Testimonies

Yearnings of Joy

I vividly remember being precariously perched atop a stack of kitchen chairs that my mother had moved into the living room so she could wax the kitchen floors, something mothers did back in the mid-1960s. I must have been about four years old because I was still the only child—my sister came along when I was five—and we still lived in the south Provo house from which we moved when I was six. While my mother was preoccupied with her floors, I was blissfully balancing on the furniture. As I sat atop the tower of chairs my thoughts turned to serious matters. Perhaps prompted by the lighter air at that altitude or by the frightening possibility of falling, I began thinking about the Sunday school lesson from that week: The beautiful, young woman who taught our class of four-year-olds had explained how Joseph Smith had prayed to find out which church to join and how God and Jesus actually came to visit him. Atop my throne, I felt like I could use a little wisdom myself—I must have figured that if prayer like that could get that kind of attention, I would give it a try myself—so I decided to pray. As my mom continued mopping in the other room, I prayed with all my heart for God and Jesus to come to my Provo living room. I wanted to see them, hear them, and touch them. I waited patiently for several minutes after praying. Nothing. As my mother finished up the floors, I gave up. I had no vision. But I didn’t feel defeated. Instead I had a blissful, aching yearning that forever changed me. I did not feel disillusioned by my failed experiment; rather, I felt a deep longing for something—some one, some place—I didn’t know what. But I felt I had known once, but could no longer recall the memory.

I’m sure I didn’t think about it in quite these terms at the time—after all, I was a four-year-old boy—but the feeling was real and stuck. And I experienced it many times thereafter. I could not create it—rather it would overtake me when I least expected it. Usually it was when experiencing something particularly beautiful or sublime: watching a spectacular sunset, listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for the first time, being in the mountains, staring up at the night sky away from the light pollution, encountering Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. But it wasn’t the beauty of the experiences that moved me; rather, I believe the beauty stirred in my soul a recollection of an even greater Beauty I had lost, that I’d been separated from, a pre-mortal Beauty that I once knew really well but of which I now retained only vague memories. I also had a strong desire to regain it, if not the place or person itself, to reexperience the feelings of aching and longing that hints of this world far away and of a possible return. The longing hurt, but in a rather exquisite way.

Many years later, I read C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy and recognized that this feeling was similar to what Lewis calls “joy.” For Lewis, joy is a technical term for “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” It is a kind of pleasurable pain, a sweet aching longing for something absent—a moment of yearning so exquisite that, according to Lewis, once experienced one will always want to experience it again. Joy is, for Lewis, a glimpse of the transcendent glory of God.

I should probably remind you that my PhD is in Romanticism, so I have a rather deep interest in feelings and emotions. The Romantics were not so much interested, as their name often suggests, in the romantic glow of love. Rather they wanted to confront the honest feelings of human existence, which they believed were more important to understand than the empiricist rules laid down by the Age of Reason. Wordsworth believed poetry originated in “organic forms,” from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Romantics believed the Enlightenment left humanity cut off from each other and fragmented individually as industrialization divided us into parts of a large impersonal assembly line of being. They were preoccupied with the mystical, the unconscious, and the supernatural, and longed to locate in nature and in the human soul the essential meaning of existence. So for me to talk about my relationship with my religion, I have to talk about my feelings—those moments when I have felt a kind of transcendent connection with other people and another world.

Despite my pre-Kindergarten yearnings for the transcendent, I had fairly non-religious parents. They were deeply moral, kind, good people—my Dad never got a speeding ticket and my Mom was generous to a fault. But they both drank coffee and didn’t pay tithing and were never comfortable talking about religion. My mother taught me to say my prayers at night, but that was really the extent of my religious training at home. My questions got quick, unsatisfying answers. However, I did go to Sunday school and weekday primary meetings. My Mom made sure of that. This setting created a fairly confused kid. I didn’t really fit into my family because I craved religion, but I didn’t really fit into my religion because I was without a family to take me. I felt like an outsider in both worlds.

When I learned about “eternal families,” that a family can be sealed together for eternity, I felt more confusion. I wanted my family to be with me through eternity, but I couldn’t bear the discomfort of talking to them about it. And I began to feel a sense of shame when at Church, knowing my family was not Brady-Bunch perfect like everyone else in our neighborhood. My friends’ parents went to church each week, none of them drank coffee, and, unlike me, they were sealed to their parents in the temple. I distinctly remember having some friends over to my house once when one of them noticed the coffee can in our cupboard. His voice revealed horror: the kind you would expect if I had just told him that my father was in jail for beating up a police officer or my mother was in the back smoking marijuana and drinking Jack Daniels. My friends knew my family was sinning, and I knew they knew. I started to develop what W.E.B. DuBois would call a double consciousness—seeing myself through the eyes of my neighbors and sensing a deep shame about my family’s “wayward” ways. This might have made me resentful either of my family or of our church-going neighbors, but I knew my parents were good people—they didn’t beat up police officers or smoke marijuana— and I knew that my friends didn’t understand that. But I also knew my friends and their families were good people. And I craved the discussion about religion I found at Church, with my friends and their families. It was a double bind; I felt caught in the middle between two worlds, a stranger in a strange land.

And those moments of “joy” often came in a Church context. Like the first time I went with a youth group to perform baptisms for the dead. As I entered the temple, I immediately felt this sense of awe and peace and power. It was another defining moment for me; I felt like I really belonged there, like my soul had found its home. I felt loved and accepted. Most of all, I realized that the yearning I had experienced all my life was for a place like the temple, not the temple but almost.

There have been many other moments when that other world I was longing for seemed like it would burst into this one. The exquisite peace I felt on the last day of my mission, as if all my sins were forgiven and I was pure as a new-born baby. The loving feelings I experienced when I was married to Zina that assured me that somehow in that simple ordinance we were uniting generations past, present, and future in a chain of familial love. The delight I felt when I finally saw my own parents go through the temple and we became an “eternal family.” The indescribable love I felt when my wife gave birth to our four children and the window of heaven opened long enough for these new beautiful beings to enter this world and our lives. And the sweet pleasure of being able to serve my father and mother in their final days before they died and feeling the trust and love that unites us as a family beyond the grave.

The word “religion” comes from the Latin religio, which means “to bind”; its cousin “ligament” illustrates its deeper meaning. Religion is a binding together of believers. It gives us community in which we can create holy lives, a community of saints. I have found my community within Mormonism. I’m not always at ease here; I often find myself frustrated by my fellow Mormons. I frequently struggle with our culture’s conservative politics, I am often uncomfortable with my fellow Mormons’ discourse of surety as they bear testimonies of “knowing” things that I can only say I believe in, and I am sometimes frustrated at the lack of tolerance I see in our Mormon communities toward superficial differences. But I also know that many of my friends and ward members struggle with my more liberal political leanings, my comfort with doubts and ambiguity, and my own lack of tolerance. We struggle together, trying to work out our salvation as a community. In Mormonism I have found a home away from home, a community of faith, a tribe to walk with as I try to find my way back to my real Home.

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Boyd Petersen serves as the Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies at Utah Valley University, where he teaches classes like Mormon Literature and Literature of the Sacred for the English department. He serves as the Past-President of the Association for Mormon Literature and as the Book Review editor for the Journal of Mormon History, and has served on the boards of Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and Seggulah. He has published across the range of Mormon Studies, from publications like the FARMS Review and BYU Studies to Dialogue and Sunstone. He wrote the biography Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, which won the best biography award from the Mormon History Association in 2003. He graduated with an MA from the University of Maryland and a PhD from the University of Utah, both in comparative literature, emphasizing Romanticism and Religious Studies. He is the husband of Zina; the father of Mary, Christian, Nathanael, and Andrew; and has fairly close relationships with one dog, a gerbil, and a bunny.

His article “Soulcraft 101: Faith, Doubt, and the Process of Education” is on line at
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=boyd_petersen

Posted December 2010

Revisiting Germany

I did not grow up in an active LDS home. My stepfather was a very good man who was as honest and hardworking as the day is long. He had picked up some bad habits during his years in the war and felt uncomfortable around active LDS people, but he always felt close to the Church and its teachings. My mother was very caring and supportive—but she did not go to church very often either. During my days at Bountiful High School in Utah, I became very close with a number of young men and women who were not only active in the Church but who became very patient and caring friends—the kind you value throughout your life. They always seemed to take me into their circle. I loved being with them and their families and soon developed an ideal of what I wanted for myself in a family. Through their examples, I was baptized, attended seminary the last two years of high school, and nurtured a desire to serve a mission. For me, my mission was a transformative experience. I served in Germany under two devoted mission presidents who had a powerful influence in my life. I also mingled with some remarkably bright and capable missionaries who were not only becoming well-educated but also faithful and hard-working. In spite of best efforts, we were not very successful in winning converts of the German people. Those who did take our message to heart and were baptized were quite amazing people—but we didn’t have the opportunity to see that very often. What I didn’t realize was that I would come have an opportunity to take a new look at my mission a couple of decades later.

About twenty-two years after returning from Germany, marrying the girl of my dreams, defending the country, finishing grad school, bringing five energetic children into the world, and starting a university teaching career, I received an invitation to make a presentation in Amsterdam at a conference. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take our oldest son, Evan, on a father-son adventure not just to see Holland but to go back, for the first time, into my old mission area. So, after the conference, we rented a tiny car, braved the no-speed-limit autobahn, and drove through Holland and across the border into Germany. What a thrill to see the familiar cities and towns of the old industrial section of Germany—once crowded with steel mills, coal mines, chemical plants, and Protestant and Catholic churches. I showed Evan some of my old apartments, the cobblestone streets I had “tracted out,” and our old rented branch meeting hall in Herne. Here we managed to also find a beautiful new modern ward meetinghouse. Faithful Schwester Klein was the custodian on duty when we stopped by. She gave us an update on the growth of the branch into a ward and then showed us where her 97-year-old mother, Oma Klein, and her nearly-as-old aunt were living. We knocked on the apartment door. They peeked out, carrying the open copies of the Book of Mormon they had been reading. They seemed to glow with remembrance and filled me in on the people of the branch I had known.

Then we drove south to Düsseldorf and our former mission office, where I spent many months of my two years. The meetinghouse we helped build was still there, but the office had been sold to a real estate company since the missions in Germany were consolidated a few years back. It was in this office where a robber broke in and stole the tithing money and many other things back in 1966.

But the most important and most unexpected part of our trip was ahead of us outside the boundaries of the old Central German Mission. We drove the next morning down to the Frankfurt area, where the church had recently completed a temple. In the light snow we walked around the beautiful building, took some pictures, and talked to some American missionaries. I asked at the desk where one might stay—Frankfurt is actually many miles away from this rural town and I hadn’t seen any motels nearby. The person at the desk said, “Oh, you could have stayed here—we have several rooms available but they just filled two minutes ago.” How disappointing. “But,” she continued, “there is a sister who has a place near here. She rents out rooms to temple visitors. Here’s the number.” I called and, fortunately, she had space for us. Not only that, when we arrived, white-haired Schwester Hansen fed us a sumptuous German dinner. After our long day’s drive, we were anxious to get straight to bed, but Schwester Hansen said cheerfully, “Would you like to see my photo albums?” I translated this for sixteen-year-old Evan and I could tell he would much rather have gone to bed—and so I would have preferred. But she had been so good to us. Soon a large photo album was spread before us going back many years. We tried very hard to look interested. I asked her how long she had lived in the Frankfurt area. “Oh, I’m not from here—I live up near Düsseldorf. I just rented this apartment because I knew people would need a place to stay when they came to the temple.” She had shown us some pictures of one of her children who was in a wheelchair. She mentioned that he was one of thirteen children. That made me start thinking. Thirteen children is highly unusual for a German family. Then she said, “We’ve had a lot of sickness in our family. I’ve been ill a lot, too.” Could it be? A memory started to awaken. “Did you ever have heart problems?” “Yes,” she admitted. “Did you once come into the mission office in Düsseldorf seeking a blessing from the mission president? But he was not there, was he, so you were blessed by his two assistants?” She looked at me with squinted eyes. “Yes.” I asked her to excuse me a moment. I went back into our bedroom and extracted my mission diary from our luggage. I hurried back, and leafed through the pages until I found the right spot. Then I read to her what happened on that miraculous day.

It was a Sunday morning in the winter of 1966. A heavy snowfall had covered the streets. President and Sister Horace Beesley had left early for a meeting in Wuppertal. Elder Steve Smith and I had just stopped by the office before we were to travel out ourselves. A couple came into the office and asked to see the mission president. The woman looked very ill—exceptionally pale and weak. We brought them both into the president’s office and asked if there was anything we could do. “I just came from the hospital,” said the woman. “They didn’t want me to leave but I just had to. I have nine children to care for and they need me at home. I have a very bad heart problem. Feel my hands and my face.” They were both pale and ice cold. “But I know if you bless me, I will recover. God will heal me and let me take care of my children. Will you do that for me?” I had given blessings before but never to someone who appeared so ill. She had much more faith than I felt I had. Elder Smith and I looked at each other and asked to be excused for a minute. We went down the hall into his office.

“We need to pray,” he said. We prayed. We asked that we be able to give a blessing that would be equal to the trust this good woman was putting into the Lord’s priesthood holders. This seemed to be a life or death situation to us. We went back into the president’s office. The woman’s husband did not feel he could participate in the blessing. Elder Smith, being the senior companion, anointed her with consecrated oil. I put my hands, with Elder Smith’s, on her head and started to bless her. At first the words just wouldn’t come. I felt nervous and self-conscious. But then something happened. The German started to flow. Powerful impressions. Whole sentences. I pronounced a blessing I had no earthly capability of pronouncing. I used words I didn’t know. I gave her advice I didn’t understand. I promised her a full recovery and the ability to return to her children and take care of them. I had not experienced such feelings before—feelings of confidence and knowledge and goodness. This was something beyond normal life experiences.

When we finished, she stood, glowing. “Feel my hands.” We did. They were warm. “Feel my face.” We did. It was warm and flush. “Danke! Danke!” she said. “I’m all better and now I’ll go take care of my family.” She and her husband put on their coats and headed out into the snow. Elder Smith and I sat for a while in that office wondering at the remarkable experience we had just been part of. Since then, I had often wondered what had happened to her and her family. I did not see her again over those twenty-two years.

When I finished reading the experience to Schwester Hansen from my diary, she wept. I wept. Evan wept. What a blessing to cross paths with this soul who entered my life only for a few minutes some twenty-two years earlier. She went on to have four more children after that time. She continues to serve others even all the way down in Frankfurt.

I’m glad we were two minutes too late to occupy a guest room in the temple and got to come and revisit one of the most memorable experiences of my missionary days.

I’m very grateful for the church’s missionary program. It not only spreads the gospel throughout the world, but it also gives young men and women—and even older ones—opportunities to stretch their capabilities, enlarge their world view, discover the goodness of other people, and even glimpse the power of God.

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Ned C. Hill is former dean of the Marriott School of Management (1998-2008) at Brigham Young University. He taught at Cornell University and Indiana University before coming to BYU in 1987. He graduated in chemistry from the University of Utah, where he was a laboratory assistant to Professor Henry Eyring. He earned a master’s degree in chemistry from Cornell and then a PhD in finance from Cornell. He is currently the National Advisory Council Professor of Finance in the Marriott School, where he teaches corporate finance. He has authored three books and over seventy academic articles. He has served as a bishop and stake president (twice) and his current calling is chair of the board of the Volunteer Care Clinic of Utah County. He serves on a number of other boards of directors. His wife, Claralyn Martin Hill, is a BYU Law School graduate and a University of Utah undergraduate. They are the parents of five grown children and fifteen grandchildren.

Posted December 2010

In his new book, The Grand Design, the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking argues eloquently that science has no need for God. He is probably entirely correct. Science does not need God, but history demonstrates clearly that people do. This does not prove the existence of God any more than science can disprove it. Indeed, intellectuals across the ages, as well as pseudo-intellectuals such as current media blabber Bill Maher, have suggested that humans created God and not vice versa. Despite Maher’s claim that “only morons believe in God,” most thoughtful people, believers and non-believers alike, will agree with Hawking that the question of God’s existence has no empirical answer. This leads many to the very sensible path of the agnostic. As Hawking put it, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Nothing remains after this cold exercise in logic except humanity’s undeniable yearning for the Divine. Mormons, of course, cling to the sweet notion that not only is there God but that He cares profoundly about humanity, deeply enough to respond personally to the pleadings of an American farm boy in 1820 and then set into motion a dazzling stream of revelation that established a new and vibrant religious tradition. Such an outrageous tale is antithetical not only to the bland assertion that the existence of God is at best doubtful but to orthodox concepts about how God, if He indeed exists, might deal with humanity. In addition to all this, there are all the nagging inconsistencies in Mormon history, an easy target not only for those who scoff at Joseph Smith as a charlatan and faker but evangelicals who also consider him a dangerous pied piper leading his deluded followers to Hell.

I believe there has never been a time in history when the hatred of Mormonism has been more virulent. This may sound absurd in the face of such nineteenth-century anti-Mormon madness as the Haun’s Mill Massacre, the Illinois burnings, and the federal “raid” on the Church in Utah. The difference is in the scope and means of it. Using every scrap of history that suggests something wrong with the Mormon story, the modern anti-Mormon mob attacks relentlessly and viciously. I have seen these rabid mobbers take down the strongest of the strong, using most effectively these days the Internet and word of mouth. The examples may vary widely, but the message is always the same. I was in Palmyra a few years ago. A very righteous-looking woman was proudly picketing in front of the Grandin print shop with a sign that read, “There is no archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon.” I asked her if she was a Bible-believing Christian, to which she proudly replied, “I am.” I then said, “Well, did you know that there is no archeological evidence for the Book of Exodus?” The look on her bewildered face left me with one of the most pleasing moments of my life and just one little victory in the new Mormon War. I am loyal to a fault—“true blue, through and through.”

The visiting authority at a stake priesthood leadership meeting I attended recently was Elder Marlin Jensen, who had just returned from a lengthy tour of Africa. Having become somewhat friendly with him because of his role as church historian and having taught African history for several decades, I was doubly moved as he talked about the misery he had witnessed on that suffering continent. When he said softly, “the Gospel is their only hope,” the hair stood up on the back of my neck, because in those few words he spoke such a simple and profound truth. I am not sure that this practical reality is good enough, and I’ve spent my life pondering what is good enough. Here are my modest conclusions: I’m a firm believer in the old axiom that the proof is in the pudding. Much more than a religion, Mormonism is a way of life with enormous causal power for good. Beyond that subjective judgment, my investigations of church history and doctrine leave a persistent impression with me that, even with all the questions, “there is definitely something to it,” as a querulous colleague said to me recently. For me, the mysteries and inconsistencies of it all make it more fascinating and oddly satisfying. Richard Bushman’s riveting biography of Joseph Smith moved me deeply. Even with all of the Prophet’s flaws and the various aspects of the Restoration story that don’t seem to make much sense, it became apparent that his biographer was right when he said that Joseph somehow “managed to lay his hand on the Infinite.” That’s more than good enough, because then the answer to the age-old question of whether there is God has an answer, and a powerful one at that.

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Gene A. Sessions was born in Ogden, Utah, and received his Ph.D. degree from Florida State University in 1974. He is the author and editor of numerous works, including Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant (1982, 2008), Latter-day Patriots: Nine Mormon Families and Their Revolutionary War Heritage (1975), Prophesying upon the Bones: J. Reuben Clark and the Foreign Debt Crisis, 1933-39 (1992), Camp Floyd and the Mormons: The Utah War (with Donald R. Moorman, 1992), The Search for Harmony: Essays on Science and Mormonism (with Craig J. Oberg, 1993), Utah International: A Biography of a Business (with Sterling D. Sessions, 2002), and Mormon Democrat: The Religious and Political Memoirs of James Henry Moyle (1975, 1998), for which he received the Mormon History Association’s annual award for best edited work. Professor Sessions is Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University in Ogden. He has also been a consultant on documentaries and committees exploring the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre and is past president of the Mountain Meadows Association. He and his wife Shantal have four children and seven grandsons.

Posted December 2010

I am a committed Christian, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I believe its doctrine and its history, and its basic premise that Jesus Christ is indeed the savior and redeemer of the world, the creator of the world, and its ultimate judge. I have this imaginary friend, a composite of several people I know who put great stock in the human intellect and value highly the rational mind. He comes up to me and says, “How can you believe that old stuff? You have been to college haven’t you? How can you believe that this Jesus character did all those miracles and even came back from the dead? How can you believe in angels bringing gold plates to an unlettered young man and having him translate them into a dubious ‘scripture,’ who then says he ‘gave the plates back’ so they can’t be seen? Aren’t we so beyond such things these days?”

His skepticism doesn’t bother me because I know where he is coming from. He simply embraces the widespread notion that “Man Is the Measure of All Things,” that man is the yardstick by which all things in this world should be measured, judged, and evaluated. My answer to him is that I believe because many times in many places I have felt the presence of God through the Holy Ghost—among them in church meetings, in personal prayer, in speeches by our church leaders, in scripture reading, or in moments of quiet or reverie. It is by these spiritual assurances that I know that God lives, that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that Joseph Smith received a prophetic calling from Them to restore the fulness of Their gospel, and that by Their direction and authority he restored Their true church in its fulness. These assurances are the seedbed of my testimony of God, Christ, and Their gospel.

So I tell my imaginary friend that his logic is probably OK but his basic premise is wrong. God, not man, is the measure of all things. God and His Word are the yardstick by which all things are to be measured, judged, and evaluated. Through His word—the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and continuing revelation—God has given us our most accurate view of basic reality, who we as humans are, why this earth was created, what our purpose for living here is, and what our ultimate destiny is and how we may achieve it.

I would also tell my friend that a testimony of God is not to be derived from our common and ordinary everyday living experiences but rather is something extraordinary that comes from higher realms to all peoples who are in a particular frame of mind that includes faith, a penitent spirit, and a righteous desire to know. These extraordinary experiences give the rational mind something else to chew on rather than just the ordinary and common experiences of everyday life. My friend may not be convinced but I hope he remembers these things for a later day when they may become more meaningful.

My life in academe has been considerably enriched by understanding something of God’s great plan of salvation for all peoples who have lived here on the earth. In my studies of people and cultures in various parts of the world, my testimony has helped me bring balance to two modern, seemingly contradictory views of other peoples and cultures. Paraphrasing Lindsay of Birker:

On the one hand people start with the correct assumption that all peoples share a common humanity or human nature but then jump to the false conclusions that the differences between Western and non-Western peoples are superficial, and that Western categories of thought can be used to adequately study, analyze, and describe these cultures. . . . On the other hand people start with the correct assumption that there are profound differences between Western and non-Western societies, but then jump to the false conclusion that non-Westerners are fundamentally different from people of European descent.

Thus, at one end we have the idea of the fundamental and universal unity of human nature versus, at the other end, the incredible variety of modes of thought and expression of that human nature. My understanding of God’s purposes for this earth has helped me bridge this seeming contradiction and develop more empathy for and some ability to see other peoples’ essential humanity, to see them as humans like myself, to know at a fundamental level that every thought, tender feeling, hope, aspiration, sorrow, exultation, or worry which has ever crossed my mind and heart has crossed theirs, to know that their parents have the same hopes and aspirations for their children as ours have for us. For this also I thank God.

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Larry V. Shumway is a Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Musicology at Brigham Young University with a BA degree from BYU in Music Education, an MA from Seton Hall University in Asian Studies, and a Ph.D in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. Born in 1934, he grew up in St. Johns, Arizona. He came to BYU as a professor in 1974. In his professional life he has taught music in the public schools, taught Japanese language, and done field research in Japan (Shinto ritual music), on American traditional music, and in Tonga (where he was a member of a team which filmed and produced three video documentaries on Tongan national music, culture, and dance). Representative publications in each area are Frontier Fiddler: Life of a Northern Arizona Pioneer, in which he assembled, edited, and annotated the memoirs and fiddle tunes of his grandfather, Kenner C. Kartchner, a prominent early-twentieth-century old-time fiddler as well as fish, game, and wildlife official (1990); “Gagaku in the Provinces: [Japanese] Imperial Court Music at the Ikeda Fief at Bizen [modern Okayama],” in the Asian Music Journal (2001); “Contextualizing The Tale of Genji With Other Arts of Its Golden Period,” in the journal Interdisciplinary Humanities (2003); and “The Tongan Lakalaka: Music Style and Composition,” in Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology (1981).

At BYU he had a joint appointment in the Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature and in the School of Music where he taught courses in Asian Humanities, World Music, and the Cultural History of Japan. He also served variously as Asian Studies Coordinator, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, and chairman of the Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature. He directed two Study Abroad programs to Japan and served as cultural advisor to the Young Ambassadors and the BYU Folk Dancers on two Asian tours. He is also an old-time fiddler, preserving a five-generation family tradition. He is married to Sandra Leece of Dundee, Scotland, and has six children, four of them fiddlers like himself. He also has two granddaughters.

Posted December 2010

There appears to be a time in the life of every faithful Latter-day Saint when they come to know the truth of the Gospel. My personal testimony is deeply rooted in the stories of my childhood in postwar Finland, in a home filled with faith, beauty, and a love of learning. My parents, Aune Irene Makinen (1914-2009) and Valto Antero Tolvanen (1909-1991), were both strong individuals who were destined to hear the call of the Gospel. As I have circled back to my childhood and pondered the stories that I was told, I have come to see that it was the faith of my parents that readied me to become a member of the Church.

When Finland entered the bitter Winter War in 1939, Father answered the call to serve as a staff sergeant along the Russian front and left my mother, his fiancée, in Helsinki. Father fought as a lieutenant in the famed white camouflage ski patrol. Mother prayed for my father’s safe return and for five years patched through wartime calls in the Helsinki telephone central exchange office. Bombs fell on the Russian front as well as in Helsinki. It was a time of great uncertainty. One night my mother woke from a deep sleep hearing my father’s voice calling her name. She knelt down and prayed for his safety. When a letter arrived a week later, it confirmed her experience: at the precise moment she had woken up, he had cried out her name as a bomb exploded by him. Those around him had died from the impact of the bomb. For my parents, this was one of a series of miracles and an answer to their prayers. It was from this heritage of faith and Finnish “sisu” that my testimony and desire for spiritual things would grow.

When the war finally ended with the defeat of German troops in Lapland in April 1945, Father returned (he had married my mother in 1943 on a short leave). Father had studied botany before the war, but now began a career with the national postal service in Helsinki. In 1946 my sister Marja-Leena was born and the family moved to Finnish Lapland, to Ivalo, only a few kilometers from the North Pole, where my father worked as a postmaster. My mother found this to be an exciting adventure for her, a city girl! Seven years later, Father meandered across the street to watch the Olympic venues while waiting for my mother to give birth to me in Helsinki on a warm August day in 1952. A month later, we returned to what my parents always spoke of as their idyllic life in Lapland.

I have realized how the hand of the Lord reaches out to us at critical times in our lives. At age three, I began a history of moves when a promotion brought our family south to Rovaniemi, a larger city located on the Arctic Circle. Everything seemed to be going so well for our family when suddenly Father felt stifled by the growing demands of government bureaucracy. He had a strong impression that we should leave Finland, just months after drawing up plans for a dream home my parents had planned to build in Rovaniemi. After studying the possibilities of exotic places such as Fiji and Walnut Creek, California (where some of Mother’s relatives lived), at age 46 Father decided to leave his career as a postal expediter to immigrate to Vancouver, in the western province of British Columbia, Canada, and begin a new life. We joined him a year later. His felt that the impetus for coming to Canada was the promise of improved circumstances for our family as well as the opportunity of a college education for his daughters.

As is common with immigrants, my parent’s dreams met with adversity as they sacrificed so much for this opportunity in a new country. My mother, the comfortably off daughter of an engineer, had left a tight-knit circle of family and friends to learn a new language and make do with very little. Yet, trials allow spiritual traits to grow. For instance, my mother often stated that she learned humility as a housekeeper for the year when Father was incapacitated with a near-fatal lung disease after working at a chemical manufacturing plant. I did not realize until many years later that my parents had spent so much money in their move to Canada that even through their initial unhappiness, they could not have returned home to Finland. Instead, true to form, they wrote glowing letters home about their new-found Eden. It was also a fact that Father worked until retirement far below his educational and intellectual capacities.

Although we knew our parents fretted about finances and security, my father’s love of learning was the warm bedrock of our childhood. In our home the learning of the world was examined and discussed. I grew up immersed in deliberations about science, geography, anthropology, comparative religion, history, languages, and much more; my reading forays by age ten included the complete voyages of Thor Heyerdahl, the philosophical thoughts of Plato and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, anything Father could find to read on Egypt and the Middle East, and, of course, literature ranging from Shakespeare through Rachel Carson, the twentieth-century environmental writer. Frugality ruled, but a monthly indulgence was always the newest issue of the National Geographic. A fine leather-bound set of Finnish encyclopedias and a world globe held a prominent place on the well-stocked bookshelves in our living room. My major undertaking as a child was acting as Father’s eager but sadly lacking conversation partner.

Out of this background, our delight in learning emerged, nurtured by a father who taught us to not be afraid of truth, but to always seek for it, wherever it was to be found. But how did we come to find the Restored Gospel? It took some years for me to realize that I was providentially given a gift of faith that allowed me to seek for the expanded view offered through the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this journey, my sister and I, paradoxically, were the ones to lead our parents to the truth.

My parents were members of the national Lutheran church and considered themselves religious even though they, along with most Finns, seldom attended church. Before we moved to Canada, I would listen to their comforting expressions of faith as well as gain insights from the Bible stories that Mother read to us each Sunday. Because of their faith I also became aware of God when very young. God was manifest in all things, especially in the beauty of the natural world. We spent much time outdoors where Daddy would bear testimony of the majesty and marvels of creation. I recall lingering summer days spent outside picking mushrooms and wild berries in the stunted birch forests as well as long skiing trips across the tundra of Lapland, followed by steaming saunas. One incident is etched in my memory: standing on my tiptoes to see out of the kitchen window in our home in Kaamanen, Finland. I was looking at the lively “talitiainen” birds on the feeder. It was bitter winter out as I watched them flutter down to eat seed on the snow-covered feeder. I was only about two and a half years old at that time and still vividly remember standing there, thinking about God. If He loved even those little birds, how could His love not extend to me?

Although I have been told that I was always a happy child, at about age three the death of our family puppy changed something in my spiritual awareness. For me, the Lutheran idea of death and especially of hell was frightening. After the puppy’s burial, I often pondered where we go after death, and oddly recall my astonishment when I became aware that there seemed to be a unique person hidden within me who was looking at the world through my eyes. That experience led me to wonder what “I” was and where I came from? I often chased away sleep with these thoughts while lying in bed; I wanted to know how far the universe extended, and where in all of this wonder of star-filled Northern winter nights God was to be found. With all my heart I wanted answers. In Matthew we are told to simply ask, and it will be given to us. I desired, but was only acquainted with two simple rote prayers. So I finally gathered courage to ask my father, who seemed to know everything. Curiously, for the first time in my life he did not have a ready answer to these questions.

Yet, the hand of providence was silently arranging our lives and, upon arriving in Canada in 1957, the “Mormon” missionaries sought out our family. We unfortunately lost contact with them. Another five years would go by before we would be “found” again. My early recollection of Canada was a series of rentals and a feeling of rootlessness as my father’s employment prospects changed. By second grade I had attended a half dozen elementary schools. But by the time I turned seven, I was quite fluent in my new language and we had settled down and bought our first home.

I returned to my earlier questions, now overtly, asking my new Canadian friends about their beliefs and attending their churches. For several years I studied their teachings—the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Protestants, the Catholics—but couldn’t seem to find what I was seeking. I recall talking to a playmate about the nature of God and what she thought happened after death. Quite a conversation as we lazily swung back and forth on a swing set in a leafy neighborhood park. Her childlike response puzzled me—if we don’t go to hell we will be angels forever, sitting on clouds and playing harps for God, who is Himself like a cloud and in all things and is the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit all “manifest” into one—I felt confused and troubled by this answer. I was too active of a child to want to sit on a cloud with a harp, but how did I avoid a consignment to hell?

So I decided to work on this problem further and spent the following summer reviewing the Old and New Testament stories at the nearby United Church of England Bible Camp. No answers came to me so I returned that Christmas to the local Lutheran church, but still didn’t find whatever I was looking for. I was looking for something specific that I couldn’t yet articulate. It was something, however, which had to be there for me to want to continue to attend a church: the comforting spirit of the Lord was what I sought, a warmth and assurance that, like the little Finnish winter birds, I too would be provided for in this immense and foreign world.

There are small miracles in our lives which often pass unnoticed, but which can change the course of our lives in moments. One day another playmate invited me to attend a children’s afterschool activity called Primary. I cannot recall the details of the day, except that we sang and then a grandmotherly teacher told us a familiar Bible story, perhaps David fighting the giant Goliath. Somehow I walked there by myself again the next week and, although the unadorned building built by the branch members left something to the imagination, the teachings felt so comfortable that I continued to return week after week. The heavens opened for me there as an eight-year-old as I attended Primary for the remainder of that year and learned to pray. Imagine my thrill to discover that after death I wasn’t consigned to hell or a cloud, but was instead a child of God with eternal possibilities for learning and progression!

This knowledge began to answer some of the other questions that had long engaged me. I eagerly learned about the eternal nature of the soul, about the concept of a preexistence, about the boy prophet who translated the Book of Mormon, and so much more. I had come home. I had a feeling of intense happiness being among the “Saints.” I believe now that I recognized the voice of the Good Shepherd, and desired to be one of His sheep. Anyway, as often happens in the way God works in the minute details of our lives, my sister Leena was at that same period of time quietly attending an evening young people’s gathering called the Mutual Improvement Association. Imagine our surprise months later to discover we had both found the same church!

The missionaries naturally sought our family out at this point as proverbial golden contacts and missionary “cottage meetings” were set up. As lifelong Lutherans, my parents were initially skeptical regarding the teachings of this “American” faith, but these two young ambassadors of the Church entered our home with the mantle and spirit of their calling. Within the astonishingly short space of three weeks we went from investigators to a Latter-day Saint family. The four of us, Father, Mother, my sister and I, were baptized members of the Church on December 19, 1962, four months after my tenth birthday.

While my Lutheran upbringing had left me confused as to the role and mission of Jesus Christ, once I joined the Church I quickly accepted the knowledge that although they were one in purpose (as my little playmate had tried to tell me on the swing set), the Gospel offered clarity in teaching me that Christ was a separate being from the Father and was my elder brother. I loved that concept. I learned that I could base my life on his example and hold on to something that was called an iron rod that would help me return to God. I slowly learned not to fear God, but rather to love and admire his love and concern for others, his gentleness, his magnificent teachings, his humility and unassuming nature, his intelligence, his willingness to endure, and his faithfulness to the end. I felt amazed that as a family we had been blessed to find this knowledge.

As I matured in the next year in the Gospel and gained a rudimentary knowledge of the Savior’s great atoning sacrifice I was relieved of that awful consignment to the hell of my childhood. I learned that his grace makes up the difference for our mortal imperfections. As intelligent as a person might be, now it seems that it took me a long time to awaken to the magnitude of the atonement. I believed in the Savior but didn’t really understand the mercy and personal application of the atonement on my behalf. I slowly began to understand through the lessons and the increasingly beloved hymns such as “Choose the Right” that being chosen by God is not a mysterious or exclusionary process, but, rather, one which takes righteous use of agency on our part. What a revelation it was to learn that God does not capriciously play favorites but loves all of His children and rewards us for our righteous desires and obedience, and grace by grace increases our capacity to become like him.

As my testimony grew, there were many things that I believed and one thing that I came to know with certainty. There was no miraculous visitation, but I knew without any doubt that Joseph Smith is the prophet and seer that was spoken of in ancient records to restore the Church in this, the Dispensation of the Fullness of Time. With all my ten-year-old heart I loved the young prophet and related to his search for truth. Like him, I had studied, prayed, and was given this firm knowledge before I joined the Church. This knowledge became the foundation on which all the other teachings of the Gospel have been built in my life. I recognized then that if Joseph was the prophet, everything else in the Gospel was possible. I so loved the prophet Joseph—his courage, his integrity, his bravery, and most of all how in his constant search for and love of truth he reminded me of my parents.

I also gained an unshakable testimony of the Book of Mormon at that young age. With each year I stood more in awe of this amazing book of scripture. It contained so much that was hidden from view until I learned to approach its pages with an open heart. There was confirmation that I felt each time I read, a powerful spirit that testified so distinctly of the truthfulness of Christ and of the plan of salvation. If I felt alone or confused, I could find answers to my questions in its pages. One memorable evening, as a young college student, I was in tears in my rented room as I read my scriptures. I suddenly felt so inadequate in my ability to pay for my education or to make the important decisions that would determine my life path. After praying for what seemed a long time I opened to Ether 12:27 and the words appeared to glow as I read about coming to the Lord in humility to find my weaknesses and how these would, through a lifetime, become my strengths. It was a very personal and pivotal moment for me as I learned for the first time how we must yield up our hearts to God—to give up our will—so that the Lord can guide our life.

Just as the young Prophet Joseph had inquired with the simple faith of youth, the spiritual truths that I sought for were given to me as a young child. I marvel at the good family I was born into. And I stand back in wonder that at an age when I should have been playing childhood games, I was drawn to search for spiritual truth. I know that I must have been guided to the Gospel by unseen hands throughout these early years as I had yet to learn that further answers and blessings are dependent upon our subsequent faithfulness in living the truths we are taught. As I have matured in the Gospel I have concluded that the principle of agency is the greatest gift that we have been given in a life experience tailor-made for the improvement and expansion of our individual spirits. We truly have only to desire and ask.

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Sirpa T. Grierson (Ph.D., University of Southern Mississippi), an associate professor of English at Brigham Young University, specializes in English education and critical reading. She is also a transfer professor for the College of Religious Education, teaching the Doctrine and Covenants. Her major research interests include “the margins”—the field of interplay between reading, the reader, and the text; multigenre research; and classroom-based field studies in literacy.

Prior to joining the BYU faculty in 1997, Dr. Grierson taught education courses at Utah Valley University and worked with the Utah Office of Education as a reading consultant. She has served on the Legislative Action Team and as a member of the Government Relations and By-Laws committees for the International Reading Association. She is the past president of the Utah Council of the International Reading Association and currently serves as their State Coordinator.

At the age of four Dr. Grierson immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, from Helsinki, Finland. She and her husband, Lorne, now reside in Orem. Besides time with family and friends her favorite pastimes include yoga, music, hiking and traveling, and of course, reading.

Posted December 2010

This week I had dinner with a senior executive in a well-known company in the United States. He holds a PhD, has worked for several name-brand firms, and is an intelligent, successful, well-read professional. After dinner he asked if he could ask me a personal question. Of course, I was happy to respond. He asked if I was a Mormon. I replied that I was. He indicated that he had always been fascinated with the belief systems that people held for themselves. He indicated that he could not understand how anyone could be a member of a religious organization, especially given the inhumane and unfortunate things that had been done throughout history in the name of religion. Furthermore, he suggested that most people belong to religious organizations because it is a matter of culture or family tradition rather than a firm commitment to a belief system. Religious organizations are not a prerequisite to holding firm beliefs or strong values, he maintained.

He wondered why, as a reasonably thoughtful person, I would be a committed member of the LDS community. He had known other Mormons, and they seemed reasonably intelligent, so he had always been puzzled about how such people could be members of an organized religion, especially one founded on such a fantastic, irrational premise as is claimed by Mormons.

I had not particularly prepared myself for such a question, particularly because my relationship with him was based primarily on my professorial role and my academic work, not on the basis of a personal belief system. Nevertheless, here is an abbreviated version of how I replied.

First, I said, Mormons believe that the spiritual side of life is real, as do most other thoughtful people. Consequently, Mormons believe that if a person studies and investigates, then sincerely prays about the truthfulness of the doctrine being examined, that person is entitled to a spiritual witness regarding the truthfulness of the information. The spiritual witness regarding the truth of Mormonism is an important foundation for the commitment experienced by thoughtful people.

I know, I said, that some people dismiss such experiences as self-delusion or psychological dependence, or as incapacity to explain some aspects of human experience. They claim that such spiritual experiences and confirming spiritual witnesses are products of a need for emotional security or psychological clarity. So, I said, let us dismiss this factor as a basis for commitment to Mormonism and rely on something else.

A second foundation is the Book of Mormon. Despite the fantastic way in which the Book of Mormon is described as having come about, it serves as a tangible witness of Jesus Christ’s mission and divinity, and as a witness of the truthfulness of the teachings of Mormonism. For example, the research [much of which has been sponsored by FARMS over the years] on the literary style, the word prints of multiple authors, the governmental systems described, the monetary systems, the cultural attributes of a civilization over a thousand year history, the weapons and strategies of war, and so on, all create a case that any reasonable person would have a difficult time ignoring or dismissing. Based merely on the empirical evidence and even without reading it, reasonable people have to take the Book of Mormon seriously. If it is what it claims to be, then the validity of the teachings of Mormonism also must be taken seriously. A person cannot accept the Book of Mormon as what it claims to be and, at the same time, reasonably dismiss LDS doctrine.

But, I said, some people might dismiss academic or empirical evidence as irrelevant or unrelated to a spiritual belief system. So, still another foundation exists for a commitment to and testimony regarding Mormonism. This foundation relates to sociological theory. Most social scientists claim that societal patterns that survive, or that are considered to be the “best,” are the ones that are most functional for human beings. They perpetuate life, societal organization, and well-being. Civilizations deteriorate when their social patterns cease to be functional. One might reasonably ask the question whether or not living after the manner taught by the LDS Church is more or less functional for society in general? Would the world be better off or worse off if everyone lived the teachings of Mormonism? Once again, reasonably thoughtful people would almost universally agree that the life style and values perpetuated by Mormonism are good for society—an emphasis on morality, virtuousness, family solidarity, interdependence, charity, loving kindness, and so forth. These values are selected by almost all of humankind as being better for society than the reverse. So, a Mormon lifestyle or belief system might be chosen by reasonable people even if the two previously-described foundations did not exist at all because it is better for society.

His response to my explanation was: “Well, it certainly seems as if you have thought about this. Your explanation is more complex than I’ve heard before.”

Given the circumstances of this conversation and what I estimated to be his level of preparation, I did not share with my senior executive friend some other more personal and sacred elements of my testimony of the truthfulness of the restored Gospel. I did not share with him the flow of divine revelation that accompanies my calling as a patriarch in the Church. I did not share with him my own sacred, personal experiences with the Spirit. I did not share with him the miracles associated with priesthood blessings and priesthood service. I did not share with him the insights and inspiration that are associated with personal scripture study. I did not share with him the daily miracles that are associated with a commitment to the Savior and to His plan. Over the course of my life, these, and other, elements of my testimony have helped build a foundation that is far richer and more spiritually sophisticated than the brief explanation that I provided in our conversation. On the other hand, I was cognizant, once again, that the Lord has provided skeptical but reasonable people—if they approach the Gospel sincerely and authentically—with all of the evidence they need to develop a testimony for themselves. I count my personal testimony of the restored Gospel to be a gift and a blessing for which I will be eternally grateful.

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Kim S. Cameron (Ph.D., Yale University) is William Russell Kelley Professor of Management and Organization at the Ross School of Business and Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. Cameron’s past research on organizational downsizing, organizational effectiveness, corporate quality culture, and the development of leadership excellence has been published in more than 120 academic articles and thirteen scholarly books, the latest of which are Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture (Jossey Bass), Positive Organizational Scholarship (Berrett-Koehler), Leading with Values (Cambridge University Press), Competing Values Leadership (Edward Elgar), Making the Impossible Possible (Berrett Koehler), and Positive Leadership (Berrett Koehler). His current research focuses on virtuousness in and of organizations—focusing on virtues such as forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, and compassion—and their relationship to performance. He is one of the co-founders of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan and has served as dean at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, associate dean in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, and department chair at the University of Michigan.

Posted December 2010

FROM BLIND TO REASONED FAITH:
A SCHOLAR’S TESTIMONY

When Professor Daniel Peterson of the BYU Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages asked me to share my testimony from a scholar’s perspective, I was very pleased because I’ve never shared it in this manner before. Like most people, my conversion story and testimony came in bits and pieces, finally welding themselves into believing faith. Spiritual preparation led to spiritual growth, which in turn led to spiritual opportunities of which I could then take advantage. As Louis Pasteur cogently said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” While a Seventy and Branch Mission Leader in Auburn, Alabama, I saw that it took several preparatory events or crises before anyone was really ‘ready’ for the restored gospel in their lives. This was certainly true in my own life.

Unlike closet doubters, agnostics, unbelievers, and atheists that I have known, my faith in Jesus Christ and his Gospel plan always come easy for me. How easy? Being passionate about the visual fine arts, when the missionaries showed me a Book of Mormon, all I had to do was look at its illustrations by Arnold Friberg and I instantly knew the book was true! My conversion story started when I was a very young child of four or five years. I was crying one night after a funeral because I was afraid to die. My second oldest brother, Bob, told me that there was a God in a heaven and that everything was going to be alright. I believed him. While my mother was an agnostic she encouraged me to kneel down beside her rocking chair each night and pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Then, in the first grade, a lady from a local Evangelical church came weekly to our public school with a flannel board and told Bible stories. That was the first I’d ever heard of the scriptures, for we had none in our home, and I believed everything she said. This was before the ACLU and Supreme Court Justice Wm. J. Brennan, in 1982, said that there must be a “wall of separation” between Church and State. Once, during recess, when I was in second grade, a Seventh Day Adventist boy came around a corner of a building and ran into me and I shoved him down. He got up off the ground and calmly said “Jesus Christ loves you and so do I.” So I pushed him down much harder. As he stood up again with tears he looked into my eyes and said, “Jesus Christ loves you and so do I.” I was totally convicted in my soul and instantly gave up being a bully. I knew that indeed Jesus did love me and I must love Him too.

By the third grade, I haltingly began going to the Community Bible Church with my sisters Barbara and Cherry, and really enjoyed it. One summer I went to Bible Camp at the church and loved their cookies and milk. I remember walking home from school, and an older lady, who lived on along the way, would ask if I’d like to come into her home and pray with her. It may all seem sinister now, but it was a more innocent time and I would always say yes. A year later, while I was selling the newspaper The Grit, another lady said that if I attended her church she would buy a newspaper from me each month. So I began to attend the little white Pilgrim Holiness Church on Pine Street in Central Point, Oregon.

It was there that I formally gave my life, heart and soul, to Jesus Christ. I came to the altar, knelt and made Him the Lord of my life. I was “born again” when I was ten years old and was saved to Heaven in the Kingdom of God. I loved my minister very much, so when he asked me to be baptized I readily agreed, but, over the course of two years, it just didn’t happen. My mother was an agnostic, my father an atheist, and my brother Bob had become a Buddhist and badly wanted me to convert to his religion. I would listen attentively to him but nothing struck me to believe. I firmly believed in Christianity and not Buddhism, and yet something always got in the way of my baptism.

One Saturday night in late June of 1959 I was secretly watching a late-late old epic movie called Brigham Young on television. It was about a group of religious people called the Mormons and starred Vincent Price as Joseph Smith and Dean Jagger as Brigham Young, with Linda Darnell and Tyrone Power as the love interests. I was fascinated by the movie but had never heard of the Mormons before. It was spiritual, historical, and romantic and I stayed awake for the entire movie and then slid into my bed, one tired boy of fourteen.

The next morning, Mike and I walked the nine blocks to church. After the sermon was Sunday school class. The church was so small that the youth class was held in a small attic room that was approached by a stairway built on the outside of the building. As was usual, our minister, Rev. Clarence Jackson, would visit our class for a few minutes to give a little message. It was, by that time of day, swelteringly hot in Southern Oregon. During his message he said, “We don’t believe in jewelry, we don’t believe in dancing, we don’t believe in movies, we don’t . . . ” I interrupted, saying, “Oh, I saw a move, but it was on television and it was a religious movie.” He responded, “It doesn’t matter. What was the movie about?” “Something about Brigham Young and the Mormons,” I naively replied. He instantly erupted and shouted, “Never say that blasphemous word!” and stomped out of class. I felt so badly that I had offended our beloved minister. On the way home, Mike and I decided not to tell Mom because it was a family rule that if we got into trouble anywhere off our property we got into double trouble at home.

The very next day, after track and field practice, Mom said, “You boys get cleaned up. Some Mormon missionaries are coming to see us.” “We can’t see them,” I responded, “Why not?” “Oh, I don’t know.” “Then get ready!” was her demand. It just so happened that Mom had done some sewing for a Mormon family in town, the Schwabs, and they asked if the missionaries could drop by. She had said to the Schwabs, “I’m not interested but maybe my two boys would be.” It also turned out that Mom hated Mormons because her first husband was a Jack Mormon and a bad guy in criminal ways.

So, in a grand “coincidence,” they arrived. Elder Tobler of Idaho and Elder Hansen from Arizona came to our house. I remember how strong and cordial they were. My father called it all “foolishness” and left, but my Mother and Aunt Gertrude were there when the missionaries stepped into the house. They immediately began to pelt them with the most vicious anti-Mormon questions. It reminded me of the persecution the Mormons suffered in the Brigham Young movie I had just seen two days before.

Elder Tobler calmly said that they had a discussion prepared that might answer our questions and asked if they might give it. So we sat around the dining room table, and Elder Hansen asked to give the prayer. We bowed our heads and, within seconds after he began, I heard a distinct authoritative voice: “Listen to these men; they have the words of truth.” My head popped up, as did my Brother Mike’s head from across the table, for he had heard the same powerful voice! Amazed, we stared at each other for a moment. We went to the Medford LDS Ward that Sunday and I was baptized a week later. Mike was baptized about a year later and a year after that my sister Cherry was baptized. It has been many decades since this fourteen-year-old boy was baptized on July 10, 1959, and I haven’t dried off yet.

These were in the days of the “kiddy-dip,” in which parental permission was not always obtained before baptism. My mother was shocked when she found out that I was baptized, being a staunch anti-Mormon and being told by our next-door neighbor, Ray Kelly, that all Mormons are going to Hell. Mr. Kelly said his minister could help, so she demanded that I go to a cult deprogrammer, Rev. Everett Cade of the local Church of Christ. So, every Saturday for the rest of the summer, I was obliged to spend two hours at his house discussing his “truths” about Mormonism. I hadn’t even had all the discussions yet! Because I was so unknowledgeable about LDS history and doctrine, ignorance was to my advantage and hearing all this anti-Mormon stuff somewhat inoculated me as I began to learn more.

Rev. Cade systematically went through the evils of polygamy, blood atonement, Danites and Mountain Meadows, celestial sex, multiple Gods, Lucifer being Jesus’ brother, the Adam-God theory, blacks and the priesthood . . . just for starters! I didn’t have a single answer to counter any of his arguments. The only thing I could say was that I had heard a voice from God saying that the missionaries had the words of truth and that I would be willing to leave the LDS Church if God commanded me to do so. However, Rev. Cade was unable to replicate anything close to the kind sweet voice speaking directly to Mike’s and my spirit. This witness of the Holy Ghost is as clear today as it was so many decades ago.

Rev. Cade had written his Bible college thesis on forty people in the northeastern United States, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, who had gone into a quiet place, had an epiphany, and used that to start a religious movement. Jemima Wilkinson, Mary Baker Eddy, and Joseph Smith Jr. were but three who had done so. He viciously attacked Joseph Smith’s First Vision. When he asked me, “What’s so special about Joe Smith of up-state New York that God would appear to him?” I thought for a while and responded “Well, uhhh, he was a nice guy?” It was a lame and weak answer even for a small town kid and it stuck in my craw for decades. Indeed, what was so special about the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr.? The quest for an answer led directly to my researching and publishing a ‘scholarly’ book on The Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism’s Sacred Bloodline in 2006, which was dedicated to answering the question.

I have believed very earnestly ever since my conversion, but living gospel principles, of course, was more difficult because it required faith, not just belief. During my half-century of Church membership that naive, innocent, and blind faith has been transformed bit by bit into a more mature and reasoned faith. Not that it is now all “understood”—only more so. For from blind to enlightened faith is the course we should follow. Through sincere prayer, diligent study, and obeying the commandments, one’s faith and knowledge can embraced more fully.

In 1974, I was with an LDS parasitologist friend, Jim Jensen, whose atheist colleague at Auburn University had chided him for believing in God. His explanation of why it was reasonable to believe in God, as understood by the Latter-day Saints, made so much sense that I thought, “This is a God that even atheists can believe in.” This immediately reminded me of the song “What’s it all about, Alfie?” where the lyrics say “I believe in something that even unbelievers can believe in.” If one could only cast aside false sectarian notions of who God was, I thought, we could easily appreciate that God existed and why it mattered. My basic premise was and still is that the Mormon God and faith could be explained, though not proven, scientifically.

My hope is that this testimony might help other scholars believe in the goodness of Heavenly Father, the redemption of Jesus Christ, and the authority of the LDS Church on the Earth. But things usually don’t work out that way because there are some things that no man can give to another—FAITH, for instance. Hopefully, though, one can give “a reason to believe,” because nobody can give belief itself. (See 1 Peter 3:15.) I like the statement from an old Christian tract that, “Even if we don’t believe in God, he still believes in us.” This was similar to the verse about God, “We love him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19; see also verse 10.) It is not difficult to believe in such a loving God if we humbly try to do so.

Ultimately, all our testimonies must be a “leap of faith” first, and then proceed toward a “reasoned faith.” There is a Latin phrase that captures this truism, Fides quaerens intellectum, which means “Faith seeking understanding.” And another, Credo ut intelligam, means “I believe in order to understand.” Only those things we believe to have value can we ever hope to know and understand. This is as true for a society as it is for an individual; otherwise, we lack faith in our institutions, our mores, our values, and ourselves—and, in the end, it will damn us. Joseph Smith said that nobody would be damned for believing too much, but for unbelief. Yet this is not an either/or dichotomy in the spirit of the pseudo-question, “Should we replace the Tyranny of Faith with the Tyranny of Reason?” It is an ongoing balance between faith and reason; tyranny has nothing to do with it.

According to a Gnostic Qumran text, the missing ingredient that compelled certain angels to fall from heaven was their inability to “bridge the gap” or to “look over the horizon” where faith was concerned. They could only believe what they could see or touch. The wicked among the unbelievers were always quick to say, “Show me a sign, then I will believe” (Alma 32:16-17). Not willing to understand that “signs” follow, but do not precede, faith, they do not understand Paul’s injunction “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV). These fallen angels, and many of us as well, are unable or unwilling to take even the slightest leap of faith; everything has to be proven first. This is their damnation, their own concrete ceiling. Doubting Thomas was rebuked by Jesus for his lack of faith, “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed” (John 20:29).

It all comes down to Isaiah 1:3 NKJV, which notes why careless or willful people don’t have sufficient faith in God. “The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not consider.” We all need to get much more serious. Joseph Smith said it best in 1839: “The things of God are of deep import; and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can find them out.”¹ This is not unlike Proverbs 25:2 NKJV: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

I have been guided by the Latin phrase Extrico subjectio quod verum ero evidens, which means, “Untangle the subject and the truth will be evident.” Along this line, Joseph Smith earnestly prayed for light when he read James 1:5, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” In boyish innocence he never thought that he wouldn’t receive an answer. An Old Testament version of this same scripture also applies, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3).

Only those who have at least a particle of desire to believe will study it out and ultimately believe. Alma taught that all one really has to do to be on the path to faith is to take a first step and exercise a tiny amount of desire:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. (Alma 32:27)

The trick to learning of God is to believe without a sign and to take the initial step for some compelling inner purpose. It is paramount for us to “bring to pass much righteousness” without being commanded first. Mosiah 26:3 says the same thing, “And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened.” The spiritually hard of hearing find it difficult to listen to “the still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). But in the din of ideas and distracting concerns the sheep will eventually “hear his voice” (Hebrews 3:15). Through earnest prayer, the words of Jeremiah 33:3 still come true: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

In the Springville Museum of Art there is an oil painting by Wulf E. Barsch entitled Toward Thebes (1985). This semi-abstract and enigmatic canvas addresses the idea of piercing the veil of confusion and finding truth. Thebes, Egypt’s capital city during politically stable times, symbolizes the concept of bringing order out of chaos. A second level of meaning in the painting deals with how the ordering principle exists but is often not apparent or easily seen. The painting’s general theme deals with this telestial mortal estate, in which, as the Apostle Paul says, “We see through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Behind this chaotic earth-life, God has given divine order, which is not now obvious but will eventually become evident. The painting presents man’s view of existence. A hint of God’s design is seen in the Magic Square in the middle of Wulf Barsch’s picture. It was scribbled into the still wet paint by the artist’s brush handle.

4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6

These numbers add up to fifteen, no matter in which direction they are counted! They might represent God’s fifteen prophets, seers, and revelators (the LDS First Presidency and Twelve Apostles) on the earth at any one time. Though being indistinct and looking meaningless at first, they are logically organized, if only the viewer will look a little deeper and consider more seriously.

All judgments on God’s methods and motives must wait until the eternal perspective that He enjoys is fully viewed. It is a like a person going to the tapestry factory and approaching the tapestry from the back side. All is a welter of knots and ends, with very little design. But when we walk around to the front of the tapestry we see the true pattern and intent of the master weaver—we see God’s side. God is the gardener, the master weaver, and the great architect of the world’s history. Faith in the Gospel is the lens by which we may view more clearly God’s merciful Plan of Salvation.

Thus it is with life. We can see God’s handiwork ordering the universe if only we have “eyes to see.” Shakespeare said that we should perceive “tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” This is true if we have not been blinded by the “world” and its “blind guides.” As the English proverb reveals, “There are none as blind as those who will not see.” (See Matthew 13:13; Jeremiah 5:21; Isaiah 6:9-10.)

This concept was echoed by Vincent de Beauvais, who said, “Man can encompass his salvation by means of knowledge.”² To this, we must add wisdom. In Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Locksley Hall we read, “Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers.” Galileo expressed just how important this concept was: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”³ We must use all our faculties, or else risk losing them.

I love Brigham Young’s succinct insight on our Godly nature: “We are made expressly to dwell with those who continue to learn.”⁴ Pure learning for its own sake never goes unrewarded. “Whatsoever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:18). Joseph also noted that “It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance.”⁵ I think he meant “saved in the higher kingdoms,” for even idiots will be saved in the Telestial Kingdom of Heaven.

Our very happiness rests on knowing and having faith in that kind Heavenly Father who cares so dearly for us. It is written, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). I love His Son, Jesus Christ, who in Gethsemane suffered for us more than any man, more than all men combined, because of our sins against eternal justice. He has taken upon Himself our liabilities and now it is time to take upon ourselves His assets. I testify that it is only through “mature faith,” seeing eye-to-eye and knowing Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as They really are, that we will be able to regain the Father’s full presence and happily become heirs and join-heirs with Jesus (John 17:3).

Amen.

——

Notes:
¹ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith p.137, also see History of the Church 3:295.
² Louis Charpentier, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral
³ Quoted in Discover magazine, January 2005, p.12.
⁴ Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 17:141.
⁵ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith p.301.

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Vern Grosvenor Swanson is the director of the Springville Museum of Art, in Springville, Utah. He is a native of Oregon who attended Brigham Young University in art and football. After graduation, he received his master’s degree in art history at the University of Utah under Robert Olpin, and ultimately earned his Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. Prior to coming to the Springville Museum in 1980, he had worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, several sales galleries, Wasatch Bronzeworks, and, as an assistant professor of art history, at Auburn University in Alabama (1972-1975). An authority on the art of Utah and of nineteenth-century Europe, as well as on Soviet impressionism, he is the author of, among other things, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World (1977); The Other Lost Tribes (1981); with Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1990); Utah Art: The Springville Museum Collection (1991); with William C. Seifrit and Robert S. Olpin, Artists of Utah (1991); Hidden Treasures: Russian and Soviet Impressionism 1930-1970s (1994); with William C. Seifrit, Robert S. Olpin, and William Gerdts, Utah Painting and Sculpture (1997); John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism (1998); with Robert S. Olpin, Donna L Poulton, and Janie L. Rogers, Utah Art, Utah Artists: 150 Years Survey (2001); Soviet Impressionism (2001); with VaLoy Eaton (and with an introduction by Orrin G. Hatch), In Natural Light: Paintings by VaLoy Eaton (2003); Dynasty of the Holy Grail (2006); and, with Donna L. Poulton, Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts (2009). He is currently working on a book dealing with the Mormon theology of the atonement. Dr. Swanson is married to the late Elaine Milne, and they had one son together, the late John Brett Swanson; he is now married to Judy Nielson, with daughters Amber C. Swanson and Angela R. Swanson Jones. He is serving in the high priests group leadership for the Hobble Creek Fifth Ward, in Springville, Utah.

Posted November 2010

I begin with my conclusion: I know that God lives, that He is a personal Being, that Jesus Christ is His Only Begotten Son, that the gospel taught by Jesus was taken from the earth and restored through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith, whom God called and sent His angels to instruct and empower. In addition, with perfect peace of conscience I testify that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Kingdom of God upon the earth, and that the Book of Mormon is not only heaven-inspired scripture but was given as an evidence of the truth of the great latter-day work of restoration. These things I know by the power of the Holy Ghost—and I am bold to say that I know my witness is true.

I was born and raised in a home where love was the motive force, where gospel truths shone in the behavior of my parents and in the lives of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my brothers and sisters. I have witnessed the exercise of gifts of the Holy Ghost, and have seen and experienced that which could only occur by the power of God. I would not be honest with myself or with others were I to try to rationalize away my experiences, or to explain them away as psychological aberrations, momentary insights, or anything else. I have met and mingled with apostles and prophets, and have known of and felt the power attending their ministries; I have seen their character and experienced their teachings, and, while I have known of their mortal weaknesses, I have never seen anything which caused me to doubt their testimony or their authority. Each experience testifies to the reality of previous experiences, and I stand quite amazed that in spite of my persistent weaknesses the Lord would so constantly reassure my soul of the truth of this great latter-day work

No latter-day prophet is more impressive to me than Joseph Smith. Some thirty years ago I set out to read everything I could find in journals, diaries, letters, memos, newspapers, public documents, affidavits, magazines, books, and elsewhere, that had anything to do with Joseph Smith that had not previously been published at all or published in venues convenient to the average Latter-day Saint. I spent unnumbered hours in the Church Historian’s Office, in libraries public and private, and in the homes of Latter-day Saints throughout the United States and Canada, perusing family memorabilia and materials from ancestors who knew the Prophet Joseph personally. My searches took me into forty-nine of the fifty states, and I developed such a closeness with those early friends, acquaintances, and even enemies of the Prophet Joseph that my wife gently quipped that I seemed to know the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo better than those of my own home ward. The sum total of this search is that I have never read or encountered anything which, when weighed and balanced, has given me cause to doubt the divine authenticity, the divine commission, or the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith (or any of his successors, for that matter).

The character of these early associates of Joseph Smith is readily apparent. They were honest men and women, exposed to the grit and gristle of life, and in spite of the hardship and persecution they encountered because of their testimonies of Joseph’s divine call, they remained true. Their character is evidence of his character. These were men and women who had genuine spiritual experiences—they saw Joseph in dreams and visions before meeting him in the flesh and thus recognized him when first they saw him, for example; multiple hundreds and perhaps more of others were healed of sickness by his administration; others felt his prophetic voice speak of events in their personal lives before those events transpired; others received revelations in his presence and sometimes with him; some saw angels and visions with or because of him; still others experienced miraculous interventions of other sorts. Their experiences testify of the veracity of his experiences, and it is their standout character which enabled them to have those experiences.

Joseph taught that others could have the same experiences which he had, and they did, and they were not fooled by imitation experiences. Benjamin Brown, to illustrate the point, tells of being sick and confined to his bed for some two or three weeks. He was unconscious when Joseph laid hands on his head to heal him. Knowing that critics claimed such healings were only the effects of frenzied imaginations, Brown later asked: “Was it the power of imagination over the body that cured me, when I did not even hear Joseph’s voice, or know that any operation on my behalf was going on, until I found myself well?” He then concluded: “The honest in heart will judge righteously.” In short, he knew his experience was real, and that honest men and women would recognize it as such.

I have collected nearly one-hundred and fifty different accounts of those who were present on the 8th of August 1844, a little more than a month after the Prophet’s martyrdom, when Brigham Young was transfigured and both appeared and sounded like the Prophet Joseph Smith. One such account comes from James Henrie, whose son, years later, challenged the veracity of the experience, suggesting that Henrie was having an illusion of some sort. “James brought one fist down hard into the other hand with a bang and said ‘Illusi—hell! I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. I was not asleep, or dreaming, and I was not alone. We all saw it, and heard it, and felt the Spirit present.’” Henrie knew his experience was real, and was not to be dissuaded by psychological analysis. (And, we might add, the evidential value of nearly 150 people seeing and bearing witness of the same event is monumental—even Biblical in proportion).

These early associates of Joseph Smith examined Joseph for his integrity because they had integrity and knew it was at the center of everything decent and good. It was important to them that he paid his debts—and he did; that he preached on honesty and integrity, which he did; that he kept his promises—which he did; that he required high integrity of his family and associates—and he did; and that they could test his doctrines against his own conduct—which they did. They were subjected to public scorn, opposition, and persecution because they knew Joseph was a truth teller; they were mobbed and driven from their homes, and many even died, because they could trust in the character not only of Joseph Smith but of those he trained to succeed him.

The current leadership studies point to integrity as one of the most desired of leadership traits. The life of Joseph Smith illustrates why.

My testimony of the restoration came because the Holy Ghost has spoken to my soul. But it is ever so nice that the history of the Church, and particularly of the life and conduct of Joseph Smith and those associated with him, bears that same witness and sustains that same claim.

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Mark L. McConkie is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where he has served as the resident dean. He earned his master’s degree in public administration from Brigham Young University and his doctorate in the same field from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining the School of Public Affairs, Dr. McConkie consulted with BankOne, NASA, the U.S. Navy (NAVSEA), the U.S. Air Force (Special Forces), MCI Corp., Hewlett Packard and others. Professor McConkie’s teaching focuses on organizational change and behavior, leadership, management development, and ethics; his research interests also include the myths and folklore of organizational culture. He has lectured internationally, and has published many articles in professional and scholarly journals.

Professor McConkie is also the author of numerous items on Latter-day Saint teachings and history, such as Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, The Father of the Prophet, Joseph Smith and the First Vision, and Wit and Wisdom from the Early Brethren. His book Remembering Joseph: Personal Recollections of Those Who Knew the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2003) draws on more than eight hundred sources, many of them unpublished. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM that features approximately 2,000 pages of primary source texts from eyewitnesses concerning Joseph Smith and important events in early Mormon history.

Dr. McConkie served a full-time mission in Argentina, and has since served as a bishop, a counselor to the president of the Colorado Denver Mission, and a stake president. He is married to the former Mary Ann Taylor, and they are the parents of nine children.

Posted November 2010

I spend much of my life in an academic world in which religious belief is a rarity. My fellow historians are generally respectful of religious belief in the past, but most of them see belief in the present as an anachronism, something to be resisted as a barrier to social progress and rational thought. Like them, I value reason and practice a scholarship based on the careful sifting and evaluation of tangible evidence. But I accept another way of gaining knowledge as well. I was born in the LDS church, to believing parents who taught me that I could obtain truth through my spiritual as well as my physical senses. I learned to pray as a child. I learned that the Holy Ghost would send comfort and testify to me of truth, and I experienced that comfort and answers to my prayers from a young age. At my baptism, my mother gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon and promised me that, if I read it and prayed about it, I would receive a testimony of its truth. I followed those steps, and I did receive an unmistakable spiritual witness, as well as a taste of the fruit of the tree in Lehi’s dream—a joyful sense of God’s love for me. That early experience was the foundation of my present faith and has been spiritually confirmed many times since. I am grateful for it and for parents who prepared me to receive it. I feel comfortable saying “I know” the church is true, that God lives and loves me, that Jesus Christ is the son of God and my savior, that the Book of Mormon is true, because I find that the model laid out in Alma 32 conforms to my experience in testing those truths. I have felt “the word . . . swell [my soul].” I have felt my “understanding . . . enlightened” and my “mind . . . expand.” My “knowledge is perfect in that thing” and my “faith is dormant” (Alma 32:34).

A year or so ago, I was asked to speak to a group of very bright students, recipients of BYU’s highest academic scholarship. I include here what I said to those students, because it recapitulates two important themes in my life: my ongoing pursuit of truth through both study and faith, and my efforts to resolve the tension between my academic and home life, a tension particularly pressing in a church which puts great emphasis on women’s primary calling in the family.

* * * *

A particular scripture lodged itself in my mind as I thought about what to say tonight: “To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.” I started with the positive part of the scripture. Let me backtrack a little. Here’s what Nephi says first: “O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise.” You see, wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. “And they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.” And then we come back to the part of the verse I began with: “But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.” Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from my years as a student at BYU was a firm understanding that I had to continually pair my growth in secular knowledge with spiritual knowledge, not just at BYU, but throughout my life. Without both, I would never achieve wisdom or find the path that my Heavenly Father had marked out for me. Let me illustrate this point with examples from my own life.

I entered BYU in the fall of 1981, convinced that BYU had made some kind of mistake in giving me the Spencer W. Kimball scholarship and that, as soon as they discovered their error, they would take it back and give it to someone else. To my relief, they never did. I majored in English and graduated in 1985. A year before graduating, I married my husband, Mike, a fellow Kimball scholar whom I had met at Freshman Honors Conference. While Mike finished his own Chemistry degree, I enrolled in BYU’s Kennedy Center, pursuing a master’s degree in American Studies and starting my drift toward history. Both as an undergraduate and in my master’s program, I had several mentors who urged me to think about getting a PhD. I smiled, thanked them, and inwardly dismissed the suggestion. I intended to begin a family, soon. By the time Mike graduated, two years after our marriage, I was finished with my MA coursework and seven months along. Our first child, Katie, was born in June of that year. Two months after Katie’s birth, we moved to Stanford, where Mike went to medical school. While he studied, I ran the household, did part-time editing work while Katie and then Jonathan napped, and chipped away at my master’s thesis, which I completed just under the wire in 1989.

The next year, we were off to Philadelphia, where Mike did his three-year pediatrics residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Those were difficult years. Mike was on call every third night. I was pregnant with our third child, Annie, and Young Women’s president. During that time, I had two experiences that were pivotal to my choice to get a PhD. One was a conversation I had with my stake Young Women’s president. She had just become an empty nester, and had spent the past year trying to find something worthwhile to do with her time. It had been a very frustrating process for her. Though she had a BA, she had never held a job. Each place she applied to gave her the same unhelpful response: she needed more work experience. She was a bright, capable woman, with leadership skills honed through church callings. But that kind of experience didn’t seem to count. She finally settled on doing volunteer work in a local library. It gave her a place to contribute, but she was still frustrated at not being able to use the full range of her talents. I was shaken by this conversation. Over and over again, I put myself in her shoes, imagining how I would feel if, when my children were grown, I was considered unqualified to contribute to the world outside my home.

The second pivotal experience was coming across an article in a BYU alumni magazine about the value of teaching.¹ I read it and thought, “This must be what people mean when they say they have found their ‘calling.’” I felt that the article was written just for me—a spiritual sense that teaching at BYU was what the Lord wanted me to do. This was shortly after Pres. Ezra Taft’s Benson’s 1987 talk, “To the Mothers in Zion,” which stated clearly that “a mother’s calling is in the home, not in the marketplace.”² In that context, getting a PhD didn’t seem to make sense. Mike and I read that talk several times, talked about how we could do for our children the things Pres. Benson discussed. We also prayed about my desire to get a PhD, and we both felt the Spirit’s confirmation that I should apply to PhD programs. We targeted areas of the country that also had good post-doctoral programs for Mike. In 1993, he started his post-doc in pediatric hematology and oncology at Harvard, and I started my PhD program in American History at Brandeis.

We were in Boston for five years. I loved my program; I was enthralled by my study of Indian and English interactions in seventeenth-century New England. Archival research fed my soul, and I was good at it. Katie and Jon had started school, and I found a babysitter for Annie from 9-1 every morning. Because I already had an MA, I could take three rather than four classes per semester, which eased the load. I came home in the afternoon and juggled studying and taking care of the kids until dinner. Mike took over after dinner, cleaning up and getting the kids to bed. It was hectic, but it worked. At one point during graduate school, I got an invitation to have lunch with Clayne Pope, Dean of Family, Home and Social Sciences at BYU, and other LDS graduate students in the Boston area. I told him of my concerns about balancing family and a career and asked if BYU would support a part-time tenure track hire. He said he thought they would. Just after finishing my two years of coursework, I delivered my fourth child, Sam. I took my orals at the end of his first year, made some headway on my dissertation the following year, and got a call from a BYU History Department search committee. They had posted an ad for a colonial historian. Why hadn’t I applied? I had seen the ad, but it was for a full-time, tenure-track historian. After four years of juggling motherhood and graduate school, I had decided I wouldn’t work full-time. Recalling my visit with Dean Pope, I asked if they would consider hiring someone half-time tenure track. They said they would.

I flew out to BYU in the spring of 1997 to give a job talk and a lecture to students, and do interviews. During my years of graduate school, I had begun to question that feeling of being called to BYU, and I was exploring other places to teach. More pertinently, Mike had explored getting a faculty position at the University of Utah Medical School and had been told that there was not, and would never be, a position for him there. For me to teach at BYU, Mike would have to abandon his plans to be an academic physician and enter private practice, making his post-doc, essentially, a five-year detour. Needless to say, I arrived for my interview feeling skeptical.

My visit to BYU was a strange but sweet experience. I had been quite anxious in the weeks leading up to the visit. However, as soon as my plane descended into the Salt Lake airport, calm descended on me. As I drove to Provo, I felt oddly at home. The calm persisted through my lecture, my job talk, and my interviews. I felt a peaceful assurance that I would be offered the job. That night, when I called Mike, he told me that he and Katie had fasted for me that day. His news brought me to tears, because I had so clearly felt the spiritual support they had requested for me. It took several weeks for the actual offer to come through, but—again, uncharacteristically—I was not at all anxious. I knew I would get the job. I knew that the Lord wanted me to accept it. Mike knew it, too, and insisted that we take the job, despite what it would do to his anticipated career. All of my doubts about BYU, about living in Utah, were not resolved, but we felt we could not ignore the strong, clear direction we had received. Mike found work in a private pediatric practice in Orem, and we moved to Provo. Within two years, the University of Utah department chair who had dashed Mike’s hopes decided to take early retirement. The new chair called Mike and offered him a job. He is now the director of pediatric bone marrow transplantation at Primary Children’s, and the clinical director of adult bone marrow transplantation at the University of Utah Medical Center and a scholar with a growing national and international reputation.

That’s my story—or maybe I should say Mike’s and my story—of how I came to teach history at BYU. You may have noticed that the themes of secular and spiritual knowledge intertwine throughout this story. That is not an accident, but a reflection of what is important to me. Because you are sitting here tonight, I assume they are important to you, too. I hope they always will be.

Let me pull a few key points out of the experiences I have described to you:

1) To be learned is good. The scriptures make it clear that Heavenly Father values all knowledge, that, in fact, even the most secular subjects have spiritual dimensions. The Lord instructed the prophet Joseph Smith to obtain a knowledge of “all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand,” and then he listed some of those things: “things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:78-79). I think that you’ll agree with me that this list favors History. You, like me, have been blessed with an outstanding education at BYU. Your education should not stop here. One of the hopes your professors and leaders have for you is that you will be lifelong learners. Keep reading and exploring, broadly and deeply. And while you add to your secular knowledge, do not forget to “hearken unto the counsels of God.” Read the scriptures broadly and deeply. Take notes. Ponder and pray about the meaning of passages not only for God’s ancient people but His modern ones as well.

2) All work—domestic, academic, administrative—can be an offering to God. Just as Heavenly Father values all truth, I believe he values all talents and expects us to use them. I find a remarkable passage that supports this in the book of Exodus. The children of Israel had just finished building the Tabernacle of the Covenant and were ready to offer it to the Lord. Before they did, the Lord spoke to Moses. He told them that, before they could use this holy tabernacle, they must furnish and ornament it, much as we furnish and decorate our modern temples. In answer to God’s command, the children of Israel gathered together, “every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing. . . . and they came, both men and women.” Next, the scripture describes the many offerings presented to the Lord for his tabernacle, by both men and women: some brought beautiful cloth that they had spun, others brought carvings of stone or wood, still others wove or embroidered lovely tapestries. And the scripture makes it clear that God valued all of these offerings, and that he had, in fact, blessed each person with distinct talents and inspired them to use those talents in His service. Listen: “Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work.” (Exodus 35:4-35)

I don’t embroider or weave or carve, but I do research and write and teach. My talents are academic ones. I take joy in them, as I believe my Heavenly Father intends me to. I find support for this belief in Doctrine & Covenants 88:33: “For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.” For me, the meaning of that scripture is that using my mind—my intellectual gift—will bring me joy. But I must remember not to merely rejoice in the gift, but also in the “giver of the gift,” and to acknowledge that it came from Him.

3) Not only are our talents gifts from Heavenly Father, but He expects us to use them. We may not always know how to use them, or it may seem that the other demands in our lives prevent us from using them. For a long time, I didn’t see how I could be both a good mother and a good scholar. Our own knowledge may fail us, but the source of wisdom will not. He will lead us down paths we could not have found for ourselves. Mike and I have made choices along the way that hardly seemed rational at the time, decisions that required significant sacrifice of our financial resources and our dearest aspirations. Sometimes it felt like flying blind. When we followed the prompting to come to BYU, Mike gave up a million-dollar research grant with no prospect of ever being able to work in academic medicine again. That was a very painful sacrifice, and Mike must have wondered whether Heavenly Father valued his talents as much as mine. We had no reason to believe that the door that had been so firmly closed to him at the University of Utah Medical School would open again, but it did.

4) Keep your priorities in order. My husband and I have, collectively, spent twenty-two years in college or graduate school. But we’ve spent twenty-five years being married to each other. If our work or education had been our priority, our path would have been very different. In many ways, it might have appeared more rational to outside observers and might have required less personal sacrifice, but I don’t think it would have led us here. And we are very happy to be here. Mike loves what he does; I love what I do; and we love each other and our children and the gospel.

Reflecting on our experience, we feel inclined to marvel. Each door that opened, each experience that came our way is a testimony that Heavenly Father knows who we are. He knows our strengths and weaknesses and has led us down paths that have enriched us and allowed us to serve. He knows each one of you as well. Remember that your gifts come from him, that he wants you to use them in his service, and that, if you continue learning and hearkening unto the counsel of God, he will lead you down paths that will someday fill you with wonder and gratitude.

Notes:
¹ Bruce C. Hafen, “’Linger awhile, thou art so fair’: Thoughts on the Value of Teaching,” BYU Today 1989 (November), 50-56.
² Benson, “To the Mothers in Zion.”

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Jenny Hale Pulsipher is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, where her research is focused on American colonial and Native American history. Dr. Pulsipher graduated with a B.A. in English and an M.A. in American studies from BYU, and then earned a Ph.D. in history from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She is the author of reviews and articles in the American Historical Review, the New England Quarterly, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Early American Literature, the Massachusetts Historical Review, and the William and Mary Quarterly, as well as of Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), which was selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2006.

Posted November 2010

I Am a Mormon

I am a Christian: I believe that Christ is my savior and redeemer. I am a Mormon: I believe that Christ has spoken and appeared many times beyond what is documented in the Bible; I do not deny him the willingness or capacity to do that. I love and cherish the extra-biblical records of Christ’s dealings with people in the Americas, and what he said to them, especially during the 1800s in the United States. I delight in the enrichment that Mormonism provides me about Christ’s purpose, character, and love for God’s children all over the world.

In 2006 my wife and I visited the American University of Armenia. The president of that university oriented me to the country and its history with the aid of a large map, explaining the early meaning of the names of key territories. When he was finished he had left out one territory – a part of ancient Armenia that now lies within the borders of Turkey south of Mount Ararat. Instead of a one- or two-word designation, this area had a phrase for its title.

“What about this area?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s a very old name” he said.

“What does it mean?”

“It has a very traditional meaning.”

“What would be the literal translation?”

“It could be translated different ways.”

“Are you reluctant to tell me about this area?” I asked.

He looked at me, and then at the map. “One interpretation is ‘The land where the people of God descended from the mountain.’ The other is ‘The land where the Son of God appeared to his people after his resurrection.’” When he said that he looked at me again as if to monitor my reaction; I smiled and almost together we said “other sheep” [John 10:16; 3 Nephi 15:21; 3 Nephi 16:1-3].

I was then, and still am, grateful for my willingness to study beyond what the world considers the limits of conventional Christian literature, where can be found more of the words of Christ and his prophets. Mormon scriptures challenge my intellect and provide me with an abundance of mind- and soul-satisfying insights that enrich the literature of the entire world.

One simple example is the words of Christ given to Joseph Smith in Missouri in 1832. They clarify that Christ gives commandments to men “that you may understand my will concerning you; Or, in other words, I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation.” [D&C 82:8-9]

I haven’t found any other place in holy or wisdom literature that provides such a simple clarification of what a commandment is—a directive to guide me to salvation. But Mormon scriptures provide more; they explain that God’s directives and associated blessings are based on irrevocable laws that have their origins in the depths of the eternities.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated – And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21)

For all who will have a blessing at my hands shall abide the law which was appointed for that blessing, and the conditions thereof, as were instituted from before the foundation of the world. (Doctrine and Covenants 132:5)

My profession is biology and agriculture. I earned my PhD in plant physiology at the University of Minnesota. I worked for thirty years in Minnesota, researching some of nature’s laws, and have documented how an attempt to manage an ecosystem contrary to those laws always proves to be unwise. Although such management might be appealing in the short term, long-term studies confirm that practices contrary to the laws of nature eventually damage the farmer’s pocketbook as well as his surrounding landscape and communities.

I’m not a sociologist, but I have observed nature’s laws operating in societies much as they do in agriculture. I have worked in several countries of the world, mostly in those that are poverty stricken. I confidently conclude that what the poorer peoples of the world need most is not monetary or technical assistance; they need virtue. Data from Cambridge University documents an overwhelming negative correlation between a country’s corruption and its prosperity.

I testify that within the scriptures that are unique to Mormonism are many not-to-be-found-elsewhere directives and insights based on irrevocably-decreed natural laws that, if followed, will not only bless people’s lives and their lands and cultures, but will also improve the welfare of their eternal souls.

I have found that many of us are prone to challenge scriptural-based directions to long-term happiness, or to criticize them because we find them inconvenient to our fashionable desires. We may declare a doctrine to be debatable in order to justify our preference to disobey it for short-term pleasure. In fact we go about gathering evidence, stories, and “proofs” that will help us sustain our defensiveness and contrariness. I appreciate the insight offered in the Book of Mormon from the prophet Alma, who said to his wayward son Corianton, whom he loved:

And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. (Alma 41:9)

The Book of Mormon is an astounding book filled with great stories and profoundly-worded devotions to Christ. It is the most compelling book I have come across. Just one example is Alma chapter 36, which is a masterful presentation of the centrality of Jesus in our lives. It’s an intricately-composed completely-original literary masterpiece that never fails to move me.

The Doctrine and Covenants is amazing. In it we repeatedly find the nineteenth-century words of Christ, spoken in the first person, giving explanations of his character, his purpose, and his methods—with words and insights that cannot be found anywhere else, although comparable to the writings of Isaiah. Consider:

Hearken, O ye people of my church, to whom the kingdom has been given; hearken ye and give ear to him who laid the foundation of the earth, who made the heavens and all the hosts thereof, and by whom all things were made which live, and move, and have a being. . . . Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him—Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have eternal life. (Doctrine and Covenants 45:1-5)

In hundreds of Mormon scriptures I find similar insights and enrichments to my understanding of the Bible, including the nature and attributes of the Holy Ghost and how I can qualify for his companionship, the worth and value of souls, how the devil operates, how I may more fully receive personal revelation, and so much more.

In summary, I believe that Christ has shared his irrevocably-decreed laws and directions for happiness and salvation with his disciples in many lands and at many times. I believe that Christianity is vibrant, and living, and open to fresh revelation right now in the twenty-first century. I look forward to learning more about what he has said. (When will we get those Armenian records?) To date I am yet to encounter such a mother lode of wisdom and guidance as I find in the combined scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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R. Kent Crookston was raised on a wheat and dairy farm in Magrath, Alberta, Canada, and served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Zealand. He received a B.S. from Brigham Young University in agronomy, and then earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in plant physiology. After a 1972 postdoctoral fellowship with the Canada Department of Agriculture and a two-year stint as a research associate at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, he taught for twenty-five years at the University of Minnesota. From 1984 to 1986, he served as resident coordinator of a USAID / University of Minnesota project in Rabat, Morocco, where he was also an adjunct professor at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II. While at the University of Minnesota, he was the founding director of the Minnesota Institute of Sustainable Agriculture (1988-1992) and the head of the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics (1990-1998).

In 1998, Dr. Crookston accepted appointment as a professor in the Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences and dean of the College of Biology and Agriculture at Brigham Young University. Having completed his tenure as dean in 2005, he currently serves as associate director of the University’s Faculty Center.

A fellow of the Crop Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy, and the holder, since 1999, of an honorary professorship at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II, in Rabat, Morocco, Dr. Crookston has consulted on projects and with organizations in Mexico, the Philippines, Senegal, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ghana, France, Oman, Morocco, England, Ecuador, and Armenia, and at various places in the United States of America. His research has focused on such areas as photosynthetic physiology, photosynthate partitioning and grain growth, applied crop management (e.g., of corn and soybeans), and academic administration. His publications have appeared in numerous volumes of acts and abstracts, and in such journals as Plant Physiology, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Canadian Journal of Plant Science, Crop Science, Planta, Agronomy Journal, Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, Journal of the American Horticultural Society, New Phytologist, Plant Growth Regulator Bulletin, American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, Journal of Production Agriculture, Actes Editions – Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II, Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, Academic Leader, and The Department Chair. He is the co-author of Decision Cases for Agriculture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), and the author of chapters in books published in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and various places in the United States. He has written numerous popular articles on various subjects; has, on four occasions, won the Excellence in Agricultural Journalism Award from the American Society of Agronomy; and is co-holder of a patent for a method of increasing corn yields.

Posted November 2010