more heat generated than light. Accusations fly, and hurt feelings, even bitterness, arise because of these conflicts.

I answered by noting that both religions are of the Christian faith, and that there’s much I admire about the Catholic Church—its belief in the Trinity; that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the Savior of the World who died for our sins; that we must worship him and partake of the Eucharist (Communion, or the Sacrament); that we must repent and be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost; that there is a Heaven and a Hell; that we must engage in faith, hope, and charity, and do good works, in order to please God; and that we must study and learn from God’s word, the Holy Bible. I also admire the fact that the Catholic Church adheres to strong doctrine and policy on birth control and abortion, the sanctity of marriage, etc.

Then I noted the differences and some of the unique contributions of the Mormons. Our Church is, of course, a comparatively young religion, less than two hundred years old, compared to the Catholic Church, which has been around for two thousand years. The Catholic Church is much bigger, with over a billion adherents, while the Mormon Church, though growing fast, has only fifteen million followers. The Pope in the Vatican is much more famous and influential than the President of the LDS Church in Salt Lake City.

What can the Mormon faith offer the world?

The Prophet Joseph Smith once wrote a letter to the Times and Seasons about the meaning of the word Mormon, which was originally the name of the prophet and military leader who compiled the Book of Mormon. He stated:

“To the Editor of the Times & Seasons:

“Through the medium of your paper, I wish to correct an error among men that profess to be learned, liberal and wise. . . . The error I speak of, is the definition of the word ‘Mormon.’ It has been stated that this word was derived from the Greek word ‘mormo.’ This is not the case. There was no Greek or Latin upon the plates from which I, through the grace of God, translated the Book of Mormon. . . .

“Before I give a definition, however, to the word, let me say that the Bible in its widest sense, means good: for the Savior says according to the gospel of John, ‘I am the good shepherd;’ and it will not be beyond the common use of terms, to say that good is among the most important in use, and though known by various names in different languages, still its meaning is the same, and is ever in opposition to ‘bad.’ We say from the Saxon, ‘good’; the Dane, ‘god’; the Goth, ‘goda’; the German, ‘gut’; the Dutch, ‘goed’; the Latin, ‘bonus’; the Greek, ‘kalos’; the Hebrew, ‘tob’; and the Egyptian, ‘mon.’ Hence, with the addition of ‘more,’ or the contraction, ‘mor,’ we have the world ‘mormon’; which means, literally, ‘more good.’

Yours,

Joseph Smith”

Here the Prophet was humoring us, but I’d like to expand on his optimistic view that the Mormon faith is, foremost, an effort to engage in “more good” in the world, that Mormons can build on the good already being done by the Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and other Christian religions.

There are several scriptures that support this approach. In the introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord states that one of the purposes of the Restored Gospel was “to increase faith in the earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:21). “Increasing faith” suggests bringing “more good” in the world.

Two verses later, the Lord indicates that the restoration of the Church involved the “fullness of my gospel.” That means that the gospel of Jesus Christ was there prior to 1830, with the other Christian faiths, but not in its fullness. God saw the need for more—a fullness of the good word.

Finally, I like to think that the Book of Mormon offers “more” of the word of God, and that everyone, not just Mormons, can benefit from its teachings and stories. It’s unfortunate that non-Mormons don’t spend the time reading and benefiting from the Book of Mormon. Just because they decide not to join the LDS Church doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from its principles. They need to dust off the Gold Bible (as the Book of Mormon is sometimes called, since it was translated from gold plates) that the missionaries or a friend may have given them, and see if it has any value in their lives—even if they decide not to join the Mormon faith. As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8-9). The world would be a better place if all of us studied and drew from the works of all good religions. As Jesus said to his disciples, “For he that is not against us is for us” (Luke 9:50).

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Mark Skousen (Ph. D., economics, George Washington University) is a professional economist, investment expert, university professor, and author of over twenty-five books. Currently, he holds the Benjamin Franklin Chair of Management at Grantham University. He has taught economics and finance at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, Barnard College, Mercy College, and Rollins College in Florida. Since 1980, Skousen has been editor in chief of Forecasts & Strategies, a popular award-winning investment newsletter (www.markskousen.com), and three trading services. He is a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a columnist for Forbes magazine, chairman of Investment U, and past president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in New York. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Christian Science Monitor, and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, ABC News, Fox News, and C-SPAN Book TV. His bestsellers include The Making of Modern Economics and Investing in One Lesson. His latest work is The Maxims of Wall Street. In 2006, he compiled and edited The Compleated Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin (Regnery). He is also the producer of FreedomFest, an annual gathering of free minds, held every July in Las Vegas (www.freedomfest.com). In honor of his work in economics, finance, and management, Grantham University renamed its business school, “The Mark Skousen School of Business.”

Personal website: www.mskousen.com.

Contributions to economics: http://www.cobdencentre.org/?s=mark+skousen.

Posted August 2011