Testimonies

Daniel Peterson’s request to contribute to “Mormon Scholars Testify” has weighed on me for several months, and as I now prepare for a new Church assignment in Brussels, Belgium, as diplomatic representative to the European Union, it seems an appropriate time to comply with his kind invitation.

A little background. I was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in the shadow of Stanford University where Elder David B. Haight was my stake president and a family friend. I received my B.A. degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles after serving in the North German Mission with President Percy K. Fetzer, and as European Mission Secretary to Elder Alvin R. Dyer and Elder Theodore M. Burton. Graduate studies followed, leading to the J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from George Washington University, an M.P.A. degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. I have been admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court and was privileged to edit the fifteen-volume Digest of International Law while a special assistant to Marjorie M. Whiteman, the Counselor on International Law at the U.S. Department of State. Interestingly, as I departed following completion of that work, I was presented with a 1929 photograph showing the entire State Department staff in front of the Old Executive Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, with Under Secretary of State J. Reuben Clark front and center next to Secretary of State Kellogg. The gift of the photograph was their recognition of “another Mormon lawyer” whom they had come to know and respect.

Most of my career was in Washington D.C., where I was the senior policy adviser for economic affairs and director of Congressional Relations at the U.S. Department of Commerce, serving for twenty-five years as the United States Representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland. I was also a professorial lecturer in law at the National Law Center, George Washington University, during those years, and served on the interdepartmental Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFIUS) and as senior adviser to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC). This was a time which found me as stake president of the Mount Vernon Virginia Stake, and afterwards as president of the Hungary Budapest Mission and director of the Mesa Arizona Temple Visitors’ Center.

I married the former Darelyn Servoss in the Salt Lake Temple while in law school. We are the parents of seven children and enjoy seventeen grandchildren.

The actuality of the First Vision to the Prophet Joseph Smith has burned brightly since I was a young boy growing up in California. This was brought home to me by the Holy Ghost while a youth of ten. It has never waivered, never faltered, and has been a cherished possession even in light of later profound spiritual experiences. My father loved the Prophet Joseph Smith, and listening to him speak with power and conviction about the Prophet made a lasting impression. I saw myself as being much like Joseph, who described himself as being quite exuberant about life, which, he said, “will not seem very strange to any one who recollects my youth, and is acquainted with my native cheery temperament” (JSH:28). I have testified of him many times, and exclaim once again: “We thank thee, O God, for a prophet!” The life of Joseph Smith is a remarkable lesson in fidelity, sacrifice, and receptivity to the inspiration of heaven, while in the midst of sorrow, calumny, and trials of great magnitude.

The Book of Mormon is a treasure. Nothing compares with it in scope and magnitude as “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” My experience was very similar to that of Parley P. Pratt, who wrote: “I read all day; eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when night came, for I preferred reading to sleep. As I read, the spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I knew and comprehended that the book was true, as plainly and manifestly as a man comprehends and knows that he exists” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, p. 37). This is the great witness borne by the Book of Mormon to the hearts of honest seekers after Truth who will trust in the promise of Moroni found in its final pages (Moroni 10:4). I have followed his counsel and found it true.

It is especially important in our day of preparation for the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, for it tells us how to prepare for that glorious day when He returns to the earth. I have marveled at the clarity and specificity of the Book of Mormon with regard to the exceptionalism of the land of America: “. . . it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof; and that it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, and the holy sanctuary of the Lord” (Ether 13:2-3). Our great blessing is to live faithful lives, teach the Gospel, and worship Him at a particular time and generation wherein the Lords says “they (the inhabitants of the earth) have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; they seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:15-16). We have a great preparatory work to do.

I have experienced a long line of prophetic leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during my lifetime: Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Thomas S. Monson. Each has assumed his sacred stewardship in an orderly and inspiring manner. Each was prepared through a long tutorial by the Lord “to preside over the whole church, and to be like unto Moses . . . to be a seer, a revelator, a translator, and a prophet” (Doctrine and Covenants 107: 91-92). I have known most of them on a personal basis and have sustained all of them since I was a child. Why have I done this? Because I have received a witness from the Holy Ghost that each has been the Lord’s anointed servant, in fact the Lord’s mouthpiece and prophet.

When I think of “higher education,” I think of the Temple and its ability to consistently teach the Truth about man’s journey and ultimate destiny. It is a place of calibration with the infinite and a sure standard of behavior, thinking, and values. I learned long ago that spiritual truths, taught by the Holy Ghost, are of much greater certainty and clarity than those things taught by and through the learning of men. The Apostle Paul was exactly right when he wrote: “For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the word which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Corinthians 2: 11-14).

In these perilous times, we must be “as sheep in the midst of wolves . . . wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16), taking the Spirit as our guide, and following the wise counsel found in the scriptures and in the words of the Lord’s living Apostles and Prophets. Therein is safety and the spiritual strength to overcome the world. We are taught many things in schools and universities that are at variance with the revealed word of the Lord. The Lord has not left us alone. Our prayers of faith are heard and answered by our Heavenly Father. The Holy Ghost is a reliable and constant companion if we will seek to be worthy and apply the Savior’s Atonement in our daily efforts. It is a great period in which to be on the earth and living in joyous anticipation of the future seen by prophets in all ages since the beginning of time.

———————————-

David Peterson (M.B.A., J.D., George Washington University; M.P.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) currently serves as diplomatic representative for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the European Union, in Brussels, Belgium.

Posted August 2011

“Whether one is a Roman Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, or Mormon, there are many challenges in writing religious history. On the one hand the historian must convey the facts of history in an honest and straightforward manner. The historian must strive against the conscious or unconscious distortion of events to fit the demands of current fashions; he or she must renounce wishful thinking. On the other hand, many religious historians wish also to bear testimony of the reality of spiritual experience. . . .

“Speaking for myself and, I think, for most of the historians who have worked with me, some tension between our professional training and our religious commitments seems inevitable. Our testimonies tell us that the Lord is in this work, and for this we see abundant supporting evidence. But our historical training warns us that the accurate perception of spiritual phenomena is elusive—not subject to unquestionable verification. We are tempted to wonder if our religious beliefs are intruding beyond their proper limits. Our faith tells us that there is moral meaning and spiritual significance in historical events. But we cannot be completely confident that any particular judgment or meaning or significance is unambiguously clear. If God’s will cannot be wholly divorced from the actual course of history, neither can it be positively identified with it. Although we see evidence that God’s love and power have frequently broken in upon the ordinary course of human affairs, our caution in declaring this is reinforced by our justifiable disapproval of chroniclers who take the easy way out and use divine miracles as a short-circuit of a causal explanation that is obviously, or at least defensibly, naturalistic. We must not use history as a storehouse from which deceptively simple moral lessons may be drawn at random. . . .

“I firmly believe that a person may be a converted Latter-day Saint and a competent and honest historian of the religion. That others support us in this calling, even while criticizing some products of our labors, is suggested by the remark of [eleventh president of the Church] Harold B. Lee to me before his sudden death [in 1973]. ‘Our history is our history, Brother Arrington, and we don’t need to tamper with it or be ashamed of it.’ Paraphrasing a remark of Pope John XXIII, [the late member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] Bruce McConkie said to our executives: ‘The best defense of the church is the true and impartial account of our history.’

“I have tried in this memoir to bear witness to the loyalty of my colleagues and associates to the Latter-day Saint ideals of professional competence, sincere truth-seeking, and unquestioned integrity, trusthworthiness, and dedication. Our historical scholarship was accompanied by firm convictions of the truth of Mormonism. If we did not measure up, we can at least say that we sincerely tried.

“May Latter-day Saint historians lengthen their stride as they strive to develop capacities that will enable them to write histories worthy of the marvelous work and the wonder that is their heritage.”

[Adventures of a Church Historian (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 236-237.]

“My own impression is that an intensive study of church history, while it will dispel certain myths or half-myths sometimes perpetuated in Sunday school (and other) classes, builds faith rather than weakens it.”

[“The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3/2 (Summer 1968): 61; reprinted in D. Michael Quinn, ed., New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 6.]

“My long interest in Mormon history (I’ve been working in it for 33 years) has only served to build my testimony of the gospel and I find the same thing happening to other Latter-day Saint historians as well.”

[“An Interview with Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton,” Sunstone 4 (July-August 1979): 41.]

“Having given my professional life to the serious study of Latter-day Saint history—having examined even the most intimate documents of the Church—I am even more persuaded today than previously that a knowledge of our past offers persuasive proof that our people have been engaged, all along, in the work of the Lord.”

[“Learning about Ourselves through Church History,” Ensign 9 (September 1979): 6.]

“[As Church Historian] I was able to examine over a period of several years the most intimate records of the Church—records that are replete with faith-promoting incidents that served to strengthen my belief in the divinity of the latter-day work. Particularly meaningful to me was my private knowledge of the divine circumstances that led up to the announcement by the First Presidency that the priesthood might be conferred on all worthy males without regard to race or color. Although now released from the position of Church Historian, I am still devoted to carrying out responsibilities which I trust continue to help build the Kingdom of God on earth. Many satisfying spiritual experiences, as well as my continued study of the Saints and their leaders throughout our history, have intellectually and emotionally validated my decision to serve the faith that I committed myself to many years ago, and that I believe to be based on true principles.”

[“Why I Am a Believer,” in A Thoughtful Faith: Essays on Belief by Mormon Scholars, ed. Philip L. Barlow (Centerville, UT: Canon Press, 1986), 233.]

—————————————–

Leonard J. Arrington (d. 1999) served as the Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972 to 1982, and was widely respected as “the dean of Mormon history” and “the father of Mormon History” owing to his numerous influential contributions to the field.

A native of Twin Falls, Idaho, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Idaho in agricultural economics. Following service in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War, he completed a doctorate in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

From 1946 until his appointment as Church Historian in 1972, he taught at Utah State University. When he assumed his new post, he also became Lemuel H. Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History at Brigham Young University, from which he retired in 1987. Over his career, he was a fellow at the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California, during 1956-1957; a Fulbright professor of American economics at the University of Genoa, in Italy, from 1958-1959; and a visiting professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles, from 1966-1967.

In 1977, Professor Arrington received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from his alma mater, the University of Idaho, and in 1982 Utah State University awarded him an honorary doctorate of humanities. In 2005, Utah State University created the Leonard J. Arrington Chair in Mormon History and Culture, which was sponsored by more than 45 donors. The university also hosts the Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series, for which Arrington himself gave the inaugural lecture in 1996.

Dr. Arrington helped to establish the Mormon History Association in 1965 and served as its first president from 1966–1967. He also created the Western Historical Quarterly and served as president of the Western History Association (1968–1969), the Agricultural History Society (1969–70), and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (1981–1982).

In 1958, Harvard University Press published his path-breaking book Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900, which is regarded by many as marking the birth of “the new Mormon history.”

He followed Great Basin Kingdom with a steady stream of articles and books, including David Eccles: Pioneer Western Industrialist (Logan: Utah State University, 1975); with Dean May and Feramorz Y. Fox, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), which won the Best Book Award from the Mormon History Association; with Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), which won the Best Book Award from the Mormon History Association; with Davis Bitton, Saints without Halos: The Human Side of Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1981); Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), which won both the Best Book Award from the Mormon History Association and the Evans Biography Award from Utah State University; with Davis Bitton, Mormons and Their Historians (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988); History of Idaho, 2 vols. (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1994); and Adventures of a Church Historian (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), which won a special citation from the Mormon History Association.

For his publications on American history he was awarded the Western History Association Prize in 1984 and was made a Fellow of the Society of American Historians in 1986. After his death in 1999, the Mormon History Association created the annual Leonard J. Arrington Award in order to honor distinguished and meritorious service to the study of Mormon history. In 2002, he was posthumously awarded the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award by the John Whitmer Historical Association.

Posted July 2011

In reviewing my early life, I’ve come to realize that my faith developed according to the process taught by Alma the Younger to the Zoramites in Alma 32:21-43, although unknowingly and not without pitfalls and wrong turns along the way.

As a very young boy, born as was Nephi to goodly parents, I remember feeling a strong desire to gain a testimony like that of my parents. Thus, the seed of faith was planted and the experiment begun. With the help of many people, including my parents, my primary and Sunday school teachers, my priesthood leaders, and my friends, the seed of faith began to grow. But I soon realized that in many ways my growing faith was actually founded on the faith of others. So I began a process of independent learning during which I read the standard works several times along with every other church book I could get my hands on. And after learning the importance of seeking wisdom “out of the best books” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118), I began to read books on every possible subject, including the World Book Encyclopedia cover to cover. I also attended early morning seminary, where I was blessed with wonderful teachers.

Of course, along with my secular education, this left little time for other pursuits, especially those of a social nature. Also, I’ve come to realize that I spent so much time reading that I didn’t pray for the Lord’s guidance as often as I should. So when I received my mission call after a not very successful year academically at BYU, I was somewhat prepared intellectually but my faith was weak. I remember praying for the Lord’s help several times in the mission home in Salt Lake City and a couple of times during my first week in the mission field. But, at the end of that first week, I was seriously injured in a car accident and hospitalized for two weeks. I remember waking up in the intensive care unit in terrible pain and unable to speak due to my injuries. It grieves me still to say that my first thought was “Why did the Lord allow this to happen to me?” I’d prepared the best way I knew for my mission and was doing what I thought the Lord expected of me. These thoughts persisted for what seemed like hours or even days, until I was at the point of despair and decided that there was no way I wanted to stay in the mission field. Then a voice came into my mind quoting these words of the Lord to Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail (Doctrine and Covenants 121:7-8): “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes,” along with a reminder that “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:8). At that time, my spirit was so deeply touched that I committed to stay on my mission.

And that’s what I did. But it wasn’t until a few months later, after realizing that I still did not have a firm witness of the truth of the Gospel even though I was telling people that they could gain such a testimony, that I prayed fervently one morning for such a witness. That afternoon, as I was teaching a discussion, I felt impressed to tell our investigator that the Lord would answer his prayers if he was sincere. As I did so, the Spirit bore witness to me that the Gospel was true. Since that time, although I’ve not always done the right thing, I have never doubted my faith in the Lord and the truthfulness of the Gospel.

One might then ask how I reconcile my faith with my scholarly pursuits. Did my training and experience in anthropology and archaeology, based as it was on the scientific method, ever raise conflicts in my mind regarding spiritual things? While I admit to wondering about this at times, it became clear to me very early on that science and religion are very different but complimentary ways of looking at the world. Since I believe their goals are different, to me science and religion can never truly be in conflict. Science strives to develop an understanding of the natural and social world based on empirical observation, while religion strives to develop faith in something that we cannot directly observe. It is, as Paul observed, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Since science deals in probabilities, not certainties, it can never disprove religion, just as religion cannot disprove science. All scientists believe, or at least I hope they believe, that there is always the possibility that new evidence will appear that challenges and even overturns existing explanations. This is what makes the pursuit of scholarship so exciting to me, whether it be unearthing new archaeological data that turns existing ideas on their heads, finding exciting new evidence on the origins of early LDS hymns, or helping students develop the research and critical-thinking skills required to meet their information needs. In sum, to me all knowledge comes from God, whether we gain it through scientific inquiry or through faith in the Lord. In the end, both can result in a better understanding of the world and help us prepare to return to live with our Father in Heaven.

—————————————–

Dr. Wade Kotter was born in Boston and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. After graduating from Wheaton High School in 1972, he enrolled at Brigham Young University, where, following a semester of uncertainty, he decided to major in anthropology and archaeology. After returning from the Oregon Portland Mission in 1975, he continued his program at BYU, graduating magna cum laude with a B.S. in anthropology and archaeology. A defining moment in his undergraduate career was the opportunity to spend a semester abroad in Jerusalem in 1987, where he decided on a career in Near Eastern archaeology. This led to a master’s degree in ancient history and archaeology from Andrews University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in anthropology (specializing in Near Eastern archaeology) from the University of Arizona in 1986. During these years he spent several summers on excavations in Israel and a year in residence at Tel Aviv University pursuing his dissertation research.

After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Kotter returned to the Washington DC area, where he taught anthropology and archaeology as an adjunct at several universities in the Washington DC and Baltimore suburbs. Unfortunately, there were very few job openings in his specialty, so in 1991 he entered the Master of Library Science program at the University of Maryland, which he completed in 1993. After a year of working several temporary library positions and volunteering at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Dr. Kotter was appointed Social/Behavioral Sciences Librarian at Weber State University (WSU), where he is currently Social Sciences & Music Librarian and Professor of Library Science. Dr. Kotter also regularly teaches as an adjunct in the WSU Department of Sociology and Anthropology. While he retains an interest in and continues to teach archaeology, his current research focuses on early Mormon hymnody, including work on a historical companion to Emma Smith’s 1835 hymnbook and an article on the origins of the tune and text of the hymn “All is Well,” which was the source for William Clayton’s hymn that we now know as “Come, Come Ye Saints.” He is also working on an article describing the sources used for hymns of non-LDS origin in the 1840 Manchester hymnbook. His publications include numerous book reviews as well articles on the relationship between academic librarians and classroom faculty and subject access in anthropology. Dr. Kotter is also an active musician, including both formal and informal training in music history, theory, and composition. He has composed several hymns and is active in local choirs and sacred harp singing.

After a long period of bachelorhood, Dr. Kotter was sealed in the Ogden Temple to the former Janet Marie Jensen in 2008. He is especially proud of the two grandchildren he inherited as a result of his eternal marriage. In terms of church callings, Dr. Kotter has served as a ward clerk, stake clerk, counselor in a branch presidency, elder’s quorum secretary, priesthood instructor, Sunday school teacher, primary teacher, priesthood chorister, and high priests group leader, and is currently serving as gospel doctrine instructor in the Pleasant Valley 7th Ward, Ogden Utah Pleasant Valley Stake. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Posted July 2011

I lost the keys of the universe. My world was imploding with no purpose to life. I still remember standing at the top of the stairs in my home as a child, wondering who I was and why I was here. I craved that knowledge but felt spiritually starved. Questions about life’s purpose continued to spring up whenever I’d give them the least chance, like crocuses poking through a late spring snow, only to be buried again. I had no clear answers. I asked questions in Catholic school about the war in heaven, wondering who was present; it seemed to me that if one-third of the hosts fell, there must have been more people engaged than Jesus and the Father and Lucifer. No answers were provided; I was told to accept that as a mystery. I inquired about the need to re-confess a sin to someone for “additional grace,” and wondered why a scapula could be influential in getting me towards heaven. I also never grasped the Trinity as presented and so never really had a personal relationship with God or the Savior, and didn’t know if anyone did. So, while I respected the foundation of faith provided in those early years, I knew in my heart and mind that there was more truth to be had outside the walls of the faith of my fathers.

As I attended college, the questions came back in force. I was studying theories with no rod to evaluate them, viewing life and trying to set goals for a future without a frame. What was the big picture? How could I determine my life’s course without seeing it in context? I observed others’ lives and wondered what made them tick. Vacations, cars, money—what I imagined it might be—didn’t seem enough.

Eventually, my desire to live waned and I decided to take my life. I had pills by my bed, intending to overdose. I was stopped in my tracks by undeniable impressions that appeared on the screen of my soul. I was told by what I later recognized as the Spirit of truth, that nothing I’d invested in my life—no moment of love and discovery—was wasted; that I must have the courage to live on and that I would find the purpose of life. I trusted that voice, though I didn’t comprehend its Source then. The Savior had spoken to me, through the light of His Spirit.

Through the years, though, I’d read a great deal, and it seemed as if some guiding influence was helping me identify truth. I carried a notebook with me of things I’d learned about progression that I gleaned from all kinds of literary materials and learning experiences. I remember writing down a quote from Teilhard de Chardin’s On Becoming, which spoke of three phases of growth: knowing self, becoming, and then ultimately worshipping. I wondered, then, if I would ever ascend to worship, and if so, what that might be like.

A few months later, under the light of a full August moon, and after searching, pondering, reading further, and wondering about life, I found myself jogging the neighborhood. I’d just finished Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. While she wrote of a possible God, she depicted him as selfish, and her worldview was formed around that concept. Somehow, in processing that and my own experience, I came to an intellectual conclusion there was a God—the opposite of Ayn’s thesis. While running and ruminating, I had an experience that changed my life: I saw my life in a panoramic fashion through spiritual eyes, and then, in a moment, I was overcome with an infusion of knowledge that God lived—as if someone spiritually injected me with the truth in a way that defies description but that was as tangible as anything I’ve ever seen, felt, or experienced. I only knew that I knew, nothing doubting, that God and Jesus lived, and that I belonged, and that I was loved. Tears flowed unbidden; I actually sat down and sobbed on the curb. I was changed from that moment. The witness I had received in my mind was now paralleled with an indelible spiritual witness that I could never doubt and have never doubted. As a result of this experience, I had an overwhelming desire to know more about Jesus Christ, what He expected of me, what the truth about Him really was.

Borrowing a copy of the Holy Bible, I laid in a field of a Catholic rectory, reading the New Testament for the first time. I marveled that this body of truth had existed for so long and I’d never read it. I took notes in a small silver notebook which I kept for years. I learned much through the Spirit then—but as I read about the atonement of the Savior, I stopped. I pondered. I was overcome. The Savior had just interceded to save my life physically. Now I read and understood that He literally died to save me spiritually. I came to know that for myself in that field in that moment. I also understood from that moment that He was, therefore, my Advocate—I knew I had someone in whom I could totally trust my every thought, action, circumstance. That was amazing to me.

From there, I took my biblically-based list of characteristics and teachings of the Savior’s Church and went on a comparative church-searching quest to see if any matched what I had learned for myself to be true about the Savior and His original Church. From Methodist to Swedenborgian, Adventist to Pentecostal, Christian Scientist to Jehovah’s Witnesses, I examined it. I also began reading the Koran. But while I found morsels of truth and many great people in each of these denominations, I always came up disappointed. No one scored on all scriptural points. There was always some disappointing deviation from what I learned to expect from the biblical study. I decided to venture forth one last time. This time it was into a Baptist Church, with the same result—except that, as I was leaving the service I noticed an ex-Mormon, anti-Mormon brochure on a rack in the vestibule, which I eagerly picked up, tucked away, and read the moment I walked in the door to my home.

The teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints listed, though mockingly, in that brochure, struck me with great force and the negatives seemed superfluous. I’d learned from my own experience that the spiritual and the physical were inter-related and had anticipated a code of health in the Lord’s Church; I had read Matthew 5:48 and understood that we were intended to become more and more like the Savior and Father in our progression and perfection. I knew that a loving God wouldn’t stop speaking to His children, just because they reached a certain age, and anticipated that He would be the author of additional revelation. So reading about the Book of Mormon, the doctrine of becoming perfect as God is, and the code of health rang very true, and the negative comments, again, were dwarfed and irrelevant distractions. In short, the brochure backfired. What was intended to dissuade me from belief only propelled me forth in my investigation of the Church. Ultimately, I tracked down The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ—referred to in the brochure—in a small library in suburban Philadelphia, took it home with a half-gallon of ice cream, and read it through the night. I knew it was a true record of Christ and His gospel. Electrified by what I then learned through that reading and as I discovered a leaflet on the purpose of life in that same library, I contacted the Church, was taught further, and was baptized.

Witness of The Book of Mormon

I’ve read and re-read the Book of Mormon, each time with a new understanding of my potential and God’s purposes. It keeps unfolding, kaleidoscopically. As I’ve pled for wisdom in my undertakings, and asked for guidance as a mother, as a friend, as professional, as a student, I have never wanted for an answer. Those answers have changed me, guided my steps, motivated me to overcome, helped me to balance justice and mercy, and brought me peace. It’s all there, tucked away in a true account of our forefathers and mothers. It’s a life-changing book, pre-dating our time but post-dated for our needs.

The Book of Mormon is about God’s power to deliver. It’s about the Savior’s ultimate reach, how far He will go to extend mercy and love to each of us in His family and how we can try to do likewise; it’s about God’s justice in allowing the consequences of sin to meet the ungodly if they persistently rebel against light and knowledge. It’s about the power of our personal faith and the perfection of that faith through adversity and struggle and growth. It’s an inspiring work that activates the power of faith in our lives and prepares us to see God.

I have to say that I’d be grateful if we just had certain portions of the Book of Mormon, such as:

Alma 32: It’s a chapter that I refer to as “The Lord’s Formula for Success,” or “The Faith Version of the Scientific Experiment.” The Lord tells us how we can know what is “real” spiritually. It’s profoundly simple and simply profound.

1 Nephi 4: This chapter has been a template that I’ve overlaid in my life time and time again as I’ve encountered a new challenge, or taken a new direction, walking in faith. It is an absolute witness of the ways in which the Lord will guide us individually, according to our aptitudes, and help us move forward “not knowing beforehand the things which we should do.”

Alma 52: The physical war tactics described in this chapter are a type of spiritual war tactics. As I read this chapter, I’m reminded that I need to continue to defend my daughters from the voices which call housework and motherhood slavery, and which seek to “flatter them out of their strongholds,” overtaking them.

I’d be grateful to have been graced with just those passages, but even more so, having been given 531 pages of similar spiritual nuggets in the Book of Mormon.

I add my voice of testimony to the many who likewise testify, that the Book of Mormon is divine.

Witness of Jesus Christ

As I continued my education, worked, and married, I continued to let go and let God, to know Christ in ways that I treasure more than anything in this life besides my own family and friends. I’ve come to know His grace—His enabling power—that applies to all I do. I feel as close to Him as I do the best friend I could ever have. He converses with me through His word and as I pray and listen, repent, and grow. He marks my path. He has a million ways of delighting me. He goes before me. He opens my eyes to things I’d never see on my own. He colors my world; He changes me. He tutors me, He sends angels to minister. He finds things I’ve lost. He embraces me and reveals Himself to me continually. He challenges me; He encourages me; He corrects me. He provides me with wisdom and hope. He beckons me. He intercedes for me. He continually extends His reach towards me, and extends my reaching of Him, my understanding of His atonement. He has poured out healing and balm in times when I may otherwise have been crushed by betrayal. When I stood alone in my marriage covenants, He filled and fills the void. Through and with Him, I don’t have to go it alone. As my children have been, in a sense, spiritually fatherless, He has been their Father; He has compensated. I know He lives and knows me. He knows when I pull in the driveway, when I’m sitting on my bed, when I’m trying to sort out the best of the best to do in His kingdom, when I struggle to overcome, when I long to be better, as I strive for excellence, when I plead for my children, when I seek Him.

I testify again that the Savior lives. I testify He wants to be found. I testify that all things testify of Him. I submit to you my love of Jesus Christ and my joy in my relationship with Him. His gospel has been restored in our day, and His priesthood power is on earth, which means that you and I have access to His presence again—in this life or the next. He will come again. I know that’s true and bear witness of these truths in the name of Jesus Christ.

——————————————

Karen R. Trifiletti was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Of Italian descent, she is a mother of two. She holds a BA in French, served as a missionary in Germany (1983-1984), did graduate work in English, earned a master’s degree in human and organizational development, and is now a PhD candidate (2/3 completed) in the latter field. She is also currently vice president of Content Development for the More Good Foundation.

Posted July 2011

I am a molecular biologist. I’m fascinated with genes, how they work, how they change, and how they direct the development of a single-cell embryo into an adult organism. In this arena, conflicts between science and religion generally revolve around evolution. An attitude I commonly hear goes something like this, “I can accept the evolution of things like bacteria, birds, or turtles. But I know for a fact that I did not descend from monkeys!” In fact, we do share something like 97% of our genes with chimpanzees. Not only that, but at the genetic level we are also remarkably similar to mice, fruit flies, and brewer’s yeast. Information we learn about genetic function by studying these organisms is often directly relevant to humans and provides great benefits in our understanding of human health and disease.

In light of the irrefutable evidence of our genetic and biochemical similarity to all other life on earth, my personal conviction is that it’s not our genes that make us different. It’s our spirits, which are in some way that I cannot comprehend the literal offspring of heavenly parents. Every aspect of our chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology is firmly grounded in the common chemistry of life on this planet, but our spirits, which existed before we were born into this life and which leave our bodies when we die, are divine and are what make us human.

Having said that, I must admit that I have little patience with those who would paint science and religion as opposing forces. This may come from being raised in a Latter-day Saint home and having always taken for granted that absolute truths exist and that truth is truth, no matter how it was discovered. The idea that scientific truths and religious truths could conflict with one another defies reason—something that is true cannot contradict something else that is also true. Any apparent contradictions, then, are simply evidence that our present understanding is incomplete.

While all truth is, by definition, true, no matter how it was discovered, it is important to note that there are some vastly different methods of discovering truth. The scientific method is one of these. It is a physical method that produces physical truths. Spiritual inquiry, on the other hand, produces spiritual truths. It requires prayer, study, and pondering. These methods are drastically different from the experimental methods employed by scientists, but they lead to knowledge of a spiritual nature that is no less real, strong, or valid than knowledge obtained through scientific observation.

I rejoice in a religion that accepts, and indeed encompasses, all truth. I relish the process of scientific inquiry and the way it leads to fascinating discoveries and improvements in the human condition. I look forward to that day mentioned in Doctrine and Covenants 101:32-34: “…in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things—things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof—things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven.” While acknowledging that the scientific method has flaws, not least of which is that it is implemented by flawed humans, I expect to find that most of what has been discovered using the scientific method is, in fact, truth.

I also expect confirmation that those things I have discovered by the method of spiritual inquiry are truth, although the spiritual feelings in my heart are so deep and so strong that a physical confirmation could scarcely make them stronger. I testify that we are, each one of us, spiritual children of a Heavenly Father who loves us individually and is aware of the minute details of our lives. I testify that Jesus Christ suffered for us, died, and was resurrected so that we can rise above our sins and live again. I testify that learning to love and serve others as Christ did is the highest goal of our existence on this earth. These things bring me joy and ground me in a way that temporal achievements or pleasures never could, and I am filled with gratitude for this knowledge with which I’ve been blessed.

—————————————-

Laura Clarke Bridgewater earned a B.S. in microbiology from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah and a Ph.D. in genetics from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; and performed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas, Houston, and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. She has been at Brigham Young University since 1999, where she is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology. Her research laboratory is focused on molecular processes involved in the degradation of cartilage during osteoarthritis and on nuclear variants of BMP family proteins. She is married to Tim Bridgewater and they are the parents of four children.

The appeal of Latter-day Saint history and doctrine seems to have embraced me the day I was born. The teachings of my mother and father, as well as those of my Primary instructors, were never (well, almost never) boring, and time spent receiving instruction in church remains among my most pleasant childhood memories. Following the example of the men and women most respected in the small Cornish, Utah, ward of my youth, I learned to think about, probe, ask questions, and evaluate both the scriptures and the content of course manuals. Ward members were not afraid to direct inquiries to apostles regarding lessons whose content did not seem satisfactory or accurate. On one memorable occasion my Sunday School teacher developed a sacrament meeting sermon in response to a question I had asked in class. My question, “How did God become God?”, he said, would require a week of study as well as more than a few prayers. In his sermon delivered that winter night long ago, he discussed Joseph Smith’s King Follett Address, the concept that there could never be a father without a father (infinite regress), as well as Orson Pratt’s contrary view that all matter had intelligence and at some point in time the most intelligent bits of matter self combined and this combination resulted in God becoming God. Even though I did not understand all that my teacher said, the fact that an ex-bishop and former member of the stake presidency would so seriously considered the query of a fourteen-year-old farm boy impacted my life. The way he responded to my question reinforced my growing belief that somehow questions are an essential component in the quest for truth. Nor was lost his reference to the role prayer played in preparing his sermon.

My parents believed that the church was so true it would survive intact all investigation and scrutiny. While in the Sacred Grove in 1930 in the company of B. H. Roberts and a hundred other missionaries, my father’s testimony of the reality of Joseph Smith’s first vision was secured. Early in his mission an almost audible voice told Dad that the church was true, and while walking where Joseph Smith walked, he was reassured that the prophet had told the truth about the visitation of the Father and the Son. His and Mother’s faith, and the way they reacted to my questioning nature without a fear or a flinch, left me comforted that God expected only that I embrace truth.

I was not unaware that there were members of the Cornish Ward who not only knew but entertained in their homes Juanita Brooks, Virginia Sorensen, Leonard Arrington, Joel Ricks, George Ellsworth, and Thomas C. Romney, all historians and writers of some repute. Virginia Hanson, a ward member who served as the county librarian, in a winter sacrament meeting talk, reviewed Vardis Fisher’s new book Children of God, which portrayed Joseph Smith not always at his best. That she was unafraid to publicly discuss such a book for some strange reason only encouraged my own faith in the Prophet. The members of the ward of my youth, many of whom were college graduates, would never, I believed, deliberately conceal troublesome historical events.

Thus, when I left Cornish I already knew something, though not very much, about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, plural marriage, blood atonement, the First Vision, and the martyrdom. I knew, too, that those who claimed both membership and belief in the church did not always keep all the commandments. Though hurt when I observed some of the ward’s high priests drinking beer as they celebrated the town’s baseball team winning the county championship, I remained convinced that many church members, including my father and my Sunday School teacher whose faith assured me, would not have engaged in beer drinking no matter how momentous the occasion. But even if they had, I believed that they could not use church teachings to justify violating the Word of Wisdom.

As I left home to study political science and history at Utah State University I brought with me a quest for knowledge that was anchored in study and also in faith. In my first institute class, Eugene Campbell, an historian who earned a PhD at the University of Southern California, taught me how the New Testament came to be in a way that seemed to lace the human with the divine. I became convinced that one cannot winnow all humanism from that which is considered most sacred and holy.

While serving a mission in the Southern States I encountered enough anti-Mormon literature and questions relating to Latter-day Saint history that I could not answer to fire a desire to learn all I could regarding the Mormon past. Returning home, I read Carter E. Grant’s new book The Kingdom of God Restored and found it more interesting than a novel. I read, too, Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History and Hugh Nibley’s No Ma’am, That’s Not History, as well as Joseph Fielding Smith’s Essentials in Church History, Juanita Brooks’s Mountain Meadows Massacre, and William E. Berrett’s The Restored Church.

Working in the Church Educational System I encountered men who had spent their academic lives engaged in gospel and church history study and found their faith securely anchored in the restored gospel. While attending the University of Southern California, the associate dean of the College of Public Administration hired me to read the Journal of Discourses and ferret out all that church leaders had said about government and politics. I read, too, journal articles that related to Mormon history, as well as the anti-Mormon books of John C. Bennett and Jerald and Sandra Tanner. With my interest in Latter-day Saint history intact, I returned to Utah and enrolled in a PhD program in the history of religion. Gustive O. Larson, Milton V. Backman, Russell Rich, Thomas G. Alexander, James R. Clark, LeRoy Hafen, and Louis C. Midgley assigned reading based on the primary documents that reflected the Mormon past. I was taught to evaluate sources, critically read those sources, and teach balanced if not objective history. One year of my life was spent in the Church archives and in libraries in Illinois reading letters, affidavits, pamphlets, newspaper articles, diaries, journals, and rare books whose content had relevance to Latter-day Saint history.

After completing my PhD, I taught church history for more than thirty-years. My classes covered the Mormon past from the beginning to the present. I also offered an advanced class titled somewhat presumptuously “Answers to Difficult Issues in Latter-day Saint History,” as well as one titled “Joseph Smith’s Life and Thought.” Preparing for these classes required that I read both pro- and anti-Mormon sources. As a member of the Mormon History Association I served as that group’s Secretary-Treasurer and, in 1984, as its president. Being around the best historians of Mormonism impacted my life, and I, along with many of them, attempted to read every book written about Joseph Smith and the history of the church he founded as well as journal articles focused on Mormonism.

Believing that writing clarifies thought, I published a significant number of articles and books or chapters in books. In my articles I focused on “Crime and Punishment in Nauvoo,” “Joseph Smith and Masonry,” “The Rise and Fall of Moses Thatcher,” “The Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,” “Zelph, the White Lamanite,” “The Causes of Mormon-non-Mormon Conflict in Hancock County, Illinois,” “The Battle of Nauvoo,” “Daily Life in Mormon Nauvoo,” “Charles W. Penrose and the Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood,” and “Frank J. Cannon,” to name just a few of my publications.

While I served as director of the L.D.S. Institute adjacent to Stanford University in 1967, the Reverend Wesley P. Walters sent the editors of a new “journal of Mormon thought,” Dialogue, his article “New Light on Mormon Origins from Palmyra (N.Y.) Revival.” Walters had spent considerable time studying primary sources that seemed relevant to religion in western New York in the early 1800s and concluded that there were serious problems regarding the historical setting of Joseph Smith’s first vision. One of the editors of Dialogue, Eugene England, who also taught institute part-time, asked me to read the article and advise him as to whether or not it should be published. After studying the document it became clear that Walters was plowing in a field that had not seen the plow of any Mormon historian. Knowing that my friend Paul Cheesman had published a master’s thesis in 1965 entitled “An Analysis of the Accounts [note the plural] Relating to Joseph Smith’s Early Visions,” Eugene and I decided to send Paul a copy of Walters’s article, and asked if there were answers rooted in historical documents to the questions Walters raised. Our letter and the article fueled a fire of interest in what Richard L. Bushman called “Mormon Beginnings.” Mormon historians who scoured libraries, court and church records in the east, as well as the Church archives, came away from their search with new information regarding the religious setting of Latter-day Saint history, the First Vision, Joseph Smith’s youth, the translation of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the priesthood, and the organization of the church, as well as new insights regarding the Mormon experience in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Dialogue published the Walters article (Dialogue 4 [Spring 1969]: 60-81), together with a response from Richard L. Bushman. My own faith, as I too engaged in research into the man whom Donna Hill called “the First Mormon,” grew as a flood of articles and books favorable and unfavorable came from the pens of historians. It seemed to me that, on balance, all this new information favored Joseph Smith. Two examples follow:

While preparing the Joseph Smith papers for publication, scholars discovered the record of a previously unknown court trial that involved Joseph Smith, Sr., the sale of a team of horses, and a Palmyra New York resident. The court record had a serendipitous quality. It proved that the Prophet Joseph Smith lived in Palmyra in 1818, refuting Walters’s claims that Joseph arrived there after 1820 and, thus, could not have had there his encounter with God. To cite another example, a careful investigation of court documents by legal historian Gordon Madsen revealed that the Prophet did all he was legally required to do and more in his care of the Lawrence sisters, refuting anti-Mormon claims that he cheated the girls and used their inheritance for his own purposes. (See Gordon A. Madsen, “Joseph Smith as Guardian: The Lawrence Estate Case,” Journal of Mormon History, 36/3 [Summer 2010]: 172-211.)

The Book of Mormon with its complex plots, parallelisms, chiasms, and sophisticated use of irony, with its throne theophany, ancient farewell addresses, ancient parallels for Mosiah’s weights and measuring, legal exemptions from military duty, handling of a case of an unobserved murder, law of apostate cities, and double-sealed witnessed documents seems to bear witness itself that this book is something more than the attic writing of a Palmyra farm boy. (See Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch, eds., Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon [Provo: Foundation For Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002].)

In the 1960s I received permission from President Joseph Fielding Smith to research the unclassified letter file in the Church archives. This trove of primary source material consisted of more than 3,000 letters written by and to residents of Nauvoo, Illinois. Unedited, these missives written by Church leaders, as well as those residents who lacked position, station and wealth, grew my faith as they bore witness that they were engaged in a cause that was somehow linked to a personal God who cared about them and revealed things of import to their prophet-leader.

Early in the 1980s I spent three afternoons a week for months reading more than 20,000 (the librarian’s count) letters written by Brigham Young. As I concluded my reading I also finished my last class of the winter quarter, which was titled “The Greatness of Brigham Young.” As the class ended, something prompted me to bear witness of Brother Brigham, as he was called, and the prophetic office he held. Unplanned tears graced my cheeks and a warm assurance seemed to fill my body that I had told my students the truth. I believed my tender feelings for Brigham Young were catalyzed by my having spent so much time reading the words he wrote.

My research has taken me, too, through the diaries of Anthon H. Lund, L. John Nuttall, Heber J. Grant, Franklin D. Richards, Abraham H. Cannon, Charles W. Penrose, Moses Thatcher, John Henry Smith, Heber C. Kimball, Helen Marr Kimball, Bathsheba Smith, George F. Richards, Wilford Woodruff, Hosea Stout, John D. Lee, and Charles O. Card, and though more than 250 women’s diaries. The personal writings of these men and women reveal that they were real people, dealing with life as it came, all the while confident that they were assisting in preparing the world for the coming of Jesus Christ. Nothing in their writings would indicate that they were engaged in a grand deception. The history of the church, preserved by those who actively participated therein, reveals a people mostly motivated by faith, sacrifice, and consecration. While there might not have been faith in their every footstep, there were enough footprints of faith to impress even the casual reader.

While I believe I have read and studied most of the documents that have a bearing on the Mormon past, new information continues to surface that seems grounded in truth. Some examples follow. Alexander Baugh, an historian known for his study of the Mormons’ Missouri experience, recently noted that Jacob Hawn (not Haun) was not a church member at the time of the Hauns Mill Massacre, and never became a Mormon, though he had a brother who was baptized. Baugh reveals that even after 170 years careful research can uncover documents that alter our perceptions of the past. Another researcher has determined the date and day of the week that the Three Witness saw the plates, the angel, and the other sacred relics, as well as the date and day of the week that the Eight Witnesses saw and handled the plates before Joseph Smith gave them back to the angel Moroni. Such “facts” may appear trivial and unimportant, but when dates and days of the week fit nicely with other documents that relate to these two sacred events my faith in Joseph Smith grows.

Study of the “physical evidence at the Carthage Jail” reveals new facts regarding the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. (See Joseph L. Lyon and David W. Lyon, “Physical Evidence at Carthage Jail and What it Reveals about the Assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith,” BYU Studies, 47/4 [2008]: 4-50). Brian Q. Cannon’s published collection of priesthood restoration documents is impressive. Cannon wrote “The powerful thrust of these accounts of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery corroborated by numerous statements from other early members of the church renders them intellectually challenging and spiritually invigorating.” (Brian Q. Cannon and BYU Studies staff, “Priesthood Restoration Documents,” BYU Studies 35/4 [1995-1996]: 162-207).

Documents and testimonies from the past, when read and evaluated in their historical and doctrinal context, have assisted in providing reasons for faith growing within me. More than four decades of research, teaching, and writing about Latter-day Saint history has only fueled my testimony. Still, the foundation of my faith came in sacred moments when the Holy Ghost whispered to my mind and my heart informing me that Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet, that the First Vision happened, that the Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient record, that the doctrines of the gospel came from God, that temple ordinances bind the living and the dead, and that authentic priesthood authority is on the earth once more. There have been moments, too, when I have been reminded that those sacred moments did happen to me and were real. I remain appreciative that Mormon history and the documents to which it is bound have only enriched that faith which came to me as a gift from God.

—————————————–

Kenneth W. Godfrey grew up on a small farm in Cornish, Utah, before attending Ricks College and Utah State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. He served an LDS mission to the Southern States Mission, spending most of his time in Florida, from 1953 to 1955. He married Audrey Ann Montgomery on September 17, 1956, and soon after completed a master’s degree at Utah State in political science. He then entered the Church Education System (CES) and worked for CES as a seminary and institute teacher, as well as an administrator, until his retirement in 1995. Additional graduate work at the University of Southern California, the University of Utah, and Brigham Young University culminated in a doctorate from BYU in 1967.

Dr. Godfrey has spent most of his professional life immersed in Mormon history, reading almost everything written in that field and compiling an impressive bibliography of books and articles, including Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints (1982), which he coauthored with Audrey Godfrey and Jill Mulvay Derr. He has also become an authority on the history of Cache Valley and has published several historical works on that region.

In 1983-1984, Dr. Godfrey served as president of the Mormon History Association.

Posted July 2011

The only way I know how to express my testimony adequately is to be somewhat autobiographical and personal.

I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland. My mother was a Latter-day Saint from Ogden, Utah, my father a non-believer from Portland, Oregon. My twin brother John and I were raised in the Church, but we did not attend all our church meetings. There were not many Latter-day Saints in the eastern United States at the time, and we attended a small branch that met in rented halls, which eventually grew into a small ward. I recall that even when I was young I believed in the Church and I was deeply impressed with the leaders and teachers I had. My father was a good man, and broad-minded on many things, but he did not like to discuss religion. He had been raised an Episcopalian, but he had long since abandoned any religious beliefs. He was a ship captain, who sailed on regular voyages to south and east Africa; he had a few passengers on his freighter, some of whom were missionaries for various churches, and he had found it best to avoid the topic of religion altogether.

My family made regular summer trips to visit relatives out west. My uncle, my mother’s older brother Rodney Schaer, was a faithful church member and the patriarch of the family. On one trip while John and I were riding in his car, he told us it would be a good thing for us to be ordained in the priesthood. We were about sixteen at the time and had not been ordained, although it is usual for boys to receive the priesthood at twelve years. This suggestion stayed with both of us when we returned home. We talked to our mother, who said she would talk to our father about it—because we were shy about this. He told her that was fine with him, as long as it was our idea. He did not want us to be forced to go to church as he had been as a boy.

Subsequently, we talked to our bishop and were ordained deacons. One Sunday when I had been attending to my priesthood duties—which was a pleasure after years of feeling left out—I had a powerful experience. I echo the words of Mormon: “And I, being fifteen years of age and being somewhat of a sober mind, therefore I was visited of the Lord, and tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus” (Mormon 1:15). I believe I was sixteen at the time, but the rest is true of me. I felt the love of God flowing into me and knew he was pleased with my offering. That same day the bishop called me to the second office of the priesthood, to be a teacher. My brother and I became anxiously engaged in church service. A few months later, our ward began to build our own chapel. At the time there was a program whereby chapels could be built almost wholly by volunteer labor from the members. John and I spent almost the whole summer working on the chapel, and much time after school in the fall and winter until the building was completed. The experience of working side by side with the faithful church members was a unique experience which I can only relate to my later experience of attending the temple. Each day we heard religious experiences and expressions of faith from church members, and saw the chapel rise out of the ground to be completed. At the end of our work the apostle Harold B. Lee, later president of the Church, came to dedicate the building.

I went away to college in North Carolina, while my brother went to Brigham Young University. Davidson College, a school sponsored by the Presbyterian Church, provided a positive religious environment. My best friends were Catholic, Episcopalian, and Southern Baptist, and all were supportive of my religion. At times I attended their churches, as well as Methodist and Presbyterian services. (My best friends in Maryland were Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Catholic.) I learned valuable lessons from religion classes at Davidson, and from compulsory Chapel services once a week. But I also learned that the liberal Protestantism of the college could not match the faith I already had and was still cultivating, though I had to travel seventeen miles to church in Charlotte, North Carolina, to meet with the saints. After my father’s retirement my parents moved to El Paso, Texas, where my brother and I attended church in the summers. We met some wonderful members, including many families who had fled to El Paso early in the twentieth century from the Mormon Colonies in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, to escape the civil war that was going on in that country.

John and I wanted to go on missions, but our father was opposed to our leaving college before we had graduated (hoping we would eventually lose interest). We honored his wishes, but as graduation time approached, we talked to our respective bishops, who said we should consult with our parents to see if they would help support us financially. I called John at BYU, who said he had received the same advice. Then I called our parents in El Paso. My mother said it just so happened that our home teachers were visiting (my father was happy to visit with them as long as they didn’t talk religion). Our home teacher had brought over his son, who had just returned from a mission in Central America, and who gave an enthusiastic report of his experiences. She went in to talk to my father, and came back to the phone to say my father had just agreed to support us both fully on our missions. A few months later I was called to the Guatemala-El Salvador Mission, and my brother to the neighboring Central American Mission (which covered the other four countries of Central America—and was the same mission our home teacher’s son had served in).

We both had wonderful missions among the often poor but spiritually receptive people of Central America. Our parents enjoyed hearing of our experiences from weekly letters. From at least that time on, our father had warm feelings about the Church, although he continued to avoid talking about religion. A month or so after we returned, my father got a letter from the shipping company which had employed him for over twenty-five years. They said the executives had been talking about their retired captains, and when the company president recalled what a good captain my father was, he asked how much pension they were paying him. When an accountant told him, he said, “That’s not enough.” He doubled my father’s pension on the spot and made it retroactive for two years. The company sent a large check to him with the letter. My mother said, “That is the boys’ mission money coming back to you.” My father continued to receive a double pension for the rest of his life.

After my mission I was blessed with a good-paying but lonely job as the office manager for construction projects for El Paso Natural Gas. As I was driving up to Washington State on my first assignment, I drove through Provo, Utah. I had a powerful feeling that I needed to go to school there. I applied to graduate school at BYU. In January of 1973 I enrolled in BYU. I took courses in ancient Greek (I had begun studying Greek as a senior, and had taken my Greek New Testament on my mission to study). I felt the hand of the Lord blessing me as I had doors opened to me. I met my wife, Diana Summerhays, in a Greek class my first semester, which opened a whole new world to me. We were married in the fall of 1973 while her father was serving as the mission president in Ireland. After graduating with an M.A. in Classics in 1975, I spent a year in Athens, Greece, studying archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies, which is the American archaeological institute in Greece. In Athens I had prayed about which of two schools to attend to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, and received a strong impression to go to the University of Texas at Austin, where I accordingly enrolled. I later talked to a recent graduate of the other university I was considering, who was visiting the University of Texas, and he told me that the program at my university was far superior to the one at his alma mater.

When I began my program at Texas, I worried that I would be too rusty. Between my undergraduate and graduate philosophy studies were a mission, a master’s degree in classics, and a year of studying archaeology. I also would be busy with church assignments and meetings whereas my fellow students would have nothing but free time. However, I quickly began to find, to my own amazement, that I was a star student in my classes. Many of my colleagues with the additional free time were spending their weekends partying and coming in hung over on Mondays. I also noted that when I asked what I feared was a dumb question in a seminar, everyone else got out their pens and wrote madly in their notebooks because they were just as ignorant as I. I seemed to them to have more confidence just because I asked. But most of all, just the discipline of doing assignments, meeting deadlines, and facing problems—skills I had learned on my mission—gave me an edge on many students with better training and more time to study.

But I was blessed in other ways as well. In my first semester I took a class on Aristotle that gave me the idea for my dissertation research. From then on, I looked for topics for papers in other classes that would help me further my research for the dissertation. When it was time for the dissertation, I wrote mine in a year and had it approved, finishing at least a year ahead of anyone else in my cohort (while roughly half of the group never finished at all). Throughout my graduate career and ever since I have felt blessed with ideas that pointed me in the direction of valuable research. My first book, for instance, grew out of a single footnote in my dissertation. I have had to organize the research, make the arguments, and so on, but even then, I have found that new ideas came to help confirm the ideas I had started with.

How can a philosopher believe in God? I believe, not because of philosophical arguments, but because of my own experiences. Yet one thing that impresses me is the way in which the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ make sense of everything. They tell us why we are here on earth, where we came from, and where we are going after this life. In short, they explain the meaning of life—something most philosophers have long ago given up trying to do. Moreover, they answer the great philosophical challenges to believing in God, most notably the Problem of Evil: how can a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God produce a world with so much evil in it? If this world is all there is, the question is unanswerable. But if this life is a probation, a time of testing, then the evil serves a purpose in trying and building our character. And if there is a better world, how can we judge the value of life by this world only?

But why should we believe in another world, and in the providential governance of this world? How can we find God in a world with so much confusion? If Christianity is true, the question is really misguided. The question should rather be: how can God find us? If he put us here to find the truth, he wants to teach it to us. That is why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a missionary church. It has good news to share with everyone who will hear. “How then,” asks St. Paul, “shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Romans 10:14-15). And who will send the missionaries? Someone who knows God and is called by him to direct his church. That is why there must be apostles and prophets. The Church of Jesus Christ is a church led by apostles and prophets.

“And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of [Jesus Christ],” wrote the Prophet Joseph Smith, “this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father—that by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:22-24). Isn’t it wonderful, that mortals should see and converse with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, in our own time? Isn’t that good news like the message the early apostles carried with them? They had not only associated with Jesus of Nazareth during his mortal ministry, but beheld him and associated with him after his resurrection. Even St. Paul, who was going about persecuting Christians, met the resurrected Lord on the road to Damascus.

I think all Christians believe God is active in the world in some way, that in some sense his kingdom is on the earth. What most don’t know is that he has set up a kingdom as it was in ancient times, with his chosen servants to communicate his pure teachings and to baptize using his authority. It is vital that there should be special witnesses raised up in our times. For not only the enemies of religion but many professors of religion themselves have been busy impeaching the testimonies found in the Bible, for over a century. At a distance of two millennia and more, the narratives of the Bible have come to be seen by many commentators as just pious fictions. The best corroboration for the Bible would be for modern prophets to come forth who have met the risen Lord like Paul did on the road to Damascus. That would prove the ancient scriptures by reaffirming their message with the same authority the ancient apostles had.

I have a personal witness that this is true. God has whispered his truths to me, and he can whisper them to you. Jesus Christ lives. He is risen! He has conquered death for all of us. Furthermore, he has sent his authorized servants to gather all who will into his kingdom. That is the good news for our time. I just had to share it with you.

————————————————

Daniel W. Graham (Ph.D., University of Texas), currently chairs the Department of Philosophy at Brigham Young University, where he is also A. O. Smoot Professor of Philosophy. Prior to joining the faculty at BYU, he taught at Grinnell College in Iowa and at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. He has also been a Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge and a visiting professor at Yale University.

Dr. Graham has published numerous books and academic articles, among which are Aristotle’s Two Systems (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1987); ed., Studies in Greek Philosophy, by Gregory Vlastos, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Aristotle Physics Book VIII (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1999); with Victor Miles Caston, ed., Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002); Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); and, with Patricia Curd, The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Recently, Professor Graham published The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, 2 vols. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), which author and critic George Steiner, writing in the (London) Times Literary Supplement, called “a monumental feat.”

Posted July 2011

I am a believing Mormon, but also some kind of scholar. Besides that, I teach and I write, with a continual hope of saying something true and interesting. My testimony of faith—in form, content, and origin—is not very different from the testimony of countless other ordinary Mormons. But it needs to be declared, just like all the others, and perhaps it will be useful to those who wonder what Mormon scholars think.

I enthusiastically endorse having faith (specifically in Christ), but I also take the view that thinking is better than merely muddling through. These commitments, joined together, can be viewed as a curiosity, or as a problem. In my own experience, the encounter between faith and reason is a practical, even existential question, not merely a theoretical one. What I mean by this is that I think people reflect upon the relationship between faith and reason only after being drawn, or even committed, to both. So this reflection is a reflection upon existing allegiances and affections, not upon options that lie neutrally before us. Whether it is the word of revelation or the word of rational argument, I have long “experimented on the word” (as a Book of Mormon prophet put it) and found these words to be enlightening, well before I figured out how those words could be coherent with all the other true ones that I know of. Nevertheless, commitments are not all absolute or irreversible. This reflection upon prior allegiances cannot, I believe, abandon itself to blind choice, or give in to commitment without any grounding. A dedication to reason cannot dispense with giving reasons for itself, any more than a covenant to speak the truth about God can put truth in quotation marks. Both my religious life and my intellectual life point beyond themselves. Indeed, I hope they point to the same thing.

I am convinced that all good things have some common ground. There is only one truth. To be sure, there is no reason to expect an easy joining together of all the separate strands. Reality is often disordered, or tragic. Human beings are limited. Moreover, the habits of mind typical of the philosophic, scientific outlook are not the same as those typical of disciples of Christ. But it strikes me—and has struck me for some time—that the values of each point of view are in large part the true values. The lives of the mind I’ve been drawn to the most have taught me the lesson that Pascal taught, that “our dignity consists of thought. It is from there that we must be lifted up, and not from space and time, which we could never fill. So let us work on thinking well.” But I’ve also become wiser because I’ve exercised faith. It is possible for a pure rationalist to see that cleverness is nothing without truth, and that human life is not worth living without goodness and grace. But I think my eye of faith sees these things more clearly. My religion teaches me reverence, humility, and unashamed hope; it has shown me how to desperately seek, and to long for what is real but not seen. I’ve never called myself a Mormon simply because it is my heritage, or inescapably who I am. On the contrary, the truth of the Restored Gospel is something other than myself that has lifted me up and made me something better than I was. It has drawn me on to wisdom that I’ve been able to find in no other way.

I know of two great scriptural allegories of the life of the disciple: Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life, in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 8), and Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son (in Luke 15). At the center of each story is the tasting of food. In Lehi’s dream, the eating is the tasting of the desirable fruit of the Tree of Life, which represents the love of God. The Tree is the end point of a journey through a vast, foggy waste. For the prodigal son, the eating is the tasting of the husks that the swine also ate, the revolting food of the world, and the son ends where he began, in the house of his father. As a young person my experience resembled the second story more than the first. For me, coming home to the Gospel was a return to where I began, a point on a circle, not the far end of a straight path. It was also a return driven not—at first—by desiring something sweet, but by turning away from something bitter. I had neither squandered an inheritance nor dramatically turned away from the good teaching of my parents and teachers in the Church. But I had tasted enough of frustration and failure to feel deeply the smallness of human achievement, the pointlessness of so many everyday rituals and routines. Many of these feelings, to be sure, sprang from adolescent disenchantment. I think they were no less true for that. They came to me during that time before we grow up and learn to stop calling the whole world into question. But the world deserves to be called into question. The Gospel, which on some level I already believed, was not at that point an answer to that dissatisfaction, but it held out the possibility of such an answer. That answer I sought out specifically in my missionary service, which I left for when I was nineteen, to the southeast of Brazil.

One day near the end of my mission, I was standing with my missionary companion on a dirt road in a town called Colatina, watching a curious sight unfold. A large truck was trying, with little success, to turn around in a sloped and deeply rutted narrow street. The driver would turn the wheel, and put the truck in reverse, but then a rear wheel would go into a rut. He tried to move forward again, but could only go a few inches, because there wasn’t much room to turn. The sequence was comically repeated several times. A woman leaned out her window, and joined us in silent watching. We three all stood there, watching this awkward scene. At some point, I turned to this woman and asked: “Would you like to hear a message about Christ?”

Her name was Maria Ana. She was a single mother, well-liked in her poor hillside neighborhood, an occasional churchgoer from a family of Pentecostals. She was quiet and gentle, and serious about spiritual things. Her two children—a boy of around eight and a much younger girl—were charming and happy. We taught Maria Ana for a few weeks. One day, after our lesson, she prayed, “I thank you, Lord, that you have spoken powerfully to my heart.” By that time, He had spoken to me, too. That was something we had in common, something more important than anything else that I had in common with anyone. There was so much joy in sitting and talking with the people I taught and served, so much joy in seeing them after a long absence, in wishing them well and praying with them. I had tasted the love of God, “which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of men” (1 Nephi 11:32), as I would taste it so many times again, in fasting and prayer, in service during and after my mission, in friendships formed in religious fellowship, and in my family. It is the most real thing I know of. The fact that I haven’t yet found a way to translate it into a kind of proof of theological principles is so much the worse for theological principles, or at least for my skill with them. But there are connections and flashes of insight that come from this love, which continually open my eyes to new things. As I write this, a marginal note from Hegel comes to mind: “What is holy? That which binds humans together—even if it does so lightly, like the straw binds a wreath. What is most holy? That which eternally combines and reconciles spirits, fashioning a genuine bond.” In my life it is Mormonism that brings about and makes sense of this joining together, this communion of spirits. It is only in the gospel of Christ that the idea of the divinity of human relations has something more than an abstract meaning to me.

There are, to be sure, low and difficult points—periods of doubt and confusion, and droughts of inspiration. I should admit that it is precisely the skeptical grain of philosophy and the human sciences that takes me to some of those low points. For this reason, while I present an intellectual life to my faithful students as a worthy calling, I do not say that it is without pains and anxieties. Though for many intelligent disciples, science and philosophy wonderfully fill in the gaps and vague spots in religious doctrine, it is usually different for me. More often I find myself agreeing with Hegel that a rational knowledge of the ways of God must come to terms with the “slaughterbench of history,” and like-minded with Pascal who famously remarked that the “eternal silence of infinite spaces” frightened him. My mind lingers on the harrowing and tragic, in part because that is where I find the hardest human puzzles and most troubling spiritual concerns. My efforts in thinking and believing often seem risky, tiring, and unsettling. But there are great riches and adventures, too. I see these most of all in the best of my Mormon students. They combine reverence with curiosity and intellectual courage, scholarly diligence with the joy of discovery and exploration. The pitfalls they mostly avoid. Learning and “harkening to the counsels of God” (2 Nephi 9:29) seem to come naturally to them. They continually remind me of the possibly happy fit between a covenanted, believing life and a life of study and thinking.

I cannot do without the Gospel, because I am convinced that it is true. I cannot dispense with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because that is where I find the Spirit of God, and the words of eternal life. Most of all, I need Christ, whom I seem to find at the end of all of these good paths.

——————————————-

I was born to Mormon parents, each from pioneer ancestry, mostly Welsh Mormon immigrants who settled in Southeast Idaho in the 1800s. I grew up in Utah and Northern Virginia. My full-time mission was in the Brazil Rio de Janeiro North mission, from 1994-96. After my mission, I attended what was then Southern Virginia College (in Buena Vista, Virginia), and later graduated from Hampden-Sydney College (in Farmville, Virginia) in 2000. After working in the Utah state capitol and in Washington DC, I attended graduate school at the University of Notre Dame, studying with Guillermo O’Donnell, Fred Dallmayr, and Vittorio Hösle. I earned a PhD in political theory and comparative politics in 2008, and my dissertation was on law and morality in Hegel.

Since 2007, I have taught politics at Southern Virginia University, where I serve as the coordinator of the politics program. My recent research and teaching interest has been in political theology, and in philosophical reflections on political freedom. My most recent publication is “The Site of Mormon Political Theology” in Perspectives on Political Science (Spring 2011). A chapter I wrote on Mormonism and politics is forthcoming in a book entitled The World of Mormonism (Routledge).

I live in Buena Vista with my wife Stephanie and our four children, Whitney, Asa, Iris, and Percy. Outside my teaching and research, I help out with the SVU cross-country team, and serve as elder’s quorum president in the Buena Vista Ward.

Posted July 2011

I love the Holy Bible. It is the single most influential book in the history of the world. It is the book with the most distributed copies, it is the most read, and it has been translated into more languages than any other book.

For a span of forty years I have been studying, teaching, and writing about the Bible. One of my favorite adjectives in the English language is “biblical.” One of my master’s degrees and my doctorate are in biblical studies. I’ve written and published two books on the Old Testament and three books on the New Testament.

I’ve enjoyed nearly fourteen years’ personal experience in the lands of the Bible—in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece. I’ve conducted thousands of hours of field trips in those lands, and led students on between 35 and 40 long walks in the footsteps of the prophets and the Savior.

Much of my life for four decades has been focused on understanding the Bible, and helping others understand it.

But! Having said all that, I quickly add that there’s a book that is far greater than the Bible, the most Christian book on earth, that teaches best the Christ-like life. It is the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is not just another testament of Jesus Christ—it is the best testament that exists.

I agree with the Prophet Joseph Smith, that a person can get nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon than by any other book in the world. And I agree with Elder Bruce R. McConkie when he testified that the Old and New Testaments are books preserved by the Lord to prepare people for the restoration of all things and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

“Ponder the truths you learn,” the modern apostle wrote, “and it will not be long before you know that Lehi and Jacob excel Paul in teaching the Atonement; that Alma’s sermons on faith and on being born again surpass anything in the Bible; that Nephi makes a better exposition on the scattering and gathering of Israel than do Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel combined; that Mormon’s words about faith, hope and charity have a clarity, a breadth and a power of expression that even Paul did not attain; and so on and so on.”

Elder McConkie added these unequivocal declarations:

1. Most of the doctrines of the gospel, as set forth in the Book of Mormon, far surpass their comparable recitation in the Bible.
2. The Nephite record bears plainer and purer witness of the divine Sonship of Christ and the salvation which comes in and through His holy name than do the Old World scriptures.
3. Men can get nearer to the Lord; can have more of the spirit of conversion and conformity in their hearts; can have stronger testimonies; and can gain a better understanding of the doctrines of salvation through the Book of Mormon than they can through the Bible.
4. More people will flock to the gospel standard; more souls will be converted; more of scattered Israel will be gathered because of the Book of Mormon than was or will be the case with the Bible.
5. There will be more people saved in the kingdom of God—ten thousand times over—because of the Book of Mormon than there will be because of the Bible. (Ensign, November, 1983).

All of that is not to depreciate the Holy Bible in any way; it is a great and influential record. It only tends to highlight the importance and excellence of the volume the Prophet Joseph Smith brought forth by the gift and power of God for the benefit of all humankind. As far as books go, the Book of Mormon stands supreme in its capacity to affect human lives here and forever.

————————————————

D. Kelly Ogden is professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He has taught courses in Hebrew, Old and New Testament, writings of Isaiah, the Bible as literature, history of the ancient Near East, biblical and modern geography of the Holy Land, Pearl of Great Price, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants. For a span of fourteen years he helped administer BYU’s study programs in the Holy Land and guided students on field study trips all over Israel/Palestine, the Sinai, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece. He led groups of students on many walks through the Holy Land, including retracing the “three-days’ journey” of Abraham and Isaac from Beersheba to Mount Moriah, the ninety-two miles Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the two hundred miles from Dan to Beersheba, and the two-hundred mile “Lehi Trek” from Jerusalem to the Red Sea. He has climbed Mount Sinai 18 times.

Brother Ogden earned a B.A. in English and Spanish, an M.Ed. in International Education, an M.A. in Hebrew language and historical geography of the Bible, and a Ph.D. in Middle East Studies (from the University of Utah). He has presented scholarly papers in Louisville, Kentucky; Washington, D. C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Atlanta, Georgia; Kansas City, Missouri; Seattle, Washington; Leuven, Belgium; Vienna, Austria; and Santiago, Chile.

He is the author of several books, including

1. The Holy Land: A Geographical, Historical, and Archaeological Guide to the Land of the Bible (co-authored with Jeffrey R. Chadwick)
2. Where Jesus Walked: The Land and Culture of New Testament Times
3. Jerusalem, The Eternal City (with David B. Galbraith and Andrew C. Skinner)
4. Discovering the World of the Bible (with LaMar C. Berrett)
5. The President and the Preacher: Memoirs of a Mission President and Companion (with Marcia H. Ogden)
6. Pioneering the East (30 years’ involvement in the Holy Land, 1972 – 2002)
7. 8 Mighty Changes God Wants for You—Before You Get to Heaven
8. Verse by Verse – The Four Gospels (with Andrew C. Skinner)
9. Verse by Verse – Acts through Revelation (with Andrew C. Skinner)
10. The President and the Preacher II – Memoirs of a Missionary Training Center President and Companion (with Marcia H. Ogden)
11. Happy like Jesus: Lessons from Jesus Christ on How to Live

His articles have appeared in the Ensign, the Liahona (the International Magazine of the Church), the Church News, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Meridian Magazine, and other LDS and non-LDS publications. He is also a frequent participant in the BYU Television scripture discussions.

For five years Brother Ogden helped prepare the LDS editions of the Scriptures, and he served on the Gospel Doctrine Writing Committee for the Church. In the 1980s, he served as president of the Jerusalem Branch in Israel. In the 1990s, he served as a branch president at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, as first counselor in a BYU stake presidency, and as president of the Chile Santiago East Mission. He has served on the high council of the Provo Edgemont Stake, as an ordinance worker in the Provo Temple, and as president of the Guatemala Missionary Training Center. He is now a sealer in the Provo Temple.

Posted July 2011

[Click to read English version.]
[Click to read Italian version.]

Eu não nasci e fui criado em Utah, entre os Mórmons, mas eu fui criado como um Católico, na Itália. Quando eu tinha 10 anos de idade, meu pai faleceu e tive que amadurecer mais rápido que os outros rapazes. Com 15 anos, questões como o proposito da vida, e de onde viemos e para onde vamos depois desta vida, eram muito frequentes. Eu li muitos livros, tentando encontrar respostas para as minhas questões, e eu tinha muitas discussões filosóficas com meus amigos. Muitos deles eram Católicos, e por isso estávamos acostumados a nos reunir na paroquia local, dirigida pelos Salesianos de Don Bosco, e discutíamos religião e outros assuntos.

Eu sempre tive uma mente inquisidora, e estava disposto a aprender lendo livros, mas também procurava por algo que me desse uma experiência empírica. Eu nunca gostei de “mistérios” e de “dogmas” que não se podem compreender, mas somente serem aceitos com uma “fé cega” ou porque alguém importante “disse”. Em poucas palavras, eu não gostava de ser alguém “que não pensa”, mas eu queria eventualmente me tornar alguém informado. Portanto, eu embarquei em uma viagem para descobrir por mim mesmo o que era verdade e o que não era.

Enquanto crescia, descobri que muitos dos meus amigos e adultos simplesmente aceitavam os dogmas e mistérios sem nenhuma argumentação, ou iriam se rebelar contra eles e abandona-los junto com a religião, mas eu não podia aceitar em viver em escuridão, e delegar a uma classe de sacerdotes meu conhecimento sobre Deus ou a minha salvação. Eu queria saber por mim mesmo. E mais do que tudo eu não estava confortável com a idéia de ter que separar uma vida religiosa do casamento como é comum na Igreja Católica. Eu era atraído pelos dois e não desejava ter que escolher entre eles.

Eu tinha um caro amigo, Stefano, que era membro de uma pequena igreja Protestante, e eu estava fascinado pelo fato de que, em sua igreja, as pessoas podiam seguir uma vida religiosa e ainda sim serem casados. Quando pessoas como eu estão imersas em uma forte cultura Católica, mesmo esses pequenos exemplos, ou ideias, podem fazer a diferença com o passar do tempo, e dar a coragem de continuar procurando por alguma coisa diferente, apesar da forte pressão da tradição.

Eu estava procurando por respostas e fui atraído por muitos autores e livros, eu tive que estudar filosofia por três anos no segundo grau, mas rapidamente isso se tornou uma paixão e não mais um simples objeto de estudo. Uns dos meus autores favoritos eram Platão, Nietzsche e Kierkegaard. Eu também tive acessos a muitos livros de Psicologia, e alguns dos meus favoritos eram A Arte de Amar e Ter ou Ser? de Eric Fromm.

Depois da morte do meu pai, minha mãe começou a praticar Ioga e ler livros sobre o assunto. Assim fiquei familiarizado com muitos livros sobre as religiões e filosofias orientais, incluindo o Hinduísmo, Zen e Budismo. Eu até estudei e pratiquei Ioga por um tempo, mas a pratiquei como um meio de me aproximar de Deus, tentando ter uma experiência direta com Ele, e não somente a fim de obter benefícios físicos.

Todas essas ideias e experiências abriram minha mente. Eu estava procurando pelo absoluto, por Deus, por progresso espiritual e entendimento. Eu também era intrigado com muitas historias da Bíblia, como as de Moisés, José, ou dos Apóstolos. Entretanto, eu frequentemente me perguntava porque os sentimentos e o espirito que sentia quando lia o Novo Testamento eram tão diferentes daqueles que eu tinha quando ia a igreja ou escutava um sacerdote falar.

Mais tarde, eu me interessei pra física, mas por causa dos livros como O Tao da Física Fritjof Capra, um livro que discute os paralelos entre a física moderna e o misticismo oriental.

É desnecessário dizer que a influencia da Igreja Católica era muito forte na minha comunidade. Eu ainda posso me lembrar de quando tinha 10 anos de idade, quando, enquanto escutava a minha professora da escola elementar, eu perguntei a mim mesmo: “Como as pessoas podem não ser Católicas? Será que elas não sabem que terrível destino às aguarda?”

Quando eu tinha 15 anos, entretanto, eu tive uma pequena experiência que mudou tudo. Eu fui a uma viagem a Roma com outros jovens católicos. Eles estavam vindos de toda a Europa para se encontrarem na Basílica de São Pedro e conhecer o Papa. Durante aquela viagem, algo especial aconteceu.

Durante o dia designado, milhares de jovens estavam prontos para conhecerem o papa. O Papa não estava lá quando chegamos. Todos sentaram no chão da igreja e começamos a cantar. Eu não cantei, mas escutei por pelo menos uma hora as letras daqueles cantos Gregorianos. Eu tinha grandes expectativas daquele encontro com o Papa, mas depois de um tempo eu comecei a pensar: “O que eu estou fazendo aqui?”; “Afinal de contas porque estou aqui?”; “Somente porque os outros me disseram que seria especial?”; Eu resisti por um tempo, mas então decidi sair. Eu me senti aliviado quando deixei aquela estranha atmosfera da Basílica de São Pedro. Eu tinha um tio em Roma e decidi visita-lo e passar algum tempo com sua família em vez de encontrar o Papa.

Ao retornar para a minha cidade no norte da Itália, com o trem, eu tive a oportunidade de dizer o que havia feito para o nosso guia, um sacerdote bastante amigável. Eu expliquei a ele meus sentimentos, minhas duvidas, e contei a ele porque havia abandonado o encontro. Eu comecei a fazer perguntas sobre as crenças Católicas. Depois de me ouvir e conversar comigo por algum tempo, ele finalmente disse: “se você acredita nessas coisas, então você não é um Católico.” Isso foi realmente uma declaração forte e desafiadora, uma chamada de volta a ortodoxia. Eu estava um pouco perplexo, mas eu respondi: “Então, eu não sou um Católico!”

Eu suponho que o Espirito do Senhor estava presente naquele dia para me apoiar e abrir minha mente, porque me senti aliviado quando disse o que estava pensando, e eu não tive medo da reação do sacerdote. Depois daquele episodio, minha busca por respostas foi focada para fora da igreja Católica, desde que aparentemente um sacerdote de mente aberta não teve sucesso de me dar as respostas que procurava. Quando confrontado com perguntas difíceis, ele não pode me oferecer nada além de sugerir-me em confiar em uma fé cega ou considerar a mim mesmo um herege! Eu não poderia aceitar essas respostas.

Muitos anos se passaram depois desse episodio, e eu continuei a me encontrar com meus amigos Católicos, mas agora eu estava cada vez mais envolvido em ler livros sobre as outras religiões.

Um autor que teve uma forte influencia sobre mim durante este período, por exemplo, foi Sri Aurobindo. Nos seus livros, ele sugere que a humanidade pode evoluir espiritualmente para além de suas limitações atuais alcançando um estado futuro de existência “supra mental”. Este era um conceito interessante para mim na época que me deu alguma esperança e significado para o futuro (podemos comparar essa idéia com aquela do Milênio, mas as diferências são muito mais do que as similaridades).

Depois de todas as leituras que fiz durante estes anos importantes, onde me preparei para entender a mensagem da restauração. Eu acredito que o Espirito do Senhor ensina as pessoas de acordo com a língua e entendimento, e orienta os verdadeiros buscadores um passo de cada vez, até que estejam prontos para a plenitude do Evangelho.

Ter a coragem de não ser ortodoxo e desafiar as tradições, pensar independentemente, praticar o que se acredita, para ter certeza que funciona, são todos passos necessários que nos preparam para receber um testemunho e aceitar o evangelho restaurado. Isto foi especialmente verdadeiro para mim, porque eu não decidi ser batizado na Igreja Mórmon por razões sociais, mas somente porque fui tocado pelo Espirito, depois de comtemplar as simples, mas poderosa arquitetura e logica da doutrina Mórmon.

Eu ouvi pessoas criticarem o que os Mórmons acreditam e até dizer que temos uma mente simplória por causa daquilo em que acreditamos, mas eu estudei muitas religiões e filosofias diferentes e muito poucas, se alguma, pode se comparar ao evangelho restaurado de Jesus Cristo em logica e clareza. Um exemplo simples é a seção 76 de Dountrina e Convênios, onde são descritos os Reinos de Glória. Mesmo se conhecermos somente os princípios básicos do evangelho, não podemos deixar de contemplar a simplicidade do plano. Entretanto, se nos aprofundarmos, descobrimos que existe muito mais do que pode ser entendido inicialmente.

Além disso, a despeito da beleza da logica do Evangelho restaurado, o que é mais importante é que podemos receber um testemunho, na verdade muitos deles, e saber por experiência própria que é verdadeiro, assim não precisamos confiar em terceiros ou sermos guiados por uma “fé cega”, mas podemos ter uma fé baseada naquilo que sabemos ser verdadeiro, e essa fé e conhecimento podem crescer até se tornarem perfeitos.

Eu sempre acreditei que a verdade podia ser encontrada. Não é uma busca sem esperança. Mas não podemos ter medo de procura-la em muitos lugares diferentes, e alguns deles podem ser estranhos à nossa cultura e experiência. Devemos acreditar que podemos alcançar nossas metas de conhecimento seguindo regras espirituais, algumas vezes enfrentando desafios e fracassos, até que encontremos o que estamos procurando. Não podemos delegar essa responsabilidade aos outros, e as vezes temos que lutar por isto.

Eu posso testemunhar com toda a minha convicção que a escritura “Pedi, e dar-se-vos-á; buscai, e achareis; batei, e abrir-se-vos-á” (Lucas 11:9) é verdadeira, porque o Senhor me guiou pela mão através de diversas experiências até que eu encontrei o que estava realmente procurando, a verdadeira Igreja de Jesus Cristo, mais uma vez estabelecida aqui na terra.

Os anos de escuridão da minha vida foram dissipados quando eu conheci os missionários mórmons, pois eu estava pronto para compreender. E sou grato por ter nascido em uma época em que a verdadeira Igreja está estabelecida na face da terra. Eu não posso imaginar as dificuldades impostas às pessoas que tentaram encontrar a Igreja, quando ela ainda não havia sido restaurada na terra.

Eu preciso reconhecer que devo à Igreja Católica minha compreensão inicial, mesmo que limitada, de Jesus Cristo, crença que sempre esteve comigo, mesmo quando eu estava procurando conhecer outras religiões. No entanto, devo a estas outras religiões e filosofias um melhor entendimento de muitos princípios verdadeiros, e uma mente mais aberta que me ajudou a não ter medo quando eu finalmente encontrei a verdadeira Igreja de Jesus Cristo.

———————————————-

Giuseppe Martinengo é natural de Vercelli, Itália, se formou bacharel em ciências sociais pela UEL, Brasil, e Mestre em Administração de Empresas e Doutorado em Casamento, Família e Desenvolvimento Humano pela Universidade Brigham Young. Sua pesquisa se foca na interface entre trabalho e família, e em uma série de trabalhos, utilizando Modelos de Equações Estruturais aplicadas à dados da IBM, Giuseppe analisou as semelhanças e diferenças entre grupos de trabalhadores da IBM, divididos por sexo, fases da vida e cultura. Giuseppe tornou-se membro da Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias em 1985, quando ainda morava na Itália. Ele é casado com Giovanna e eles têm quatro filhos. Atualmente é Vice Presidente de Operações da More Good Foundation, uma organização sem fins lucrativos dedicada à promoção da informação correta na internet sobre a Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias.

Posted July 2011