Testimonies

Why I Am Still a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

As a fairly reflective and rational person, I often have occasion to examine the important choices I’ve made in my life. Most of them are pretty easy to understand and explain: going to college, marrying the person I did, becoming a librarian, having a few kids – none of these is a choice likely to raise anyone’s eyebrows. I know, however, that what I consider the most important choice of my life is one that many find strange, for reasons that I completely understand. Having spent my career in an academic environment, where this particular choice can seem especially questionable, I’ve found that some of my colleagues in the past have been mildly incredulous, while others, I sense, are puzzled but politely avoid the issue. Some of the latter are probably fearful of what I’d say if they asked.

I’m referring to my choice to remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I say “to remain a member” because there’s no mystery as to why I started out as one. Although I grew up in Massachusetts at a time when Latter-day Saints were relatively thin on the ground in that region, I was born into an active Latter-day Saint family and was raised in the Church. My family went to church every week and we participated in all the normal church activities: we prayed and studied scriptures together daily; we held weekly family home evenings; my father and I were home teaching companions; I attended early-morning seminary throughout high school. So it’s easy to understand why I was a Latter-day Saint kid – really, I had little choice. The restored gospel was inculcated into me from my earliest years, and I never understood it as one of several legitimate lifestyle options. It was the truth, and its truthfulness informed everything about the way life was lived in my home.

I’ve heard it said that you can’t choose your family or your religion, and to some degree I suspect that’s true. However, there have been several points at which I’ve had to make deliberate and conscious choices about my spiritual life – about whether I actually believe, first of all, that there is any such thing as a “spiritual life” at all and, if so, what it really means to pursue it.¹

At the moments in my younger life when I needed to decide what I believed and how I should live, the questions I was addressing – though I couldn’t have put them into these exact words – were the following:

1. Is there a God who is real and exists outside of the natural order?
2. If so, does The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teach accurately about God’s attributes and expectations for us?
3. If so, do the Church’s doctrines, covenants, and practices constitute a set of uniquely true principles and put forward a uniquelytrue and necessary set of prescriptions for living – or do they only represent one valid set of spiritual options among many?

When I was a child, like most children, I accepted what my parents told me about these issues, because a) my parents seemed to know everything and b) they clearly wanted what was best for me. And like most young adults, I eventually came to question the things they taught me. Not just once, but in an ongoing and recurring pattern throughout my life, one that I think is normal, essentially healthy, and likely to continue indefinitely.

The first time I remember seriously questioning my religious beliefs was when I was in the Missionary Training Center preparing to leave on a two-year proselyting mission for the Church. My concern wasn’t with any particular points of doctrine; I just came to the sudden and sharp realization that although I had gone through my life up to that point operating fairly comfortably on the assumption that God was real and that the Latter-day Saint conception of God was accurate, I had never come to a truly independent conviction that those propositions were true. I had accepted that they were true and had more-or-less willingly (if very imperfectly) structured my life around that acceptance, but as I was preparing to actually spend two full years of my life testifying actively to their truthfulness I came to the belated realization that willing acquiescence to the doctrine probably wasn’t going to be enough to make me an effective missionary.

I should point out, though, that being an effective missionary really wasn’t my primary concern at that point—my concern was about being a missionary at all. To be completely honest, I had actually been dreading my mission. Throughout childhood and adolescence I had anticipated it strictly as an interruption, a wall I was going to have to climb over before I could get on with the real business of my life, which I saw as going to school and pursuing my career goals and getting married and raising a family. As it is for all new missionaries, the transition into missionary service was wrenching for me. When I departed for the MTC I left a girlfriend behind whom I missed very much. I found the scriptures boring – not especially baffling or hard to believe, just generally uninteresting. I’m an introvert by nature and have always cherished having time alone, and I knew that a mission would require me to be in someone else’s close presence nearly around the clock. I loved books and was obsessed with music, and knew that as a missionary I’d have to give up most of my favorite music and all of what I most enjoyed reading. But most of all, there was nowhere in my personality a natural inclination to knock on strangers’ doors and offer to talk to them about my religion – I knew that in most cases it would be annoying to them, and that few if any would have any interest in hearing what I had to say. I fully expected that proselyting would be embarrassing and at times humiliating, and that the vast majority of the people I’d encounter would think I was a deluded fool at best and an irritating zealot at worst. Apart from my natural shyness, my pride and intellectual vanity made (and still make) the prospect of being seen in either light very painful.

To be clear, it wasn’t that I felt missionary work was in any way a bad idea; I understood what it was about the gospel that made such work good and necessary, and I knew why I needed to do it, and truly, I was willing. But I expected it to be difficult in particular ways that were especially painful for me, and I was not looking forward to it.

It was in the context of these feelings that I realized I had to have a firmer and more independent knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel if I were going to go forward and complete my missionary service. I needed to make a binary decision: either continue on that path or go home. To make that decision, I needed to know whether the gospel was true. I knew that if I gained that knowledge, I could do what needed to be done even if it was difficult or embarrassing. But I also knew that without it, I probably couldn’t.

I had felt what I understood to be the influence of the Holy Ghost at various times in my childhood and adolescence, and I think that I already had a fairly good understanding of the difference between emotional and spiritual feelings, so I was pretty well prepared to ask the question that I asked on my knees one evening at bedtime in the MTC. I must not have been alone in the room, since it housed four of us and we were never left alone. But it seems in my memory as if I were alone when I knelt down and made a very simple and straightforward prayer. It was along these lines: “Heavenly Father, if you are there, and if what I’m about to do is in fact what’s right and required of me, please let me know now. Because I have to know; otherwise I’m going to go home and pick up my life where it left off.”

I received an answer to my prayer. It came promptly, and it came powerfully enough that there was no question in my mind as to its origin or its message. It was clear to me that it originated outside of myself. Although I was not a very spiritually mature person, I had already learned from experience to recognize the difference between the somatic, chemicals-in-the-stomach sensations of emotion and the fundamentally different feelings that came from the Holy Ghost. What I felt was spiritual, and the message was clear: God told me that he was there, that he loved me, and that I should continue on the path on which I had set out.

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This is the point at which I fully expect to lose the attention of anyone who is firmly committed to a naturalistic worldview. Someone who has already dismissed the idea of a spiritual realm will read the above and say “You only think you discern the difference between emotional and spiritual feelings. In fact, what you’re experiencing are just different flavors of emotion.” It’s a perfectly reasonable response, and one to which I’ve given a lot of thought. But the more I think about it, the more I bump up against something I really can’t deny: the fact that the feelings I experience when dealing with matters of an eternal nature are in fact different from the feelings that I have when dealing with anything else—and not subtly different, but radically. They don’t carry with them the baggage or the side effects of physical emotion: rarely do they make me cry; they never leave me with a feeling of catharsis; they never raise my level of physical excitement; I don’t feel them in my stomach, the way I do anxiety or anticipation or desire; and most significantly, unlike feelings of emotional excitement they don’t come in response to a wide variety of stimuli. Spiritual feelings come only when dealing with spiritual things, and they always somehow push away emotional noise rather than add to it.

Having these feelings and impressions has taught me what I think is a valuable lesson about the nature of evidence and testimony. When dealing scientifically with the physical world, evidence only counts if it can be shared and replicated. When dealing with the spiritual world, evidence is generally private and not shareable – and though it may in a certain way be replicated, what is replicated ends up being equally private and personal to the person who experiences it. In other words, my spiritual experiences can’t prove to anyone else the existence of a spiritual world. I suppose that in the strictest philosophical sense, they can’t really “prove” it to me, either. (I could always find some way, however far-fetched, to explain away my spiritual experiences. Even a direct angelic visitation, like any other experience, could at some point be explained away as a hallucination.) But while they can’t give me proof, they most certainly can give me evidence – private, unshareable evidence, but nevertheless real enough for me to work with in my own life. And this, I’ve come to believe, is the essence of faith: faith isn’t just picking something to believe in and then proceeding with your life on the assumption that it’s true. (It’s not, in other words, just “belief combined with action.”) Faith consists in gathering spiritual evidence and then putting it to an empirical test. You start with a little bit of belief and you apply it, watching the results; as you do so you learn something about the rightness or wrongness of that belief and are simultaneously equipped to gather more evidence. Over time, you build a structure of faith that becomes stronger as its foundation is deepened and thickened by the accumulation of evidence and experience. This process may not be “scientific,” but it is certainly empirical. It is what I believe the prophet Alma describes in the Book of Mormon.²

What this means, I think, is that faith and reason are inseparable. Contrary to what has been argued by some prominent professional atheists, faith doesn’t mean belief despite a lack of evidence; faith is a result of the gathering and testing of evidence. Reason is what allows me to recognize the connection between, for example, hearing someone bear testimony of the reality of Christ’s atonement, and feeling a powerful spiritual response to that expression of testimony. Without reason, I wouldn’t see any connection between the expression and the response, and I wouldn’t be able to recognize the unfolding pattern of connections between similar experiences and similar responses throughout my life.

That said, I suspect that few of us will ever have experiences that are explicit, powerful, and direct enough to let us suspend faith altogether. The evidence will always be partial – it will always be at least theoretically possible to conjure up an alternative explanation for any particular miraculous experience or internal spiritual prompting. Thus, to me, putting faith into practice means:

1. Accepting, at least provisionally, that spiritual experiences are what they seem to be;
2. moving forward on the basis of that acceptance, altering my behavior as appropriate;
3. seeking out more such experiences;
4. watching, thinking, and praying about what happens next.

As I have pursued this course of action, I’ve found that I continue to have just enough of these experiences to keep me going. And again, although this approach requires me to move forward with incomplete evidence, at the same time it seems fundamentally rational to me. My spiritual life is a house of experiential, and partly intellectual, inquiry built on a foundation of trust – trust that the things that powerfully seem spiritual to me really are. This trust keeps being rewarded, usually in subtle and gentle but very often undeniable and sometimes overwhelmingly powerful ways, and always in ways that are very clearly different to me from my experiences with physical emotion. For that reason, I’m able to keep feeling my way forward with a real degree of confidence, even though my actual knowledge is partial and in some ways contingent.

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When I got up off my knees from that prayer in the MTC, I knew both that I must and that I could carry on and serve a mission. That knowledge didn’t make it any easier, however. My mission was difficult in exactly the ways I thought it would be, and at times the difficulty was excruciating. There were moments when I had to force myself almost physically to do the things that were required. On my second day in the mission field, my companion thought it would be a good idea for us to go to a large urban park and split up – staying in sight of each other, but stopping people and talking to them on our own. After he walked away I had to sit on a park bench and gather my strength. The thought of accosting someone walking by on the path and trying to engage him or her in a discussion about the gospel made me want to run away screaming. But by this point I had confidence in several propositions: God was real and loved me, and God wanted me to be in a park talking to people about the gospel. The gospel was true, and since the gospel was true, it was important enough to be worth annoying people over. So as painful as it would be for me, I knew I needed to do it and I would. And I did. And it was indeed painful, and awkward, and at times embarrassing. But I had a wonderful conversation in that park with a sincere young man, and had the opportunity to bear testimony to him.

My mission was a magnificent, grueling, life-changing experience. I was a good missionary. I wasn’t as effective as some others, though I was more effective than some; I was consistently obedient and diligent, and I had some exquisite experiences in parks and in meetinghouses and in small, shabby rooms with people of varying backgrounds who desired, in varying degrees, to come unto Christ. When my companions and I taught doctrine and bore testimony, I felt my soul vibrate in response as the Holy Ghost bore witness to the truthfulness of what we said, and I watched the eyes of those we taught as they felt the same thing. Seeing others, who came to these discussions without a lifetime’s acculturation in the Church, feel something that was very obviously much the same as what I was feeling deepened my conviction that what we were teaching was real and true and that what I was feeling came from something external to my own mind. In those moments, spiritual evidence truly was shared between us, though not in any way that could be documented, measured, or captured for future examination by others.

When my mission came to an end, I was able to look back on it with joy and satisfaction, despite the flaws in my preparation and some of the rather stupid things that, in retrospect, I could see I had done. I felt (and still feel) confident that my sacrifice was accepted, and, much more importantly, that my missionary service was a life-changing blessing to some people, and perhaps to many others of whom I’m not aware.

—

Completing a mission did not mark the resolution of my spiritual struggle or the culmination of my testimony building. Instead, as my mission president promised it would, it laid the foundation of a spiritual house upon which I’ve worked to build ever since. In doing so I’ve had tremendous, even transcendent, spiritual experiences, as well as moments of serious doubt and crisis.

Those experiences have taught me several things. The most important of them, I think, is that a testimony – an abiding conviction of the truthfulness of the restored gospel – is a fragile thing. This is surely as it must be, though it may sound strange to say that. A typical response of the unbeliever to a believer’s expression of faith is to ask “If God exists, and if he wants you to do his will, why does he make it hard to find him and make communication with him so much a matter of intuition and interpretation?” This is a fair question, and it takes its place alongside all the other fair questions about God: if God is both real and good, how can his creation include so much that is evil? Why does God allow so much tragedy and pain, if he actually does love us and want what’s best for us? Why do so many who claim to represent God on earth turn out to be corrupt, craven, and foolish?

One reasonable, though facile, response to all of these questions is that God wants us to grow and that we grow in part by striving after him, by suffering, and by making choices – some of which will be bad and some of which will necessarily impinge on others. But I think there is a deeper answer as well, and it’s implied in the questions themselves. To object to the existence of God on the basis of the difficulty of knowing him or the awfulness of our lot is to imply necessarily that if there were a God such as the one described in Latter-day Saint doctrine, our lives and our world would be substantially different. For that implied argument to have any weight, one should be able to answer the question “How would life be different if there were a God?” In other words, how much suffering is allowable before we decide that God can’t exist?

In order to be taken seriously, the answer to this question doesn’t have to be precise, but it should at least have some shape and weight. Does the Holocaust disprove the existence of God? The World Trade Center attack? The Darfur genocide? Suppose that none of those, and nothing close to them in severity and brutality, had ever occurred – would skeptics be more inclined to believe in God, or would the bar simply be set at a different level?

I think this brings us back to the more facile explanation: rationally, I think that even horrific tragedy and injustice – for all of the questions and concerns that they will raise in the minds of thoughtful believers – can and probably must exist in a God-created world where the primary purpose of life is not comfort, pleasure, long life, or even the avoidance of awful suffering, but rather growth and development through hard experience and the exercise of agency. Sometimes answers are facile because they’re false and easy; sometimes they seem facile because they’re both simple and true. I think this is one of those.

Another thing I have learned is to recognize and respect my own intellectual limitations. One of those limitations is a deep and intractable impatience. I jump to conclusions too quickly, assuming that I’ve gathered all the evidence I need for a decision when in fact I should wait and gather more. I keep having to learn that lesson over and over, a fact that leads me to suspect this to be an ingrained problem of my personality rather than just a bad intellectual habit. Having recognized this tendency, I’ve learned generally to stay away from anti-Latter-day-Saint literature. I have at times found myself shaken by something negative or critical I’ve read or heard, only later (sometimes much later) to find out that what I read was unfounded or that there was far more to the story than what the critic had reported. No matter how many times I go through that process, I still struggle fully to learn the lesson it should be teaching me.

So now I generally avoid critical literature, though not without some misgivings. I realize there’s a certain kind of danger in ignoring the critics: growth requires opposition, and to actively cultivate ignorance of opposition is to risk becoming soft and complacent. Nor is it healthy to pretend that there are no legitimate questions about the doctrines of the restored gospel, the foibles of Church leaders, or Church history. A real testimony, it seems to me, has to acknowledge and deal with those issues, not pretend they aren’t there. But it matters how one approaches them, and I have learned to do so in a way that takes into account my own particular blend of weaknesses and strengths.

And again, this seems to me a reasonable state of affairs. A loving God who wants us to grow and learn can reasonably be expected, I think, to put his children in situations where their faith will be challenged. A true church, even one led by real revelation under divine authority, can also be expected to be administered on earth by people who have faults and failings, and who present a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. To those who say (or, more frequently, imply) “Your church can’t be true because Apostle So-and-So demonstrated clear hypocrisy in such-and-such a situation,” I respond, “If the Church were true, how much more perfect would its leaders be?”

To sum up, then: I am still a Latter-day Saint because I have learned, through hard spiritual experience, that the restored gospel is what it purports to be. And I continue learning that lesson in an ongoing way as I continue living the life of a covenant disciple of Christ.

Notes:
¹To be clear about what I mean by “spiritual”: As much as I respect the beliefs of others, I have to confess that when people talk about the “spiritual” from a naturalistic perspective, the word seems pretty empty to me. If you believe only in the existence of the natural world – the material, physically perceivable, measurable world – then I don’t see how you can give the word “spiritual” a lot of real meaning without radically redefining it. So when I refer to a “spiritual life” I mean something that has reference to a reality beyond the natural world. Philosophers use the word “supernatural” to refer to that reality. In this sense, the word “supernatural” doesn’t have the woo-woo connotations that it does in casual language. When most people say they believe in God, they’re saying that they believe in a supernatural order – in something real that exists beyond the natural world that we perceive and measure with our bodily senses. When I talk about questioning the existence of a spiritual realm, it’s the supernatural order, that “world beyond,” that I’m talking about. (For now let’s leave aside the implications of Joseph Smith’s teachings about the physical properties of the soul and the inseparability of the temporal and the spiritual.)
²Alma 32:27-43.

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Rick Anderson is University Librarian at Brigham Young University. Previously, he served as Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication in the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah (2007-2020); as Director of Resource Acquisition (2001-2007) and Electronic Resources and Serials Coordinator (2000-2001) at the University of Nevada, Reno; as Head Acquisitions Librarian at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (1997-2000); and as a bibliographer for Yankee Book Peddler, Inc. (1993-1997). He earned the degrees of Bachelor of Science (1991) and Master of Library and Information Science (1993) from Brigham Young University.

Rick is the author of three books, most recently Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018), which is currently being translated into both Japanese and Chinese. He has also written numerous articles and reviews in such periodicals as Library Journal; Publishers Weekly; EDUCAUSE Review; Information Services & Use; Against the Grain; Serials; College & Research Libraries News; Learned Publishing; Serials Librarian; Internet Reference Services Quarterly; Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services; Acquisitions Librarian; Serials e-News; Notes (the quarterly journal of the Music Library Association); The Charleston Advisor; Reference and User Services Quarterly; NextSpace: The OCLC Newsletter; Music Reference Services Quarterly; and Portal: Libraries and the Academy. In 2013 Rick was the recipient of the HARRASSOWITZ Leadership in Library Acquisitions Award and was the Gould Distinguished Lecturer on Technology and the Quality of Life at the University of Utah. He has served as president of NASIG and of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, and is a regular contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen blog.

Posted October 2010

Updated March 2022

As a devout Mormon scholar, I often find myself pondering the problem of how faith mingles with intellect. I say “problem,” because faith vs. intellect has been treated as a scholarly problem by faithful Christians throughout the Middle Ages (my own area of study) up until the twentieth century, when the general scholarly assumption shifted to the viewpoint that personal faith is something that a careful scholar pretty much has to set aside and try to work around if she is to undertake serious study. That fractured faith/intellect viewpoint is something I had to grapple with in graduate school, and it caused me to face something of a crisis of faith. My faith emerged more strongly as a result, but one thing that I learned from this is that intellect and faith in today’s world do not usually speak the same language. One must learn to be bilingual in order to work with this split, even if it is a temporary and artificial split that will not endure forever. The work of translating ideas between the two, however, can stretch thinking in ways that allow for previously-unforeseen insights. The greatest challenge, it seems to me, is that some insights which come spiritually have no equivalent in the world of scientific proof, and trying to reduce such insights to words (especially those that are documented and footnoted) is even more difficult than trying to reduce the harmonies of a full orchestra into a score playable by a single pianist. I am an indifferent pianist at best, but my lack of ability on that end does not diminish my love for the orchestra of spiritual experience.

I have no easy answers to offer on the challenges of translation between the languages of faith and intellect. But I take some comfort in the fact that scholars of the Middle Ages— Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and many others— did not ever doubt God’s existence or the importance of faith, although they grappled with the best way of proving such concepts intellectually to nonbelievers. The success of their scholastic methods may be questioned today, but they did not allow themselves to be stopped by the limitations of intellect. Neither did the ancient Nephite prophet Moroni give up the struggle to express his faith, even when daunted by the greatness of the task and when he feared that he would be mocked because “when we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words” (Ether 12:25). The Lord’s reply to this, that Moroni’s weak things would become strong unto him if he (Moroni) humbled himself through Christ (Ether 12:27), is fulfilled throughout the end of the record Moroni wrote; his invitation to readers of the Book of Mormon to ask God for a personal revelation of the record’s truth (Moroni 10:4-5) is among the strongest expressions of LDS doctrine.

My ability to explain concepts of faith in the world of scholarship may be limited, even limping, but God knows I do my best, and He can, if He chooses, make up the difference. He always has. And when I run into frustration, and doubt, I turn to the words of Nephi, who said “I do not know the meaning of all things . . . (nevertheless) I know that (God) loveth his children” (1 Nephi 11:17).

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Charlotte A. Stanford earned a B.A. (with honors) from Brigham Young University in Latin and humanities, an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in medieval studies, and, in 2003, a Ph.D. in art history from The Pennsylvania State University. In that same year, she joined the Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at BYU, where she is an assistant professor of humanities. Her interests center on Gothic architecture and medieval devotional practices.

Posted October 2010

Some Things I Believe, and Why

Four important things have been at the center of my adult life: my family, my church, the study of history, and, after I began my teaching career, the well-being (both academic and spiritual) of my students. I hope I have balanced my activities well enough to have made a positive and befitting contribution to each.

As a historian and a teacher, academics have been a major element of my career. I love the intellectual stimulation and challenges of the world of academia, though in many ways that world is quite different from the world of religion and spirituality. In academia one is taught (and teaches others) to study various points of view, question assumptions, challenge old ideas, and always look for new insights into whatever one is studying. However, this kind of activity can challenge one’s religious belief, and makes some people wonder (often with good reason) about the faith of academics. That is why I begin my contribution to the “Mormon Scholars Testify” website by stating as clearly as I can my own unequivocal testimony that this Church to which I have devoted my life is, indeed, the true Church of Jesus Christ, that Joseph Smith and his successors were and are true prophets of God, that the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be and, most importantly, that Jesus is truly the Christ, the Son of God, my Savior, and the Redeemer of the World.

That said, the challenge of writing this essay caused me to consider again, as I have many times before, why I have such a testimony—what people, influences, or experiences have helped me maintain that faith in the face of all the questions that are inevitably raised as someone like me gets deeply involved in the study of Church history and, therefore, in the personal lives of those who walk across the pages of that history? Frankly, I am grateful for the opportunity to think through that question again.

Maybe I had some great Sunday School teachers when I was young, but either because of them or because of someone else I grew up imbued with the belief that my church is led by inspired prophets of God who, at the same time, are men, and therefore are not perfect. It was somehow drilled into my psyche that God works through men (and women) despite their weaknesses, and that we will be disappointed if we expect perfection. Our prophets and other church leaders have been, and are, great people, chosen in part for their faith, integrity, goodness, and openness to the prompting of the Spirit. They are recipients of divine revelation and purveyors of God’s will. The fact that they are not infallible, and, at times, have been known to make mistakes, should not diminish our reverence for them as prophets or our commitment to the truths they teach. That was the attitude I grew up with, and even though that testimony has been challenged from time to time I am grateful that somehow I maintained the ability not to “jump ship” whenever a new challenge appeared. The simple things of the gospel were so clear and satisfying, the Spirit continued to bear witness so abundantly, and the work of the Church seemed so important that it was not hard to cling to the fundamentals while holding the difficult and often unanswerable questions in abeyance as I considered the alternatives.

I mention all this because of one of the complaints from critics of the Church that bothers me most. They cannot accept Joseph Smith as a prophet, they say, because they have found some weakness in his character or some mistake in something he said or did. Or, they refuse to take the Church seriously because they have been disappointed in the actions of some other leader or some ordinary members. I suppose I was fortunate, for as a result of the way I grew up it was not difficult for me, after I began to study Church history more intensely, to look beyond their human nature and accept Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and later Church leaders as prophets of God. Even though I found what I, at least, thought were a few human weaknesses, and found in some of the things they said some speculative ideas that were not necessarily Church doctrine, my reverence for them as Church leaders did not diminish. They were still remarkable, inspired men, the fundamentals they taught were still divinely given, Joseph Smith’s First Vision was still an absolute reality, the Book of Mormon was what it claimed to be, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was still the only church with divine authority to administer the saving ordinances of the gospel of Christ and, as emphasized above, Jesus Christ (of whom the Book of Mormon and all the modern prophets testify) was the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world, and my personal Savior. Throughout my life these things have remained fundamental to me. I can honestly say, as Leonard Arrington so often did when he was Church Historian, that none of the historical documents I ever had access to gave me reason to doubt the authenticity of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, his other recorded visions and revelations, the Book of Mormon, or the divine mission of the Church itself.

This does not mean that my faith was never challenged, or that I never had questions—sometimes serious questions. Some had to do with science and religion or with various academic issues. They included such things as the age of the earth, evolution and the creation of man, the implications of higher criticism for the scriptures, how literally we should take some of the biblical stories that seem impossible (such as the sun standing still in Joshua 10:12-13), the Book of Mormon passages that seem near-exact parallels with biblical verses, and other matters often pointed out by critics. Of course I found both academic and religious, or spiritual, “answers” to all these concerns. They were often well documented and persuasively argued, no matter which side they took on the issue. I soon realized, however, that neither academia nor religion had all the answers and that, in fact, it is not necessary to have all the answers to all the questions in order to have faith in the integrity of the prophets and the fundamentals of the gospel. Perhaps this over-simplifies, but it was that attitude that helped me “roll with the punches” whenever I needed to.

And it was that attitude that I spent much of my time at BYU trying to help students understand. It was surprising to me how often students came with just those kinds of questions: “Why do I see Church leaders disagreeing with each other—I thought they were supposed to be unified?” “Why, in the Journal of Discourses, do I find (such and such) being taught, when it is not the doctrine of the Church?” “How do I reconcile what I am being taught in my biology classes with what I hear in Sunday School and some of my religion classes?” “How do I deal with higher criticism, which I am learning about in some of my classes, when I am reading the scriptures?” “What about (this–or-that embarrassing event in Church history) that I have never heard about? Why was I not told about it in my Sunday School or seminary classes?” Questions such as these went on, as students frequently came to my office asking them. Interestingly enough, my children sometimes had the same kinds of questions. I hope I helped them, at least in part, by trying to share the attitude I grew up with and which my own LDS institute of religion teachers enhanced while I was in college. It was, in summary: “Hold fast to the simple truths that are consistently taught in the Church and that the Spirit bears witness are true. Feel free to ask questions. In fact, be excited about the fact that an important part of the learning process is asking questions, but don’t let it bother you if you cannot find all the answers immediately—or ever, for that matter. As you study hard and gain in secular knowledge, don’t leave behind the continuing quest for spiritual knowledge and understanding. Conversely, even though it is important that you study the scriptures and other Church literature regularly, don’t pass up your great opportunities to also learn about the things of the world. The Lord once instructed Joseph Smith ‘to obtain a knowledge of history, and of countries, and of kingdoms, of laws of God and man, and all this for the salvation of Zion’ (D&C 93:53), and such advice applies equally to all of us. But above all, don’t be caught in the trap described by Nephi: ‘O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, 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. . . . But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God’ (2 Nephi 9:28-29). If you can retain your humility, not becoming someone who is just ‘wise in his own conceit’ (Proverbs 26:12), you can have the best of both worlds!”

However, my faith certainly does not rely solely on that kind of reasoning. More important, for me, has been my personal experience, which I also tried to share with my children and my students. I have never had a vision or seen a heavenly being, though on some special and private occasions I have felt, strongly and undeniably, the powerful influence of the Spirit—sometimes in helping me make decisions and other times simply giving me reassurances when I needed them. I have also witnessed a few miraculous occurrences, and have been told of others by people whose integrity I trust without question.

Beyond these things, however, the people of the Church inspire me. As I study and reflect on Church history, I am constantly inspired not just by the leaders but by the tens of thousands of ordinary Latter-day Saints (including some of my own ancestors) whose unshakeable testimonies of the truth of this work led them to sacrifice so much and endure such agonizing hardship and suffering for the sake of what they believed. Equally important, I am constantly uplifted by the sweet spirit reflected (and which I can feel) in the lives of the many contemporary Latter-day Saints who devote so much of their time to the service of others. These include not just the tireless ward and stake leaders, who so willingly put untold hours into their important callings, but also the many “ordinary” Saints who have learned so well King Benjamin’s teaching “that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17). In addition, since January 2004 my wife and I have been privileged to work as officiators in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. I cannot overemphasize the powerful spirit I feel as I associate with the hundreds of people who come to the temple during our shift each Friday night, hear of some of their remarkable experiences, literally feel their testimonies and love of the Savior, and sense their commitment to everything the temple stands for. All this and more only serves to strengthen my own testimony and commitment. It is nothing that can be “proven” in an “objective” or academic way, but it is all part of the testimony of the Spirit that I, for one, cannot deny.

Finally, my faith is only enhanced as I read the Book of Mormon. Yes, I have considered all the problems—all the questions and difficulties raised by those who would deny its authenticity. I have even written responses to some of their charges. But at least three things make it undeniably true to me. One is the remarkable complexity of the book. Flash-backs, stories-within-stories, important threads that run throughout the book, persistent references to earlier ideas and events, and other complexities: all these are handled so smoothly and consistently that it seems impossible to me that the relatively uneducated Joseph Smith could have made it all up and dictated it all so readily, and without hesitation, in just over two months time. Secondly, as I read the book I find so many passages that contain such powerful messages and inspiring ideas that I can’t believe that they were created by a meagerly educated and fraudulent mind. And lastly, the overriding message of the Book of Mormon concerning Jesus Christ and his divinity is awe-inspiring to me. It not only enhances my understanding and appreciation of Christ himself but also bears added witness to me that the Book of Mormon itself is true.

As I said at the outset, four important things have been at the center of my adult life: my family, my church, the study of history, and a concern for the well-being (both academic and spiritual) of my students. I hope the attitudes expressed here have “rubbed off” onto my family, my students, and any others with whom I have discussed these things over the years. I also hope that this essay, along with all the others in “Mormon Scholars Testify,” will help with whatever questions readers may have about what Mormon scholars really think.

—————————————————–

James B. Allen is Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western American History, Emeritus, at Brigham Young University and was, until recently, a Senior Research Fellow at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at BYU.

Professor Allen was born in 1927, in Ogden, Utah, and married Renée Jones in 1953. They have five children, twenty grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Utah State University in 1954; a master’s degree from Brigham Young University in 1956, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Southern California in 1963.

He has been active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all of his life, and has served in numerous positions, including tenures as bishop of two BYU wards and as a member of five different BYU high councils. In 1999-2000, he and Renée served as missionaries at the Boston Institute of Religion. He has also been active in the Republican Party, and once served as a delegate to the state convention.

In his professional career, he taught in the LDS Seminary and Institute program from 1954-63, after which he was a member of the faculty at Brigham Young University until his retirement in 1992. From 1972 to 1979, he also served as Assistant Church Historian (splitting his time between BYU and the Church Historical Department). He chaired the History Department from 1981-1987, and then, during his last five years at BYU, held the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Chair in Western American History. After his retirement, he became associated with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at BYU, where for several years he held an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow.

He has also been active in various professional organizations, including the Western History Association (for which he served on various committees, and as chair of a program committee) and the Mormon History Association (of which he served as the president, 1971-1973). He has been on various boards of editors and advisory committees, and has presented numerous papers at the meetings of various historical associations

As a researcher and writer, he is the author, co-author, or co-editor of fourteen books or monographs and around ninety articles relating to Western American history and Mormon history, as well as numerous book reviews in professional journals. Among his books are the following:

• The Company Town in the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966)
• The Story of the Latter-day Saints (with Glen M. Leonard; Deseret Book Company, 1976; 2nd edition, 1992)
• Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 1987). Revised and republished in 2002 by BYU Press under the title No Toil Nor Labor Fear: The Story of William Clayton. In 1986, while still in press, this book won the prestigious David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography Award.
• Men With a Mission: The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the British Isles, 1837-1841 (with Ronald K. Esplin and David J. Whittaker, Deseret Book Company, 1992)
• Studies in Mormon History 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography (with Ronald W. Walker and David J. Whittaker; University of Illinois Press, 2000). This important work lists, and provides an index to, all the significant books, articles, doctoral dissertations, and master’s theses on Mormon history produced between 1830 and 1997. It has been widely hailed as one of the most important aids to finding LDS history ever published. In 2001 the Mormon History Association awarded Drs. Allen, Walker, and Whittaker a special citation for the publication of this book. Since then, working with J. Michael Hunter, Professor Allen has continuously updated the bibliography database, which is now online at mormonhistory.byu.edu.
• Mormon History (with Ronald W. Walker and David J. Whittaker, University of Illinois Press, 2001). This book is a history of the writing of Mormon history, from the days of Joseph Smith until the present time.

Over the years Professor Allen has received various awards, honors, and recognitions, besides those indicated above. Among them were several “best article” awards; the Karl G. Maeser Research and Creative Arts Award, Brigham Young University, 1980; the Distinguished Faculty Lectureship, Brigham Young University, 1984; and being named a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, on 15 July 1988.

Posted October 2010

Personal Testimony of the Power of Christ’s Empathy

Not long ago, I asked a simple question: “Which of Jesus Christ’s teachings or stories is the most meaningful or relevant in your life today…and why?”

Here are just a few of the responses….

Ed—husband, father, Chinese-American, physician, member of a stake presidency—said: “The story of Jesus, the Jew, teaching the Samarian woman at Jacob’s well. Because I see how ‘mainstream’ members must reach outside their comfort groups to seek out the ‘socially unnoticed,’ ‘even looked-down-upon’ to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the process, we will see the worth of all souls regardless of the differences in cultures and traditions, and genuinely love them all, as Jesus and Heavenly Father do.”

Mike—husband, father, documentary film maker, of Presbyterian faith—stated: “The Sermon on the Mount, because it includes so many moral teachings that are as relevant today as ever; because it includes the Lord’s prayer, in which Jesus teaches us how to pray; and because it basically turns the world’s values upside down. Christ also raises the bar very high in terms of our behavior.”

Levent—father, husband, American Muslim, community leader, tech manager for NASA—responded: “I think Jesus’ missions of reforming the errant ways of the Jews and of loving and serving his neighbor, especially the unfortunate, is most significant. I also think Mary is an inspiring example of a righteous woman of faith. She inspires us to honor mothers and honor womanhood in the service of God.”

Jean—mother, grandmother, and primary caregiver in her fifty-three-year marriage—stated: “Christ’s admonition ‘As I have loved you, love one another’ . . . because I want to be known, and thought of, as one of Christ’s disciples who tries to follow his example and teachings in my life, and in my relationships with others.”

Richard—husband, father, of the Jewish faith and psychologist to professional athletes and the entertainment industry—confided: “I may not be the best person to answer this because, while I am respectful of my faith, I am not literate in the teachings of Judaism. But, simply put, I see in the teachings of Christ the importance of faith, hope, and sacrifice.”

Dennis—husband, father, psychologist, director of Pepperdine’s Center for the Family, member of the Churches of Christ—replied: “I am continually aware of my need for God’s grace. Much of my professional life is based on accomplishments, and ‘works,’ to earn promotions and advancement. It is helpful to be reminded that my relationship with God and my salvation are not based on working hard or being deserving, but through the grace of God, through Christ—something I could never accomplish on my own.”

Michael—husband, father, university senior advancement officer, Lutheran minister—answered: “Luke 4—Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth. He reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Because for me, this is the content of the mission God has given me. The focus is always on serving the downtrodden and marginalized.”

Claudette—wife, African-American, director of university alumni relations, drawn to her Episcopal congregation for their social justice ministries—said: “Jesus constantly reached out to those who were considered ‘untouchable,’ who might today be described as marginalized. Even though these people were considered by the conventional religious practice of that era to be of low status, or unclean, or unacceptable, Jesus embraced them.”

Well, little did I realize, when I posed this simple question to friends and colleagues recently, the ensuing conversations I’d enjoy and be thoughtfully provoked by. I received responses from Jews, Muslims, Evangelicals, agnostics, and Latter-day Saints. Individuals of different cultures, ethnicities, and education levels, as well as different faith traditions. Yet how interesting (and in some ways eternally perfect) it was that each person’s response was as diverse as the child of God expressing them. I suspect, as is the case for myself, that you would have heard a different response five years ago . . . as you would a year from now. I am grateful for these responses and the relationships of trust and respect that they reflect. But I am most grateful for the tutoring I have received as a result of their insights concerning Christ’s ministry and example . . . to Christian, Muslim, and Jew alike. It has been a rich source of reflection and contemplation about my own testimony of Christ and being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It’s quite a reality check when I think that Christ’s entire mortal ministry was only three years long—the fulcrum of human history, the time everything that went before pointed to and the time everything has happened since hearkens back to. I think back to three years ago. It was really just yesterday! I have been a professor for over thirteen years and I feel as if I still don’t quite get it. I’ve attempted to play tennis for about thirty-five years and I am still struggling. Christ has less time than is contained in one term of an American president in which to save the entire human family. To say that He hits the floor running is an understatement! He makes maximum use of every moment of time.

So, I ask the question to myself, “Which of Jesus Christ’s teachings or stories is the most meaningful or relevant in my life today as a woman, a psychologist, and a professor . . . and why?” And, as a member of the Mormon faith, “What compels me to voluntarily commit so much of my time and money engaged in things besides my career/family, when both can be in short supply?”

I look to Christ. In my opinion, EVERY teaching of Christ leads to the atonement, and arguably my three favorite scriptures describe the essence of the Atonement—that is, Christ’s willingness, ability, and eternal commitment to find, fix, bind up, repair, make whole and holy everyone who is lost or broken. One of the most touching moments in Christ’s mortal life that illustrates His profound commitment to heal us is recorded in Matthew 14:12-14. Jesus had just received word that His beloved cousin and closest friend, John the Baptist, had just been murdered by Herod. He is devastated by grief. He goes away by Himself to mourn and weep, but the multitudes follow Him, clamoring for help—and, at this moment of His deepest need, He rises up, goes to them and begins ministering to their needs. Because that’s what Christ does: He ministers, He heals, He fills us, no matter His own fatigue or sorrows.

Second, there is a particular component of Jesus’ life that has always overwhelmed and touched me. It is best reflected in the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” The scene in John 11:35 . . . Christ at the side of Mary and Martha grieving at the death of their brother, Lazarus. Can you just picture the Savior of the world, overcome with sadness because of a profound loss? The scriptures do not say that he cried or just shed a few tears—but the Master wept! What a model of pure empathy.

And my third favorite “one-liner” from Christ, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, tutors me about relationally responding to all of His children when He says, “Go and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:37). Really, I believe we can almost encapsulate the entire Gospel message in these three passages: In a moment of His own pain the Savior ministers to others; He displays God-like empathy, and then He acts.

Empathy has been a focus of mine for many years now. Oddly enough, it’s been part of my job description in teaching/supervising future psychotherapists. In fact, along with teaching and observing students’ in empathic “techniques,” I share with my students that researchers have determined that it is one’s perceived receiving of empathic understanding that is the defining and most predictable factor for positive outcomes in psychotherapy. A pretty simple and humbling idea for clinicians to hear. It’s inspired empathy, rather than the number of degrees on the wall, the designer furniture in your office, or your theoretical orientation that predicts positive outcome or change for those you seek to serve. While we all know that there are relational skills or sensibilities that improve love, communication, and understanding, Christ-like empathy is informed by the Spirit.

Empathic attunement to others is so fundamental, not just to my professional work, but to all of our lives, in general. It’s vital to our growth as citizens in the world, because there are too many failures of empathy that constrain our ability to live as a community of believers, as Christ taught us to do.

I recall a conversation I had with some colleagues awhile back. A married couple, humble yet noteworthy members of the Mormon Church, with a respected resumé professionally and of Church service. They had experienced the unexpected and tragic death of one of their sons. I sensed their desire to share with me their experience, now that some time had passed. So I found myself in a familiar scene of asking if they’d be willing to take me by the hand and walk me through their emotional world. The husband stated: “I was so profoundly pained by this loss . . . The grief was traumatic and I became numb. One of our congregation leaders at the time came and preached to me. It was quite excessive. He didn’t tune into my emotions at all. He was unable to reach and touch my pain. The whole experience left me feeling more empty, quite disappointed, and quite confused, actually, at this leader’s inability to reach my suffering.” Being a psychologist, he then added, “Perhaps, in some way, this leader was defensively trying to protect himself from his own anxiety at my situation, and thus preached doctrine instead of touching our family’s pain. Fortunately though, there were three other leaders, very distinguished leaders in the Church, none of whom tried to preach to us about what we should do or how we should handle it, but simply embraced us and shared their empathy for our feelings. This was so powerful and satisfying.”

His wife then added, “Our son was one of three triplets, and I can remember vividly another well-intentioned woman in the ward who said to me ‘I’m so sorry about your son. But at least you have the other two.’”

Oops. Yet again, another failure to display an emotion matching or mirroring the others. Another mis-step in effective Christ-like empathy. Certainly we can all do a better job at looking to Christ’s depth and capacity of expressing appropriate and authentic emotion. In so doing, perhaps we will become more comfortable with being uncomfortable, as we sit alongside others on their worst days.

In contrast, there are numerous great examples daily, worldwide, of the kind of empathy we seek to practice . . . in therapy offices, hospitals, humanitarian relief, interfaith collaborations, in family homes, dialogues on campuses, women’s shelters, orphanages, hospices. We’ve all witnessed and been humbled by them.

This is what inspires me. This is where a significant part of my testimony lies.

A central aspect of Christ’s teaching that, in my humble opinion, exemplifies that he was the greatest psychologist who ever lived, was to communicate the life-transforming power of knowing our Heavenly Father, not as intellectual knowledge, but as a direct relational experience.

The woman at the well, just as the young woman confiding in her Bishop, was so profoundly moved by Jesus’ empathic understanding of her that she felt as if he knew “everything she ever did.” This was how Jesus demonstrated his personal power. At times he showed his miraculous spiritual and intellectual power, but he had a special love, a perfect love, for communicating personal power through his empathy for others. Jesus had the ability to impress large crowds with amazing displays of divine authority, but he was most interested in making contact with each individual personally. He did not see his greatest miracles on earth as having to do with physical displays of supernatural power; he saw them as moments when his empathic connection with human hearts left lives changed forever. Empathy is understanding, and no one in the history of the world has displayed a greater capacity for it than Jesus. As a result of his mortal experience, culminating in the Atonement, the Savior knows, understands, and feels every human condition, every human woe, and every human loss. In fact, one of the blessings of the Atonement is that we can receive of the Savior’s succoring powers.

Neal A. Maxwell, an insightful leader in the Mormon faith, described the relationship between the Atonement and the Savior’s succoring powers this way: “His empathy and capacity to succor us—in our own sickness, temptations, or sins—were demonstrated and perfected in the process of the great Atonement.” Elder Maxwell went on to say, “The marvelous Atonement brought about not only immortality but also the final perfection of Jesus’ empathic and helping capacity.”

Clearly, Elder Maxwell has taken the idea of empathy into a higher realm. By his use of this and other scriptures, as well as inspired insight, he describes a transcendent form of empathy that we can acquire only as a gift of God. We might call this meta-empathy . . . when the Lord gives us insight into another person’s feelings that carries us beyond ordinary perceptions. With this insight, we are enlightened to heal and help those around us in a unique way.

Sadly, we rarely encounter empathy “as a way of being,” in ourselves or in others. Many of us need to consciously “shift gears” in order to get into that calm, loving, empathic zone. In fact, I’ve become more surprised at how few people are aware of the power of empathy or even the concept of empathic attunement in their relationships.

Truman Madsen, a Harvard-educated philosophy scholar, described the power of Christ’s empathy when he stated that “No human encounter, no tragic loss, no spiritual failure is beyond the pale of his present knowledge and compassion. . . . And any theology which teaches that there were some things he did not suffer is a falsification of his life. He knew them all. Why? That he might succor, which is to say comfort and heal, this people. He knew the full nature of the human struggle.”

So, what are the obstacles to empathy in our lives today? Well, the list is endless: pride, arrogance, anger, status seeking, judging, blaming, narcissism, defensiveness, parent exhaustion, anxiety/depression. Countless factors are working against us in reaching that Christ-like empathy.

Meta-empathy, as I referred to earlier, or reaching toward the Christ-like discernment of knowing another’s emotions, occurs, and is quite different than everyday kindness. It is a gift from God. Reaching towards God’s empathy, we need to rely on faith in God and in his timing, not our own. Christ’s empathy is more perfect than ours, for he can know and read our minds completely. He can know more perfectly how to help us and how we might help others. Who more than we, his disciples, need to be understood, need to be healed, and need to be inspired ourselves, so that we in turn can reflect God’s love and serve as his instruments?

None of us have experienced every human experience, so we fall short in having direct empathy for everyone’s challenges to which our heart responds. However, to the extent that we are people of sorrows and acquainted with grief, we may be, like Jesus, more tender and more compassionate. He looks for goodness where others see badness. In the broken-down soul He sees humility. In the sinner He sees emptiness and readiness. He perfectly practiced the charity He preached. He invites us to see each other with “kindness and pure knowledge” (2 Cor. 6:6; D&C 121:42). And if we are to see each other right, we must first be willing to see goodness.

One simple place to start might be to increase our capacity to listen empathically, as well as to tolerate uncomfortable things—and do so without feeling compelled to preach at someone (as my friend painfully shared) or to generate a ten-point plan of how they can “snap out of it.” It is my observation that most people listen with the intent to reply, not with the intent to understand. Once again, it’s worth remembering that Christ’s empathic response to those deeply grieving the loss of Lazarus was to openly weep with them (John 11:35).

I love the Savior with all my heart. He is a Comforter. He is a Friend.

I’m grateful for his atoning sacrifice and for the ways in which he consecrates my best efforts—and makes up for my lacking.

I am eternally grateful for having been born of “goodly parents.”

But even with the abundance of blessings I have received, when I have hit those inevitable Gethsemane days I am encouraged to remember that this is not my heavenly home. Rather, I am compelled to turn heavenward for His love, peace, and reassurance, through this time of training and correction. I thank the Lord for having loved and carried me in times when I have been less able to perceive His Hand in all things. This is my testimony and where my faith rests. This is where my stillness lies.

I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He lives. I know that God lives and loves us.

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Marilyn S. Wright grew up in the Pasadena area of Southern California. She attended BYU-Hawaii for her first two years of college on both academic and athletic scholarships before transferring to UCLA, where she graduated with a degree in psychology. Dr. Wright received both her master’s and doctoral degrees from Pepperdine University, as well as completing a two-year psychology residency at Berkshire Medical Center in Massachusetts. For the past fifteen years, Marilyn has been on the faculty of Pepperdine, teaching in both their Marriage and Family Therapy as well as Doctoral Psychology programs. In 2005, Dr. Wright was Pepperdine’s invited commencement speaker and was honored with their Distinguished Faculty/Alumna of the Year Award for significant contributions to the field of psychology, reflecting values that the university upholds. She has served on Pepperdine’s Board of Visitors for the past five years.

In 2008, the California Psychological Association awarded Dr. Wright the Silver Psi Award for her sustained service to the profession and noteworthy contributions to the field.

Dr. Wright was in private practice from 1998-2008 in Pasadena, California, as well as on medical staff at two leading psychiatric hospitals in the area. She is past-president of the San Gabriel Valley Psychological Association and, for eleven years, was the director of the Los Angeles Area Chapter of AMCAP, the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy.

In 2007/08, Dr. Wright was asked to be the in-studio guest for a live KABC talk radio show in Los Angeles discussing the public’s common misperceptions of Mormons and the Mitt Romney campaign. The program received great ratings, and Dr. Wright was invited back on the program an unexpected nine times. She has been an invited speaker at BYU Education Week on a range of topics, from understanding and managing clinical anxiety and depression to the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers and emerging adults.

She currently serves as Oakland Stake’s Interfaith and Community Relations Specialist, and an Executive Committee Member of both the Contra Costa County Interfaith Council and the Lamorinda Interfaith Ministers Association.

In 2008, after forty-two years of holding out for “Mr. Wright,” he finally came along, and, shortly thereafter, she married and moved to northern California’s East Bay. She currently resides in the Moraga Ward, enjoys navigating the wonderful world of six grown children and eighteen grandchildren, and has a practice in Walnut Creek.

Posted October 2010

Wie ich zu einer Überzeugung vom Dasein Gottes kam
und wie diese Überzeugung in mir gewachsen ist

Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes

Als unsere vier Kinder klein waren verbrachten wir einen Sommer auf einer Almhütte in der Steiermark. Eines Nachts lag ich auf einer Wiese vor dem Haus und schaute in den Himmel in seiner Pracht und Unermesslichkeit. Es kamen mir die Worte Immanuel Kants in den Sinn: „Zweierlei erfüllt mich mit Ehrfurcht und Staunen, das Sittengesetz in mir und die leuchtenden Sterne über mir“. Doch angesichts der Unermesslichkeit des Himmels über mir, 15 Milliarden Lichtjahre bis zur Grenze des uns heute bekannten Universums, fragte ich mich, wie nur der Gott des Himmels meine Gebete erhören kann. Ähnliche Gefühle muss der Psalmist gehabt haben: “wenn ich sehe den Himmel, deiner Finger Werk, den Mond und die Sterne, die du bereitet hast: was ist der Mensch, dass du seiner gedenkst, und des Menschen Kind, dass du dich seiner annimmst?“ (Psalm 8: 4-5) Und das ist das Wunder, dass Gott, trotz “Welten ohne Zahl“, uns kennt, jeden einzelnen persönlich, und uns liebt. Wenn wir in die Atome unseres Körpers (10 hoch 28) hineinsehen und vordringen könnten, in die Atome mit Atomkern, Elektronen, Protonen und Neutronen, Quark und Strings, dann würde uns dieselbe Unermesslichkeit mit Ehrfurcht und Staunen erfüllen und Zeugnis davon geben, dass der Mensch in der Mitte dieser Welten steht, dass die ganze Schöpfung auf ihn hin gerichtet ist. “Du hast ihn wenig niedriger gemacht als Gott, mit Ehre und Herrlichkeit hast du ihn gekrönt. Du hast ihn zum Herrn gemacht über deiner Hände Werk, alles hast du unter seine Füße getan.“ (Psalm 8:6-7)

Hitler in Wien – das Grauen des 2. Weltkrieges

Hitler in Wien. Ich war damals drei Jahre alt, aber ich kann mich noch erinnern wie Hitler, in seinem offenen VW stehend, die Hand zum „deutschen Gruß“ erhoben, Richtung Heldenplatz fuhr, um den Eintritt Österreichs in das Deutsche Reich zu verkünden. Er wurde von einer großen Menge begeistert empfangen, aber eine weitaus größere war nicht versammelt. Tags vor dem Einmarsch landete die SS in Wien und verhaftete überfallsartig an die hunderttausend Österreicher, alle diejenigen, die gegen den Einmarsch vielleicht protestiert hätten.

Die Beseitigung der Arbeitslosigkeit, die die Folge des „Friedensvertrages“ von Versailles war, verstärkt durch den “Schwarzen Freitag“ an der Wall Street – in dem Haus, in dem meine Eltern wohnten, war mein Vater der einzige, der eine Arbeit hatte – die Angst vor dem Kommunismus, gegen den sich Hitler als Retter aufspielte, die Unterstützung Hitlers durch die Medien, Banken und Großindustrie, und die Uneinigkeit unter den demokratischen Parteien – in Österreich auch die Ausschaltung des Parlaments und der Opposition durch den Bundeskanzler Engelbert Dollfuß – erklärt die Begeisterung vieler Österreicher beim Einmarsch Hitlers. Doch von diesem Tag an war es verboten das Wort Österreich auch nur auszusprechen, widrigenfalls man in ein Konzentrationslager gekommen wäre. Heinrich, der Bruder meines Vaters, der das Familien-Gut in der Tschechoslowakei verwaltete musste einrücken, an die russische Front. Wann immer er während eines Heimaturlaubs meinen Vater besuchte, haben sich die beiden dann nach dem Abendessen

meist zurückgezogen und miteinander geflüstert. Das hat natürlich meine Neugierde geweckt und ich versuchte, so viel wie möglich mitzubekommen von dem, was mein Onkel meinem Vater über den Krieg zu erzählen hatte, es war erschreckend, das öffentlich zu äußern hätte wegen “Wehrkraftzersetzung“ den sicheren Tod bedeutet.

Als die Zeit der Bombenangriffe kam, wurden meine Mutter und ich evakuiert; von Wien nach Tracht im heutigen Tschechien, zur Schwester meiner Mutter, die dort verheiratet war. Als die russische Front näher kam sind wir mit ihr und ihren drei Kindern in Richtung amerikanische Front geflüchtet. In einem von Ochsen gezogenen Planwagen, so wie die Pioniere, mit dem Unterschied, dass unsere Reise im Frühjahr erfolgte, viel kürzer war, nur zweihundertfünfzig Kilometer, und dass wir auf unserer Flucht von amerikanischen Tieffliegern beschossen wurden. Als wir die Tiefflieger kommen und auf die Flüchtlinge, meist nur Frauen und Kinder schießen sahen, warfen wir uns in einen Straßengraben, was uns wahrscheinlich das Leben gerettet hat. Und ich begriff, dass Kriegsverbrechen nicht nur von den Verlierern begangen werden.

Nach dem Krieg haben in Linz meine Mutter und ich in einem bombenbeschädigten Haus gewohnt, in dem die Wand zur Straße hin fehlte. Wir lebten wie auf einer Theaterbühne, bis wir dann schließlich nach Wien zurückgekehrt, zu unserer Freude meinen Vater vorfanden, von dem wir über Monate kein Lebenszeichen hatten.

Österreich war zwar befreit, aber nicht frei. In der Moskauer Deklaration erklärten die vier Außenminister der Großmächte die Besetzung Österreichs durch Deutschland am 13. März 1938 als null und nichtig und sie erklärten, dass nach dem Sieg über Hitler Deutschland ein freies und unabhängiges Österreich wiederhergestellt werden sollte. Aber aus den Verbündeten des 2. Weltkrieges wurden die Gegner des Kalten Krieges, und die Nachbarstaaten wurden kommunistische “Volksdemokratien“: 1947 Ungarn, 1948 die Tschechoslowakei, und im selben Jahr sperrte die sowjetische Besatzungsmacht die Zufahrtswege nach Westberlin, die Teilung Deutschlands begann. Die Gefahr, dass Österreich ein gleiches Schicksal erleiden könnte, war groß. Doch das Wunder geschah, nach vielen Entmutigungen und Rückschlägen, hunderten von Verhandlungen, konnte Leopold Figl, der Außenminister und vormalige erste Bundeskanzler eines demokratischen Österreichs, am 15. Mai 1955 den Österreichern zurufen: “Mit dem Dank an den Allmächtigen haben wir den Vertrag unterzeichnet und mit Freuden verkünden wir heute: Österreich ist frei.“

Auf der Suche nach Wahrheit

Der Staatsvertrag gab Österreich, das von den vier Alliierten besetzt war, seine volle Souveränität und Freiheit wieder. Das war eine Ermutigung für die Ungarn, sich von der kommunistischen Herrschaft zu befreien. Und so kam es im Oktober 1956, ausgehend von Protesten der Studenten, zu dem heroischen Freiheitskampf des ungarischen Volkes, der von den Sowjetpanzern niedergewalzt wurde. Ich war tief davon betroffen, dass niemand diesem Volk in seinem Kampf um die Freiheit beistand, entgegen allen politischen Zusicherungen der West-Propaganda.

So wurde der Ungarische Freiheitskampf für mich zu jenem Schlüsselerlebnis, das mich veranlasste nach Wahrheit zu suchen. Ich begann im Neue Testament zu lesen und wurde von den Worten Jesu Christi, sehr ergriffen. Diese Worte waren für mich neu, denn ich bin ohne irgendwelche Belehrungen über das Evangelium aufgewachsen. Ich habe nie etwas von unserem himmlischen Vater und nur Entstelltes über unseren Erlöser gehört. Und doch hat sich in mir als kleines Kind ein sehr starkes und ausgeprägtes Gefühl vom Dasein eines unsichtbaren, geistigen Wesens entwickelt, das persönlich an mir Anteil nimmt und – wie ein liebender Vater – mich in allem versteht. Dieses Wesen war für mich etwas ganz Reales und eine wirkliche Person, ich habe mich mit ihr in allen meinen kindlichen Sorgen und Nöten besprochen. Allmählich hatte ich dann aber dieses Gefühl, das mich sehr froh gestimmt hat, verloren; und während meiner Universitätszeit habe ich dann nur mehr einen abstrakten Begriff von Gott gehabt – bis dann im Jahr 1958 zwei Missionare an die Türe klopften: “Ich habe eine Botschaft für Sie von Gott.“ Ich lud sie ein hereinzukommen und war überrascht, dass ich das tat, weil ich eigentlich kein Interesse an irgendeiner Kirche oder Religion hatte. Die “Botschaft von Gott“ war die Botschaft der Wiederherstellung des Evangeliums Jesu Christi durch den Prophet Joseph Smith. Die Missionare erzählten mir viel über Joseph Smith, von der Ersten Vision bis zu seinem Märtyrertod. Dass jemand bereit war für die Wahrheit sein Leben zu geben, statt das der anderen zu fordern, hat mein Herz berührt. Ich habe dann später in Lehre und Bündnisse gelesen, dass der Märtyrertod Joseph Smiths und der seines Bruders Hyrum “ein Botschafter für die Religion Jesu Christ ist, der den ehrlichen Menschen in allen Nationen das Herz anrühren wird.“ (Lehre und Bündnisse 135:7) Es hat mein Herz berührt und es wurde mir klar, dass diese Botschaft der Wiederherstellung entweder die wichtigste Botschaft in unserer Zeit ist – oder eine große Lüge. Um das herausfinden, habe ich das Buch Mormon gelesen, gebetet und durch die Macht des Heiligen Geistes erfahren, dass es keine Erfindung ist und Joseph Smith wirklich der Prophet der im Neuen Testament vorhergesagten Wiederherstellung der Kirche Jesu Christi ist. Ich verspürte große Freude, großen Frieden, ich hatte keine Fragen mehr darüber ob Joseph Smith ein Prophet ist. Und so habe ich mich vor über fünfzig Jahren, am 30. November 1958, der Kirche angeschlossen.

Gott ist ein erhöhter Mensch

Die Wahrheit dieser Botschaft wurde in diesen mehr als fünfzig Jahren durch viele Erlebnisse, Zeichen und Wunder in meinem Leben bestätigt. Und meine Kenntnis vom Wesen Gottes wuchs. Wie dankbar war ich für den Prophet Joseph Smith und jenem großen Erlebnis, das er hatte, als er sich zurückzog, um zum ersten Mal laut zu beten. In dem Bericht in der Köstlichen Perle heißt es: „Als das Licht auf mir ruhte sah ich zwei Gestalten von unbeschreiblicher Helle und Herrlichkeit über mir in der Luft stehen, eine von ihnen redete mich an, nannte mich beim Namen und sagte, auf die andere deutend: ‚Dies ist mein geliebter Sohn, Ihn höre.“ Nach all den unbegreiflichen Vorstellungen von Gott in der damaligen Zeit, wusste der junge Joseph Smith, als er zu seiner Mutter zurückkehrte, mehr über das Wesen Gottes und über die Göttlichkeit Jesu Christi, als alle die darüber ihre uninspirierten Meinungen kundtaten. Er hatte persönlich erfahren, dass “Gott ist ein erhöhter Mensch; er thront in den Himmeln, und wenn der Schleier heute zerrisse und der große Gott, der diese Welt in ihrer Bahn hält, der alle Welten und überhaupt alles durch Seine Macht aufrechterhält, sich dem Auge sichtbar machen würde – ja, wenn ihr Ihn heute sehen könntet, so würdet ihr Ihn in menschlicher Gestalt erblicken: in Person und Erscheinung und auch in der Gestalt einem Menschen ähnlich, so wie ihr“ (Joseph Smith, King Follet Ansprache).

Ich habe erfahren, dass der Glaube an Gott der Seele Frieden bringt, dass das Bewusstsein, ein Kind Gottes zu sein, uns Selbstachtung verleiht, eine Voraussetzung, um in schwierigen Zeiten die richtigen Entscheidungen zu treffen, dass der Glaube an Gott uns hilft, „Schwierigkeiten mit Mut, Enttäuschungen mit Frohsinn und Erfolge mit Demut hinzunehmen“ (Thomas S. Monson, gegenwärtiger Präsident der Kirche).

Ich habe erfahren, dass das Sühnopfer Jesu Christi, dieser unser menschliches Vorstellungsvermögen übersteigende Ausdruck der Liebe das Herz berührt und den Lauf der Welt verändert.

Ja, ich habe in meinem Leben erfahren, dass „Glücklich der Mensch, der wahrhaftig die erhebende, wandelnde Kraft verspürt hat, die der Nähe zum Erretter entspringt. Was Sie aufrichtigen Herzens von Christus halten, bestimmt in hohem Maß, wer Sie sind und was Sie tun. Niemand kann dieses göttliche Wesen studieren und seine Lehren annehmen, ohne sich eines erhebenden, läuternden Einflusses in sich selbst bewusst zu werden“ (David O McKay, Präsident der Kirche, als ich mich der Kirche anschloss).

Die Bedeutung des Wiener Burgtheaters in meinem Leben

Von der einstigen Welt des Habsburgerreiches, das so groß war, dass darin die Sonne nicht unterging, blieb lediglich der Welt-Theater Spielplan des Wiener Burgtheaters. 1976 feierte das Burgtheater – wie die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika – sein 200-jähriges Bestehen. Joseph II., der Gründer, war ein Sohn der Aufklärung und sah im Burgtheater eine Schule der Erziehung für die vielsprachigen Völker des Habsburgerreiches. Die Menschen, die aus Völkern kamen, die mental aus verschiedenen Jahrhunderten, ja Jahrtausenden stammten, aus allen Religionen Europas, sollten durch das Spiel auf der Bühne dazu eingeladen werden, sich auf der Bühne des Lebens zu verständigen: In einer gemeinsamen Sprache der Menschlichkeit. Das Wiener Burgtheater wurde so zu dem wohl bedeutendsten Theater dramatischer Weltliteratur, mit dem größten an ein Theater verpflichteten Ensemble von über 150 Schauspielern und einem jederzeit abrufbaren Repertoire von 20-30 Produktionen.

Für viele große Österreicher, so wie auch für den in Wien geborenen Teddy Kollek, den ersten Bürgermeister eines vereinten Jerusalems, wurde das Burgtheater zu einer Stätte der Erziehung und Aufklärung, ein Ort der Wahrheitsfindung, an der man trachtete den guten Instinkten der Menschen voranzugehen und nicht seine schlechten zu befriedigen. Richard Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi, der Begründer der Pan-Europa-Idee, schreibt in seinen Lebenserinnerungen: „Oft wurden wir in das Burgtheater zu den Klassikervorstellungen geschickt. Die pädagogische Wirkung war ausgezeichnet. Keine Moralpredigt kann auf ein junges Gemüt einen ähnlich starken Einfluss ausüben wie ein klassisches Drama, das im höchsten Sinne des Wortes moralisch ist. Denn es schildert den Kampf der höher gearteten Menschen, des Helden, mit Schicksal und Umwelt und weckt die Sehnsucht, lieber in Ehren zu sterben, als in Gemeinheit zu leben.“ So verbrachte auch ich, von Kindheit an, viele Stunden auf den Stehplätzen des Wiener Burgtheaters, Und ich kann sagen, dass die große klassische Theaterliteratur, in ihren vollendeten Vorstellungen am Burgtheater, mich auf die Botschaft des Evangeliums vorbereitet hat.

Gott, der Regisseur meines Lebens

Der ungarische Freiheitskampf wurde, wie berichtet, zu dem Schlüsselerlebnis, das mein ganzes Leben verändern sollte. Von dem Zeitpunkt an begann ich bewusst nach Wahrheit zu suchen. Ich gab das Architekturstudium auf und begann an der philosophischen Fakultät der Wiener Universität Theaterwissenschaften, Literatur und Kunstgeschichte zu studieren, ein – heute verständlicher – Schock für meine Eltern. Um mein Studium zu finanzieren, arbeitete ich in einem Architekturbüro und absolvierte mein Studium in der kürzest möglichen Zeit.

Ich begann dann an einer Dissertation über Heinz Hilpert zu arbeiten, dem Nachfolger von Max Reinhardt am Deutschen Theater Berlin und Wien. Auf meine Anfrage hin wurde ich eingeladen, an zwei seiner Inszenierungen am Deutschen Theater in Göttingen als Volontär dabei zu sein. Am Tag bevor die Proben begannen erkrankte ich: eitrige Angina mit hohem Fieber. Der Zweigpräsident, den ich aufsuchte und um einen Krankensegen bat, erklärte, er könne das ohne einen zweiten Priestertumsträger nicht tun. Ich war damals ein junges Mitglied der Kirche und habe mir gedacht, wenn ich ihm sage, dass er mir auch den Segen allein geben kann, macht er es doch ohne Glauben, deshalb ist es sicher besser, ich gehe wieder und vertraue auf den Herrn. Als ich aus dem Haustor ging, sah ich zwei Missionare auf ihren Rädern auf der Straße auf mich zukommen. Ich sprang auf die Straße: “Ich brauche einen Krankensegen“. Sie haben mir dann auf den Stufen des Hauses, aus dem ich gerade kam, einen Segen gegeben. Am nächsten Tag war ich gesund. Und nahm an den Proben teil.

Zu dieser Zeit vollendete Carl Zuckmayer, ein berühmter deutscher Dramatiker, der auch den „Hauptmann von Köpenick“ geschrieben hat, ein neues Stück über die Nachkriegszeit mit dem symbolischen Titel “Die Uhr schlägt eins“. Das Wiener Burgtheater wollte unbedingt die Uraufführung haben und Zuckmayer wollte Heinz Hilpert, bei dem ich gerade volontierte, als Regisseur dieser Uraufführung. Dann war es irgendwie naheliegend, dass er mich als seinen Regieassistent ans Burgtheater mitnahm. Und dort blieb ich dann. Ein Viertel Jahrhundert. Zunächst als Regieassistent, dann als Vertrauensmann des Ensembles in der Direktion und dann viele Jahre als Generalsekretär (Secretary General) des Burgtheaters, mit dem Aufgabengebiet: Betreuung des Ensembles des Burgtheaters und die künstlerische Planung von rund zweihundert Dramen, des klassischen, des zeitgenössischen und des österreichischen Theaters.

Ein viertel Jahrhundert meines beruflichen Lebens an diesem Theater zu verbringen, war die Erfüllung eines Traumes, doch der Niedergang dieses Theaters, der zu meinem Weggang führte, wurde zu dem Alptraum meines Lebens.

“Junge Männer sollen Gesichte sehen“

Als Ezra Taft Benson über Europa präsidierte, kam es im Jahr 1965 zu “Freud Echo“, der ersten großen Junge Erwachsenen Konferenz in Frankfurt mit dem Motto“Junge Männer sollen Gesichte sehen“. Ich h a b e dort ein Gesicht gesehen und es dann ein halbes Jahr später geheiratet: Ursula Tischhauser aus Esslingen, Sparkassenangestellte und Pfahlleiterin der Primarvereiningung des Pfahles Stuttgart.

Der Herr hat uns mit vier Kindern und bisher fünf Enkelsöhnen gesegnet und wir haben mit unseren Kindern sehr viel Freude und auch viel Leid erfahren. Unsere Tochter Ulrike wohnt zu unserer Freude mit ihrem Mann Andreas, Gymnasiallehrer, und ihren drei Söhnen Oskar (16), Leoz (14) Tim (10) in dem Haus neben uns und es war für uns eine große Freude, nach den Jahren in der Gebietspräsidentschaft von Frankfurt wieder nach Wien zurückzukehren, in eine Gemeinde, in der unser Sohn Helmut, Konzertmanager, als Bischof dient. Auch seine Familie, mit Julia seiner Frau und seinen Söhnen Samuel (6) und Benjamin (3), wohnen in unmittelbarer Nähe. Der Präsident des Schweizer Tempels sagte zu uns, als unsere Ehe gesiegelt wurde: “Sie werden sehen, die größte Freude in Ihrem Leben wird sein, die Glaubenstreue ihrer Kinder und Kindeskinder zu erleben“. Eine wahre Prophezeiung: Wir haben diese Freude verspürt, aber auch das Leid erfahren durch den Herztod unseres wundervollen Sohnes Georg und durch die Abkehr vom Evangelium unseres geliebten erstgeborenen Sohnes Michael.

Die Kirche wird wachsen, wenn die Mitglieder glücklicher werden

Einige Monate bevor der Pfahl Wien gegründet wurde, hatte ich einen Traum. Gibt es eigentlich ein „himmlisches Burgtheater“, in dem Träume und Visionen hergestellt werden? In diesem Traum gab mir Ezra T. Benson. einen Segen mit der Verheißung: „Die Kirche wird wachsen, wenn die Mitglieder glücklicher werden“. Einige Monate danach erfuhr ich, dass Ezra T. Benson, zu dieser Zeit Präsident des Kollegiums der Zwölf Apostel, nach Wien kommen wird, um den Pfahl Wien, den ersten Pfahl in Österreich zu gründen. In meiner Einsetzung als Pfahlpräsident, war seine Botschaft dieselbe wie die im Traum, nur mit mehr Worten.

Auf unsere Frage wie die Mitglieder glücklicher werden können, gaben uns Propheten die Antwort. George Albert Smith: „Ihr Glück ist so groß wie Ihre Nächstenliebe, so groß wie das Maß der Liebe, das Sie den Menschen erweisen, mit denen Sie es hier auf Erden zu tun haben.“ Und Ezra Taft Benson: „Vor allen anderen Menschen glücklich, reich und gesegnet zu nennen ist der, dessen Leben am meisten dem des Gesalbten des Herrn, nämlich Jesus Christus, ähnelt.“ Das wurde die Hauptzielsetzung in unserer Arbeit für den Pfahl Wien Österreich. Wir begriffen, dass die Menschen zu lieben bedeutet unseren Hang zum Egoismus aufzugeben, der unser Herz verhärtet und den Verstand verdunkelt. Es bedeutet, dass wir die Philosophie des Eigennutzes aufzugeben haben, die die Ursache des meisten Unglücks ist, das unter den Menschen existiert, die darin besteht nach Macht, Gewinn und Vorteil auf Kosten anderer zu trachten. Und wir begriffen, dass die wirkliche Liebe Christi unabhängig ist vom Verhalten anderer. Sie stellt keine Reaktion dar, sondern sie ist eine Aktion, eine freie Entscheidung, die wir treffen, in unserem Versuch Christus nachzufolgen.

Als Präsident des Frankfurt Tempels habe ich erfahren, dass der Tempel die Universität Gottes ist um diese Liebe zu lernen. Hier, im Hause des Herrn, werden wir buchstäblich mit “Kraft aus der Höhe“ (“Power from On High“) ausgerüstet, d.h. mit der Kraft alles zu überwinden, was auch immer auf uns zukommen mag. Wie Joseph Smith in Kirtland erklärte: “Brüder, Sie brauchen ein Endowment damit sie vorbereitet und fähig sind, alles zu überwinden.“ Und in Nauvoo schrieb er nach den ersten Endowments in sein Tagebuch, dass diese gegeben wurden: “Um uns die Fülle jener Segnungen zu sichern, die für die Kirche des Erstgeborenen vorbereitet wurden: emporzusteigen und in der Gegenwart Elohims in den ewigen Welten zu wohnen.“

Die Freiheit – ein Geschenk Gottes

Wir in Österreich haben viel den Vereinigten Staaten zu verdanken! Ohne die Vereinigten Staaten wäre Hitler nicht besiegt worden, Österreich hätte nicht den Staatsvertag erhalten und unsere Kirche in Österreich nicht die staatliche Anerkennung. Die Grundsätze der Freiheit, die in der Verfassung der Vereinigten Staaten verankert sind, “gehören der ganzen Menschheit an“ (LuB 98), das heißt, dass sich von dort diese Grundsätze über die ganze Erde ausbreiten sollen. Doch wie? Mit “Blut und Schrecken“, als Diktat der Mächtigen? Ich lernte zu begreifen, dass Friede, Freiheit und Demokratie einem Volk nicht diktiert, nicht aufgezwungen werden können, diese müssen aus den Herzen der Menschen kommen.

Doch wer von den Mitgliedern der Kirche kennt schon diese Verfassung die durch Gott in Vorbereitung auf das Kommen Christi gegeben wurde? Ich habe erfahren, dass man diese mit der Laterne suchen muss. Wenn man die Verfassung nicht kennt, dann nimmt man auch nicht wahr, wie die Gott gegebenen Grundsätze dieser Verfassung von korrupten Politikern, Richtern, Medien immer mehr ausgehöhlt werden, und zu einem Verlust der Gott gegebenen Freiheit führen wird, so wie es zur Zeit der Nazi Diktatur in Deutschland der Fall war. Unpolitische oder politisch naive Mormonen widersprechen total meiner Vorstellung vom Evangelium Jesu Christi.

Wir in Österreich haben erfahren, dass Freiheit ein Geschenk Gottes ist, dass sie kostbar ist wie das Leben selbst. Und dass Freiheit ohne Verantwortung zum Verlust der Freiheit führt.

Ezra Taft Benson, vormaliger Präsident der Kirche Jesu Christi, der als Apostel im Kabinett von Dwight D. Eisenhower als Landwirtschaftsminister gedient hatte, hat bei der Gründung des Pfahles Wien uns ermutigt Verantwortung zu übernehmen und uns für die unveräußerlichen Rechte der Freiheit einzusetzen (“To stand up for freedom“). Ich kann mich, bei anderer Gelegenheit, an sein Statement erinnern: “Der Streit im Himmel, tobt nun hier auf Erden – wollt ihr euch neutralisieren lassen“. Ich sah auch auf seinem Schreibtisch den Spruch des britischen Staatsmannes Edmund Burke. “Die einzige Voraussetzung für den Triumph des Bösen ist, dass gute Menschen nichts tun.“ Das alles hat mich in meinem Denken und Handeln sehr beeinflusst.

Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass wie es John Taylor formulierte: „Neben dem Lehren des Evangeliums wir noch eine andere Mission zu erfüllen haben, nämlich die Entscheidungsfreiheit des Menschen zu bewahren und die Freiheit und freie Wahl des Menschen zu sichern„ („Besides the preaching of the gospel, we have another mission, namely, the perpetuation of the free agency of man and the maintenance of liberty, freedom, and the rights of man.“)

Der Fall der Berliner Mauer und das Ende des Kommunismus, das sicher nicht zufällig während der Präsidentschaft von Ezra Taft Benson stattfand, haben mich gelehrt, dass Gott alle Macht hat, die Weltgeschichte zu einem triumphalen Ende zu führen.

Es ist nicht durch Zufall geschehen

Im Mai 1985 fand eine Regionalkonferenz in Salzburg statt, an der Präsident Thomas S. Monson präsidierte. Am Samstag erklärte er in der Führerschaftsversammlung, dass Pfahlpräsidenten um die 9 Jahre dienen, und Bischöfe um die 3-5 Jahre. Am Sonntagvormittag, als ich der Salzach entlang ging, machte ich für meine restliche Zeit als Pfahlpräsident revolutionäre Pläne, und nach einer halben Stunde wurde ich entlassen. Ich wurde als Regionalrepräsentant berufen, und eine der Regionen waren die östlichen, kommunistischen Länder, die Länder des Ostblocks, wie unkundige Menschen diese so grundverschiedenen Länder nannten. Damals gab es in diesen Ländern nur drei Missionsehepaare, eines in Polen, eines in Kroatien und eines in Serbien. In nur zwanzig Jahren sind daraus neunzehn Missionen entstanden. Diese Länder waren ein Teil der Österreich Wien Mission, in der Spencer J. Condie als Missionspräsident diente, und als wir die Genehmigung für die ersten Vollzeitmissionare für diese Länder erhielten, wurde die Mission geteilt und Dennis B. Neuenschwander als Missionspräsident der Austria Vienna East Mission berufen. November 1989 kam es dann zum Fall der Berliner Mauer und dem Ende des Kommunismus, ohne größeres Blutvergießen.

Welch ein Wunder! Ich bin in Wien geboren und aufgewachsen, wir waren nur eine halbe Stunde vom Eisernen Vorhang entfernt, im Norden die kommunistische Tschechoslowakei, im Osten Ungarn, im Süden Jugoslawien. Ich habe mir nie gedacht, dass der Kommunismus jemals ohne einen neuen Weltkrieg und großes Blutvergießen überwunden wird. Und dann war es vorbei: über Nacht. Ein großes Wunder, das da vor unseren Augen geschehen ist.

Und doch: es ist nicht durch Zufall geschehen, sondern es war das Ergebnis von gläubigem Gebet und mutigen Taten auf kirchlicher und politischer Ebene. Präsident Kimball hat die Mitglieder gebeten, dafür zu beten, dass sich die Grenzen dieser Länder öffnen, und wir uns darauf vorbereiten in diese Länder zu gehen. Es folgte Präsident Monsons Verheißung in Görlitz, die Wiederweihung des Landes und der Bau des Freiberg Tempels auf kirchlicher Ebene, so wie die CSCE Verhandlungen in Helsinki und Folgekonferenzen auf politischer Ebene. Lynn Hansen, Botschafter der US, der vor wenigen Jahren auch als Missionspräsident in der Hamburg Mission diente, hat in einer überaus eindrucksvollen Präsentation “Europe: Miracle after Miracle“ diese Entwicklung aufgezeigt.

Elder Henry B. Eyring hat mich in Moskau als Siebziger ordiniert. Ich hätte mir nie träumen lassen, dass ich einmal in Moskau als Siebziger ordiniert werde. Aber in diesen Jahren, und insbesondere in den beiden Jahren in der Gebietspräsidentschaft habe ich viele Wunder erlebt, Früchte und Gaben des Geistes, die bestätigt haben, dass die Botschaft, die die Missionare mir gebracht hatten: “Wir haben eine Botschaft für Sie von Gott“, dass diese Botschaft wirklich von Gott war.

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How I Came to a Conviction of the Existence of God,
and How This Conviction Has Grown Within Me

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

When our four children were small, we spent a summer in an alpine cabin in Styria. One night, I lay on a meadow before the house and gazed into heaven in its splendor and immensity. The words of Immanuel Kant came into my mind: “Two things fill me with wonder and awe—the moral law within me and the radiant stars above me.” However, in view of the immensity of the heaven above me, fifteen billion light years to the edge of the universe known to us, I asked myself how the God of heaven can hear my prayers. The Psalmist must have had similar feelings: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4). And that is the miracle, that God, despite “worlds without number,” knows and loves each of us personally. If we could look into the 10²⁸ atoms of our bodies, and could penetrate into those atoms with the nuclei, electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and strings, the very same immensity would fill us with reverence and astonishment and would testify to us that Man stands in the middle of these worlds, that the entirety of creation is focused upon him: “You made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet” (Psalm 8:5-6).

Hitler in Vienna: The Horror of the Second World War

Hitler in Vienna. I was three years old at the time, but I can still remember how Hitler, standing in his open Volkwagen, raised his hand in the “German greeting” and traveled in the direction of Heroes’ Square in order to announce the entry of Austria into the German Reich. He was enthusiastically received by a vast crowd, but a much larger one had not gathered: The day before the invasion, the SS had landed in Vienna and, assault-style, arrested something on the order of a hundred thousand Austrians—all those who would, perhaps, have protested against the invasion.

Hope for relief from the unemployment that had resulted from the Treaty of Versailles and had been exacerbated by “Black Friday” on Wall Street—in the building in which my parents lived, my father was the only one who had work— accounts for the enthusiasm of many Austrians for Hitler’s invasion. So, too, does their fear of Communism (in the face of which Hitler portrayed himself as a savior) and the support of Hitler in the media and by banks and heavy industry. So, too, does the disunity among the democratic parties—and in Austria, specifically, the suppression of Parliament and of the opposition by Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß. From this day forward, though, it was forbidden even to speak the word Austria, lest one be sent to a concentration camp. My father’s brother, Heinrich, who managed the family estate in Czechoslovakia, was obliged to enlist for the Russian front. Whenever he visited my father on home leave, the two would generally draw off apart after the evening meal and speak in whispers. Naturally, that awakened my curiosity, and I tried, as much as possible, to hear what my uncle had to say to my father about the war. It was terrifying, and to publicly express it would have constituted “subversion of the war effort” [Wehrkraftersetzung] and meant certain death.

When the bomb attacks came, my mother and I were evacuated from Vienna to Tracht, in today’s Czech Republic, to my mother’s sister, who had married there. As the Russian front drew nearer, we fled, with her and her three children, toward the American front. In a covered wagon drawn by oxen, rather like the pioneers, but with the difference that our journey occurred early in the year and was much shorter (only about two hundred and fifty kilometers), and that, during our flight, we were being shot at by low-flying American aircraft. When we saw these strafing airplanes coming, firing upon the refugees (who were mostly just women and children), we cast ourselves into a roadside ditch, which probably saved our lives. And I came to understand that war crimes aren’t committed only by the losers.

After the war, my mother and I lived in a bomb-damaged house that was missing the wall facing the street. We lived as if we were on a theatrical stage, until we finally returned to Vienna and, to our joy, were reunited with my father, from whom we had had no sign of life for several months.

Austria had been liberated, but it wasn’t free. In the Moscow Declaration, the four foreign ministers of the great powers affirmed that Germany’s occupation of Austria on 13 March 1938 was null and void, and that, following the victory over Hitler’s Germany, a free and independent Austria should be re-established. But the allies of the Second World War became the opponents of the Cold War, and the neighboring countries became Communist “people’s democracies”: Hungary in 1947, Czechoslovakia in 1948—and, in that same year, Soviet occupation forces blocked the approaches to West Berlin and the partition of Germany began. There was considerable danger that Austria could suffer a similar fate. Nevertheless, after many disappointments and setbacks and hundreds of negotiations, a miracle occurred, and Leopold Figl, the foreign minister (and, prior to that, the first chancellor of a democratic Austria), was able to declare to the Austrians on 15 May 1955, “With gratitude to the Almighty, we have signed the treaty, and, with joy, we announce today that Austria is free!”

In Quest of Truth

The treaty gave Austria, which was occupied by the four allied powers, its full sovereignty and freedom. That encouraged the Hungarians to free themselves from Communist domination. And so, commencing with student protests, their efforts culminated in October 1956 in the heroic battle for freedom of the Hungarian people . . . that was then run over by Soviet tanks. I was deeply shocked by the fact that nobody stood with them in their struggle for freedom, despite all of the political assurances of Western propaganda.

Thus, the Hungarian battle for liberty became a pivotal experience for me, which impelled me to search for truth. I began to read in the New Testament, and was very taken by the words of Jesus Christ. These words were new to me, since I had grown up without any instruction about the Gospel. I had never heard anything about our Heavenly Father, and only distorted things about our Redeemer. Nonetheless, a very strong and distinct sense of the existence of an invisible spiritual being had developed within me from the time I was a small child—a being who takes personal interest in me, like a loving father, and understands me in everything. This being was, for me, something very real, and an actual person, someone with whom I had discussed all of my childish sorrows and needs. Gradually, though, I had lost this feeling, which had made me very happy, and during my university years I retained only a much more abstract concept of God—until, in the year 1958, two missionaries knocked on my door: “I have a message for you from God.” I invited them to come in, and was surprised at myself for doing so, because I actually had no interest in any church or religion. The “message from God” was the message of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The missionaries told me a great deal about Joseph Smith, from the First Vision to his death as a martyr. That someone was prepared to give his life for the truth rather than to demand the life of others touched my heart. Later, I read in the Doctrine and Covenants that the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and of his brother Hyrum “is an ambassador for the religion of Jesus Christ, that will touch the hearts of honest men among all nations” (Doctrine and Covenants 135:7). It touched my heart, and it became clear to me that this message of the Restoration was either the most important message of our time . . . or an enormous lie. In order to find out which, I read the Book of Mormon, prayed, and learned through the power of the Holy Ghost that it is no fabrication, and that Joseph Smith really is the prophet of the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ that is prophesied in the New Testament. I felt great joy, and great peace. I had no more questions about whether Joseph Smith was a prophet. And so, more than fifty years ago, on 30 November 1958, I joined the Church.

God is an Exalted Man

The truth of this message has been confirmed in my life during these more than fifty years through many experiences, signs, and wonders. And my knowledge of the nature of God grew. How thankful I was for the Prophet Joseph Smith and the great experience that he had when he withdrew for the first time in order to pray vocally. In the account in the Pearl of Great Price, it says, “When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other, This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” After all the incomprehensible notions of God in that time, the young Joseph Smith, when he returned to his mother, knew more about the nature of God and about the divinity of Jesus Christ than all of those who expressed their uninspired opinions on the subject. He knew from personal experience that “God . . . is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! . . . If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man” (King Follett Discourse).

I have learned through experience that faith in God brings peace to the soul, that the awareness that one is a child of God gives us self-respect, a prerequisite for making the right decisions in difficult times, and that faith in God helps us “to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility” (Thomas S. Monson, current president of the Church).
I have learned that the atonement of Jesus Christ, this expression of love that exceeds our human capacity to comprehend, touches the heart and alters the course of the world.

Indeed, I have learned in my life that “Happy the person who has truly sensed the uplifting transforming power that comes from this nearness to the Savior . . . What you sincerely in your heart think of Christ will determine what you are, will largely determine what your acts will be. No person can study this divine personality, can accept his teachings without becoming conscious of an uplifting and refining influence within himself” (David O. McKay, president of the Church at the time I joined the Church).

The Significance of the Vienna Burgtheater in My Life

Of the former world of the Hapsburg Empire, so large that the sun never set upon it, only the global repertoire of the Vienna Burgtheater remains. In 1976, like the United States of America, the Burgtheater celebrated its two-hundredth anniversary. Its founder, Joseph II, was a son of the Enlightenment and saw in the Burgtheater a school for the education of the multilingual peoples of the Hapsburg Empire. Men and women coming from peoples who, in their mentalities, represented different centuries, indeed different millennia, from all the religions of Europe, would be invited, through the play upon the stage, to come to an understanding upon the stage of life—in the common language of humanity. Thus, the Vienna Burgtheater became, it is fair to say, the most significant theater dedicated to the dramatic literature of the world, with the largest resident ensemble of actors (over one hundred and fifty of them) and a repertoire, available on demand at any given time, of between twenty and thirty productions.

For many great Austrians (as well as for Teddy Kollek, the first mayor of a united Jerusalem, who was born in Vienna), the Burgtheater became a venue for education and enlightenment, a place where truth was found, in which one strove to advance the good instincts of humanity rather than to gratify the bad ones. Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, originator of the idea of Pan-Europa, writes in his memoirs, “We were often sent to the Burgtheater to presentations of the classics. The paedagogical effect was superb. No moralizing sermon can have so powerful an influence on a young mind as a classical drama, which is moral in the highest sense of the word. For it portrays the struggle of the human of the higher nature, the hero, with fate and environment, and awakens the yearning to die with honor rather than live in meanness.” I too spent many hours, from my childhood on, in the standing-room-only areas of the Vienna Burgtheater. And I can say that the great classical literature of the theater, brought to life in productions at the Burgtheater, prepared me for the message of the Gospel.

God, the “Theatrical Director” of My Life

As I’ve said, the Hungarian struggle for freedom became a pivotal experience that would change my entire life. From that point forward, I began, very deliberately, to search for the truth. I gave up the study of architecture and began to study drama, literature, and art history in the philosophical faculty of the University of Vienna—which was a shock to my parents (one that I can understand a bit better today). In order to finance my studies, I worked in an architectural office, and I finished them in the shortest possible time.

I then began to work on a dissertation on Heinz Hilpert, the successor to Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and Vienna. I applied and was invited to take part as a volunteer in two of his productions at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen. The day before rehearsals began, however, I became ill: strep (or purulent) tonsillitis with a high fever. The branch president, whom I sought out for a healing blessing, said that he could not give one without a second priesthood holder. I was a new member of the Church at the time, and thought to myself that, even if I told him that he could actually give me a blessing alone, he would do it without faith. Thus, it would surely be better for me to go forward, trusting in the Lord. As I went out of the gate of the house, I saw two missionaries out on the street, coming toward me on their bicycles. I jumped into the street: “I’m sick and need a blessing!” So they gave me a blessing on the steps of the house I had just left. On the next day, I was healthy. And I participated in the rehearsals.

At this time, Carl Zuckmayer, a famous German dramatist who had also written Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (“The Captain of Köpenick”), finished a new piece about the postwar period bearing the symbolic title Die Uhr schlägt eins (“The Clock Strikes One”). The Vienna Burgtheater was absolutely determined to host the premiere, and Zuckmayer wanted Heinz Hilpert, with whom I had just volunteered, as the premiere’s producer. Somehow, it was just obvious that he should take me with him to the Burgtheater as his production assistant. And there I stayed. A quarter of a century. First as production assistant, then as representative of the ensemble in the directorate, and, finally, for many years as Secretary General of the Burgtheater with responsibility for taking care of the ensemble of the Burgtheater and for the artistic planning of roughly two hundred dramas of the classical, contemporary, and Austrian theater.

To have spent a quarter of a century of my professional life at this theater was the fulfillment of a dream. On the other hand, the downfall of this theater, which led to my departure, became my life’s nightmare.

“Young Men Will See Visions”

During the time that Ezra Taft Benson presided over Europe, the first big young adult conference, “Echo of Joy” (German: Freud Echo), was held in Frankfurt, with the motto “Young Men Will See Visions.” I saw a vision there, and I married it half a year later: Ursula Tischhauser, from Esslingen, a bank employee and the leader of the Primary Association for the Stuttgart Stake.

The Lord has blessed us with four children and, to this point, five grandsons, and we have experienced a great deal of joy and also much pain with our children. To our joy, our daughter, Ulrike (along with her husband, Andreas, a secondary school teacher; and their three sons, Oskar, sixteen; Leoz, fourteen; and Tim, ten), lives in the house next to ours. And it was a great joy for us, returning again from Vienna to Frankfurt after the years in the area presidency, to be in a ward in which our son Helmut serves as bishop. His family, too (including his wife, Julia, and his sons Samuel [six] and Benjamin [three]), lives in our immediate neighborhood. The president of the Swiss Temple, when our marriage was sealed there, said to us, “You will see that the greatest joy in your life will be to experience the faithfulness of your children, and of your children’s children.” A true prophecy. We have felt this joy, but we have also experienced pain through the death of our wonderful son Georg from a heart attack and through the estrangement from the Gospel of our beloved firstborn son, Michael.

The Church Will Grow When the Members are Happier

A few months before the Vienna Stake was founded, I had a dream. (Is there actually a “heavenly Burgtheater,” in which dreams and visions are produced?) In this dream, Ezra Taft Benson gave me a blessing, with the promise that “The Church will grow when the members are happier.” A few months later, I learned that Ezra Taft Benson, who was the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at the time, was coming to Vienna to found the first stake in Austria. When I was set apart as stake president, his message was the same as that in the dream—only with more words.

Prophets have given us the answer to our question as to how the members can be happier. George Albert Smith: “Your happiness will be as great as your love of your neighbor, as great as the measure of the love that you show to the people with whom you interact here on the earth.” And Ezra Taft Benson: “Above all other people, the one who can be called happy, rich, and blessed is he whose life most closely resembles that of the anointed of the Lord, namely Jesus Christ.” That became the main goal in our work for the Vienna Austria Stake. We grasped the fact that loving people meant to surrender our propensity to egotism, which hardens our hearts and darkens our understanding. It means that we have given up the philosophy of selfishness that is the cause of most of the unhappiness that exists among humankind, which consists of seeking power, profit, and advantage at the expense of others. And we understood that the true love of Christ is independent of the behavior of others. It is not a reaction, but an action, a free decision that we make in our attempt to follow Christ.

As president of the Frankfurt Temple, I learned by experience that the temple is God’s university for learning this love. Here, in the House of the Lord, we are literally equipped with power from on high—that is, with the power to overcome whatever may befall us. As Joseph Smith explained in Kirtland, “You need an endowment, brethren, in order that you may be prepared and able to overcome all things.” And, in Nauvoo, after the first endowments, he wrote in his journal that these had been given “to secure the fullness of those blessings which have been prepared for the Church of the Firstborn, [in order to] come up and abide in the presence of the Elohim in the eternal worlds.”

Freedom: A Gift of God

We in Austria owe a great deal to the United States! Without the United States, Hitler would not have been defeated, Austria would not have been the beneficiary of the international treaty of 1955, and our church would not have received government recognition. The principles of freedom that are anchored in the Constitution of the United States “belong to all mankind” (Doctrine and Covenants 98), which means that, from there, these principles should spread over the entire earth. But how? With “blood and horror,” at the dictation of the powerful? I began to comprehend that peace, freedom, and democracy cannot be dictated to a people nor forced upon them, but must emerge from the hearts of human beings.

But who, among the members of the Church, knows this constitution, which was given by God in preparation for the coming of Christ? I have learned by experience that one has to seek them out with a lantern. If one does not know this constitution, one will not perceive how the God-given principles of this constitution are being increasingly undermined by corrupt politicians, judges, and media, which will lead to the loss of our God-given freedom just as it happened at the time of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. Non-political or politically naïve Mormons completely contradict my conception of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We in Austria have learned through our experience that freedom is a gift of God, and that it is as precious as life itself. And that freedom without responsibility leads to the loss of freedom.

Ezra Taft Benson, the former president of the Church of Jesus Christ, who had served while an apostle as Secretary of Agriculture in the cabinet of Dwight D. Eisenhower, encouraged us at the founding of the Vienna Stake to assume responsibility and to commit ourselves to the inalienable rights of liberty (“to stand up for freedom”). I recall a statement of his from another occasion: “The war in heaven is now being continued here on earth; will you permit yourself to be neutralized?” I also saw, on his writing desk, the saying of the British statesman Edmund Burke: “The only thing required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” All of this influenced me very much in my thought and action.

I am convinced that, as John Taylor expressed it, “Besides the preaching of the Gospel, we have another mission, namely, the perpetuation of the free agency of man and the maintenance of liberty, freedom, and the rights of man.”

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism, which surely did not occur by mere coincidence during the presidency of Ezra Taft Benson, taught me that God has all power to guide world history to a triumphant conclusion.

It Did Not Happen by Chance

In May 1985, a regional conference was held in Salzburg at which President Thomas S. Monson presided. On Saturday, in a leadership meeting, he explained that stake presidents would serve for roughly nine years, and bishops for roughly three-to-five years. In the forenoon on Sunday, as I walked along the Salzach River, I made revolutionary plans for my remaining time as stake president . . . and, half an hour later, I was released. I was called as a regional representative of the Twelve, and one of the regions was that of the eastern, communist nations—the lands of the eastern bloc, as laymen termed these widely varied lands. At that time, in these countries, there were only three senior missionary couples: one in Poland, one in Croatia, and one in Serbia. Now, in the space of only twenty years, nineteen missions have emerged where these three couples were serving. These countries were a part of the Austria Vienna Mission, in which Spencer J. Condie served as mission president, and as we received permission for the first fulltime missionaries for these countries, the mission was divided and Dennis B. Neuenschwander was called as president of the Austria Vienna East Mission. In November 1989 came the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism, without greater bloodshed.

What a miracle! I was born and raised in Vienna. We were only half an hour removed from the Iron Curtain—in the north, communist Czechoslovakia; in the east, Hungary; in the south Yugoslavia. I never imagined that Communism would ever be vanquished without a new world war and great loss of blood. And then it was gone. Overnight. A great miracle that occurred right before our eyes.

And yet it didn’t occur by chance. Rather, it was the result of faithful prayer and courageous deeds on the ecclesiastical and political planes. President Kimball implored the members to pray that the borders of these countries would be opened and that we would prepare ourselves to enter them. There followed President Monson’s promise in Görlitz, the rededication of the country, and the building of the Freiberg Temple, on the ecclesiastical plane, as well as the Helsinki negotiations of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and follow-up conferences on the political plane. Lynn Hansen, ambassador of the United States, who also served as president of the Hamburg Mission a few years ago, has laid these developments out in an extraordinarily impressive presentation entitled “Europe: Miracle after Miracle.”

Elder Henry B. Eyring ordained me a Seventy in Moscow. I could never have dreamed that I would someday be ordained a Seventy in Moscow. But in these years, and particularly in the two years of my service in the area presidency, I have experienced many miracles, fruits and gifts of the Spirit, that have confirmed that the message that the missionaries first brought to me—“We have a message for you from God”—was, genuinely, from God.

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Johann A. Wondra was educated in Austria and received a doctorate from the University of Vienna. Beginning in 1961, he worked at the “Wiener Burgtheater,” the Austrian National Theatre for dramatic world literature, first as Assistant Director, later on the Board of Directors, and after 1975 as Secretary General, responsible for the ensemble and artistic planning. He has been invited for several lectures on theatre and art in Europe and in the U.S.A. and is now retired. He has been honored by the Austrian government with the Distinguished (or Gold) Medal of Merit for service to the Republic of Austria (das Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich) and with the Cross of Honor for Art and Science, First Class.

He has served in various Church callings, including as first president of the Vienna Austria Stake; Regional Representative; president of the Frankfurt Temple; mission president of the Austria Vienna South Mission, which covered the countries of former Yugoslavia; and eleven years as an Area Seventy in the Europe East Area and Europe Central Area, including two years of service as first and second Counselor in the Area Presidency and Europe Area. After his release as an Area Seventy, effective April 30, 2010, he was called with Sister Wondra as a service missionary, responsible for the establishment of the Church in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia.

Brother Wondra was born in Vienna, Austria and married Ursula Tischhauser, who was born in Esslingen, Germany. They are the parents of four children and reside in Vienna, Austria.

Translated by Daniel C. Peterson
Posted October 2010

Since I am a fairly new convert—only six years ago, in fact—I’d like to share my background, and the story of how I went from a spiritual but perfunctorily practicing Christian to a full-fledged member of this faith.

About ten years ago, while living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I answered a telephone call from a Dr. John Hawkins of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who wanted to invite my husband to come and give a talk about a book he had written. This was nothing unusual, as far as I was concerned, because my husband was frequently invited to give talks at different universities. Little did I realize at the time that this little conversation was just the beginning of an extended dialogue that would culminate in the baptism of my husband, then my son, and finally myself into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I realized something was different about my husband when he came back from giving his talk at BYU that first time. You could almost say that he had stars in his eyes. He already seemed a little different and he began to read all he could about the Church, including the Book of Mormon, and just about every book that had ever been written about the Book of Mormon. I remember thinking that it was nice that he had a new research interest and that he was going to write a book about Mormonism, but I was busy working on my own research, teaching, and being a mom.

Over the next five years, my husband and John Hawkins became close friends and colleagues, and had regular conversations about all kinds of things. My husband also had many important conversations with Steve Olsen and Marge Conder of the Church History Center, as well as her family. He also began to attend sacrament meetings and even attended the church’s Institute classes at the University of Alabama. Finally one day, encouraged by missionaries who had come by just to visit, he decided he wanted to be baptized. Once this happened, we all began to attend church together as a family and, also, to take the missionary discussions, but I was not completely open to the idea of joining this church. Wasn’t one Christian church just as good as another? And I have to confess that I was not very receptive to the missionaries. My thinking was that here were these nice young men who had never been married or had kids, and hadn’t even finished college, and they were asking me, a college professor, to give up coffee? I remember that, when they asked me to read Moroni’s promise and pray about the truth of the Book of Mormon, I wouldn’t do it, partly because I was just stubborn, I suppose, and partly because I just didn’t feel comfortable yet with the idea of having a direct line of communication with God. I’ve always considered myself to be a spiritual person, but I didn’t know how to pray in the way they were asking me to. Fortunately for me, the missionaries continued to be kind to me, and patient. And fortunately for me also, the Church doesn’t just rely on missionaries to do missionary work.

So I did want to know more about the people who were doing this kind of praying and I decided that, if this church really was better than the one we were attending, I would be able to tell just by interacting with the people. If I liked the people, then I would read the Book of Mormon. Well, it didn’t take much longer for me to realize that I needed to be reading the Book of Mormon. It wasn’t just that people were kind. They were, also, confidently kind, and they seemed very happy about being kind. They obviously “knew.” I like to use this verb without a complement when I meet people who seem to be very accomplished and successful at being human. The important thing was that now that my husband had been baptized, and my son who was then eleven was showing signs of wanting to be baptized, I had a desire to know more. That desire, it seems to me, is the first step to developing the kind of openness and receptiveness that you need to have in order to undergo a change in heart. There’s this great story in the Old Testament about a woman from Samaria who encounters Jesus for the first time, and through a long dialogue with Him (in fact, the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the scriptures), undergoes a dramatic change of heart. It’s dramatic because when He first asks her for a drink of water she questions His right to even ask. When He finishes talking with her, though, she goes off proclaiming to people about His divinity.

I, on the other hand, only became more open and receptive at the beginning by interacting with people in church whose many acts of kindness and friendship had the effect of chipping away, bit by bit, at my pride.

After my husband was baptized we both were invited to come to BYU for a year. Even though, at that time, I was feeling much more receptive to the Church, I wanted to see what Utah was like and what it would be like to live in a place where the Church had such an important presence. So we set out for Utah and stopped in southwestern Colorado where we have a cabin, and my son, Will, decided that he was ready to be baptized in Montrose, Colorado. I remember being very moved by that experience, and very happy because I thought that he would now be much safer spiritually. He was eleven years old at the time, and I’ve always believed in the wisdom of children, so by the time we arrived in Orem, Utah, and settled into a rented house in the River Ridge 3rd Ward, I was pretty receptive. I had been reading the Book of Mormon, and found it incredibly inspiring and true. A Sunday school teacher once asked us if there were a section or passage from the Book of Mormon that we would sorely miss if it were ever taken out, and I knew immediately that for me it was the passage in 3 Nephi 17:17 that says, “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we saw and heard Jesus speak unto the Father.” This passage has always moved me very much because, as a linguist, I am acutely aware of the fact that language is one of our greatest miracles and gifts, and no linguist has ever figured it out completely. I am so fortunate that I get to practice a profession that allows me to enhance my appreciation of this “marvelous work and wonder.”

After six weeks of being in the River Ridge 3rd Ward in Orem, I had the realization that I needed to baptized. And that realization came during my first visiting teaching experience. I could just feel that my visiting teacher really cared, and my heart was so moved by that, that I began to wonder why I too wasn’t a member of this wonderful community of believers. So on Halloween day in 2004 I was baptized too. And while I was very excited to be baptized, I didn’t feel all that different until the following day when I was confirmed. During my confirmation I felt so soft and so utterly malleable in my heart, but in a good way. When I learned later that it was because I was receiving the Holy Ghost at that moment, I understood why.

And this point takes me back to that New Testament story about the woman of Samaria, and the part where Jesus tells this woman, “But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

And then he repeats this spirit-and-truth phrase again, saying, “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

To me, this is saying that God is not fixed in any earthly place, unless we ourselves have the right spirit. We have to have the spirit of God in our hearts and it has to be a true spirit. When we embark on our journey of eternal progression and perfection, we have to take the special uniqueness of our spirits and figure out how God wants us to live with what he has given us. We have to be true to his teachings and the spirit of his truth, and also to the spirit of our own very being and uniqueness. We have to figure out a way to be in harmony with God, to such an extent that we want to both obey and, also, to live in the truest way we can, because to do otherwise would tear at our hearts.

I can’t possibly explain all of the things that affected me when I started thinking about the Church. Peoples’ kindness and friendship were very important, but I had to create my own testimony a brushstroke at a time. And I never felt pressured to do this by anyone. Reading the Book of Mormon, and developing an appreciation for the Old and New Testaments, which I had never been asked to read as a child (even though, as a child, I went to a Catholic school, which required daily Mass attendance as well as daily catechism classes), certainly helped. I was very impressed by one of the main messages of the Book of Mormon, about the dangers of pride. I feel that this is the disease of our age, but I have a personal interpretation of this danger, which goes beyond the sin of peoples’ pride with respect to each other. I feel that there are good reasons for seeing pride as a danger that also affects people in their relations to their physical environment. When Lehi has his dream with the two central images consisting of the Tree of Life, on the one hand, and “the great and spacious building,” on the other hand, we are being given a message, loud and clear, about becoming too wrapped up in the materialistic world we have created. We are stewards of this beautiful world, and since I work with people who live “close to the earth,” in Amazonian Ecuador, I can’t help but think that they appreciate this stewardship better than many of us do. I’ve always been a dormant environmentalist, but I find myself becoming more comfortable and open with others about the importance of this stewardship.

What I have learned is that this church offers everyone the tools that are necessary to be a better person. Daily prayer is now a vital part of my life.

Being a convert to the church means that I have a perspective based on experiences with other churches and I don’t have to wonder about what other churches might have to offer.

What other church in this world not only tries to meet the spiritual needs of all people in the world living today but, also, all people who have ever lived in the world? When I first read Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, while in graduate school, I remember that Weber’s view of bureaucratic structures was not very positive. Yet, if Weber could have seen our Church in action, he would have had to admit that a bureaucracy dedicated to helping all people in the world is a profoundly different type of institution than what he had envisioned.

I don’t know of any other church that emphasizes both knowing as much as possible as well as feeling the truth of things. This church’s doctrines are incredibly intellectually engaging. And the unique way that we teach about the atonement gives us all a basis for hope and optimism that I never heard in the church that I grew up in. The passage in 2 Nephi 25, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are that they might have joy,” has always touched me profoundly.

I’m so grateful that Joseph Smith was willing to be a prophet and restore the Church of Jesus Christ to the Earth, and grateful for all of the prophets that have followed him. Being a member of a Church that has its foundation the principle of continuing revelation from prophets can make for some interesting social interactions. When we had dinner with an old high school friend of my husband’s in Oklahoma City a few Christmases ago, he did not know that we had joined the Church, and when he asked what it was like to live in Utah, he was dumbfounded to realize that we were members. He had heard the story of Joseph Smith and how the Book of Mormon was translated, and was incredulous that we, as apparently rational and educated people, could be believers. I remember telling him that a religion without mysteries wouldn’t be much of a religion, and that we learn so many important truths from the Book of Mormon that we take it on faith that Joseph Smith translated it by the power of God. Since I rarely am able to come up with the right thing to say at the right time, I found myself wishing that I could have impressed him with an argument from a source that he might have some respect for. I then started thinking about artists and intellectuals who, although not members, have, from time to time, said things that have really resonated for me. I remember that, when I was growing up, there was this science fiction series on television called The Twilight Zone, which made a definite impact on my worldview, and I remember a particular episode about a boxer who refused to believe in miracles, and the closing narration by Rod Serling was:

“Mr. Bolie Jackson, who shares the most common ailment of all men—the strange and perverse disinclination to believe in a miracle, the kind of miracle to come from the mind of a little boy . . . ”

So, nowadays, when I find myself in skeptical company, I remember that phrase, “strange and perverse disinclination to believe in a miracle,” which reminds me that I’m not the one who is strange. . . . Anyway, our friend did say, at the end of our dinner with him, that he envied us, and I think he meant it.

One really wonderful thing about being a convert is that you get to be sealed with your family in the Temple. When we were all sealed in the Birmingham Temple it was just too beautiful for words.

I continue to marvel at the way in which we as a family were able to discover the Gospel at this stage in our lives, and particularly at the way in which we were all able to discover it in the best way for each of us: my husband from a professional colleague and my son from the missionaries, while for me it was a combination of my own family as well as the so-called ‘ordinary’ people of this Church. And I say this in the name of The Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

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Janis Nuckolls earned her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and her A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before joining the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University, she held a tenure-track position at Indiana University and tenured positions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

Dr. Nuckolls is an anthropological linguist with field experience primarily in Amazonian Ecuador, in the province of Pastaza. Her research interests center upon the cultural poetics of Quichua verbal practise and the role of ideophones and of grammatical categories such as evidentiality in the expression of attitudinal alignments with nonhuman nature. She has published, among other places, in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language in Society, Semiotica, the Annual Review of Anthropology, Latin American Indian Literatures, the Journal of Latin American Lore, Anthropological Linguistics, American Anthropologist, Philosophical Psychology, and several edited books, and is the author of Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua (Oxford University Press) and Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue and Perspective (University of Arizona Press).

Posted October 2010

When Professor Peterson inquired if I would share my testimony, I confess that the answer came swiftly: Yes! Upon reflection on the contrast between how slow I am in getting to the pulpit and my swift yes, though, I realized that my pride was once again at work to taint the good that I would do. The thought of “Mormon Scholar” had somehow tickled my vanity, and was the lure that attracted my agency to choose. So that had to be repented of, delaying my sharing my testimony, knowing that pride occasioned my repentance, out of respect for the sacred nature of witness.

During my Ph.D. graduation ceremony at Yale, capping (literally) ten years of effort in its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I realized my secret shame—I had the meaningless guilt of not being in the herd, keeping this activity secret: As a teenager, in my free time, I used every free minute in reading every single LDS book I could find. My Yale degree was in Religious Studies, and shockingly, I was an active Mormon (the department had never before knowingly enrolled a Mormon). At the graduation, for some reason, I was remembering my secret habit, and how it all made sense. And now it is secret no more!

After finishing Elder McConkie’s New Testament commentary at fifteen, I started reading a book called Jesus the Christ. It’s an 804-page book, and is subtitled A Study of the Messiah and His Mission according to Holy Scripture both Ancient and Modern.

The author, James E. Talmage, was of the opinion (these quotations are from his book The Articles of Faith), that theology (which he differentiated from religion as “theory is differentiated from practice”) could not be over-estimated as to its importance in directing how our efforts are applied during “the short span of our mortal existence.” This view of theology had an effect on me and is one reason for my studying religion at Princeton for my A.B., and for my receiving an M.A. in Religion from Columbia and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Yale. Written by a Mormon Apostle in 1915, Jesus the Christ states in its Preface that the book was “approved by the First Presidency (of President Heber J. Grant, my Great-Grandfather) and the Council of the Twelve.”

I’m a night person; my brain is at its peak late in the evening. And so, late night after late night in 1970, I read. Weeks became months until, at about the final third of the book, I distinctly recall setting it down. The Holy Spirit at that moment revealed to me certain knowledge that Jesus is my Savior. I was not praying for that testimony. As the wind listeth, the Spirit was there. I was calm. This experience of the Holy Spirit was sui generis, and was not an emotional experience.

The witness of the Spirit that night has given me certain knowledge of faith. It has served to keep my head above the waves when I was ten thousand leagues at sea without any life preserver. Those times in my life when all has not only seemed lost but, actually, really, was lost. Sometimes the only thought I could pull myself together to even think was that Jesus is my Savior.

I am also thankful for the Holy Ghost. My most recent experience of the gift of the Holy Ghost (I’m using both “Spirit” and “Ghost” to refer to the same thing) was just last Saturday. I was, of all things, texting a friend I had met in graduate school who went on to become a Professor at Yale. My friend had just published a book with Cambridge in which he had examined Christian theologies of creation and found them wanting in reverence for animals, in particular, and for Mother Nature, in general. Historically the Christian theology of creation has been disrespectful of nature, exploitive of the animal kingdom. In response, I was explaining Joseph Smith’s view that animals would obtain salvation, and sending him the following text from Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, with which I conclude my response to Brother Peterson, when—without expecting at all the distinctly recognizable enjoyment of the Spirit—I became conscious of the presence of the Holy Ghost:

“Just FYI and BTW, Smith believed that the world is an embodied spirit, capable of and in fact now in pain, but that Mother Earth will receive her paradisiacal glory eventually.

“He also was, as I seem to recall you know, convinced of the salvation of animals, preaching (again, this stuff now has to be dug out from the stacks in the basement of the library, in this the present age of the colonial captivity of Mormonism) about ‘what there was in heaven.’

“The Prophet Joseph speaks of: ‘Beings of a thousand forms that have been saved from ten thousand times ten thousand earths like this—strange beasts of which we have no conception. . . . God glorified himself by saving all that his hands had made, whether beasts, fowls, fishes or men; and He will glorify Himself with them. Says one, I cannot believe in the salvation of beasts.’ Joseph replies by referring to the language abilities of the four beasts giving glory to God in the book of Revelation, and God understanding them. Joseph adds, ‘we are not told where they came from and I do not know . . . . But they were four of the most noble animals that had filled the measure of their creation, and had been saved from other worlds: they were like angels in their sphere.’”

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Prior to returning to academia, Ashby D. Boyle II was an entrepreneur and attorney, beginning his career at the Washington, D.C. office of Sullivan & Cromwell. He is Acting President at George Wythe University, after previously working as a research fellow at Yale University, working on two books. One is on the theological foundations of the Book of Mormon and the other is an update of his Yale dissertation on the religious jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court.

Dr. Boyle graduated with Honors from Princeton University in 1980, interrupting his time at Princeton to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Madrid, Spain. Upon returning to the university, he was awarded the Aaron Austin Godfrey Memorial Prize, given annually at Princeton University to an undergraduate of “exceptional potential,” to fund research in Spain on that country’s transformation from a fascist dictatorship to a constitutional form of government.

He went on to receive M.A. and J.D. degrees from Columbia University (where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow, a teaching fellow in property law, and a member of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review), as well as an M.Phil in criminology from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He also earned M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University, where he taught ethics in Yale’s Department of Religious Studies and its Divinity School prior to attending Columbia Law School. He served as a law clerk to the fifteenth Chief Justice of the United States, the Hon. Warren E. Burger, during October Term 1990. He also served as an aide to U.S, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, in addition to service at the White House during the administration of President Gerald R. Ford (after the fall of Saigon in Vietnam) as a presidential appointee to The President’s Advisory Committee on Refugees, and then worked as an attorney in the District of Columbia area until he returned to Salt Lake City to practice law in Utah.

Dr. Boyle was recognized by the New York City Bar Association in 2004 for his pro bono work, which has included such activities as the National Chairman of the March of Dimes Youth Program, the current CEO of the American Religious Liberties Union, and membership on the Alumni Schools Committee for Yale University’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Posted October 2010
Updated July 2013

How Many Moments of Light Does It Take?

A Vicarious Testimony

My young wife Barbara appeared in tears when I arrived home. She uncharacteristically did not want to talk but I knew something was on her mind.

She answered my inquiries, with a question: “I am not sure whether I am allowed to speak of what I have learned, what I have experienced.”

After further questioning she explained to me that she had been reading the Book of Mormon and had come across a passage that she wondered about. As she wondered she became filled with the Spirit and knew with a perfect surety an answer to her prayer. She had received a special answer, a special insight and a burning testimony that the Book of Mormon was true and could teach us light and truth. As she prayed for some confirmation she was filled with the Spirit and heard the audible words in a voice not her own: “Then believe it, my little one.”

As she heard these words and received the Spirit, she understood the light and truth of God and the light and truth of the Book of Mormon. She reluctantly conveyed this experience to me with a prayerful petition that I never reveal the contents of the answer to her prayer without prior confirmation of the Spirit that it was appropriate to reveal. I have never revealed the answer to that prayer except to our children many years later when they were ready and the Spirit confirmed that it was time.

I wondered, “How many moments of light does it take?”

Joseph Smith is a Prophet and Witnessed Christ and our Eternal Father

When I graduated from Harvard we owned a small Toyota Celica. My wife Barbara and I packed our small car to the brim, loaded our precious six-month-old baby Charmian into the car, and began our journey to our new home and law school. We decided to drive through the night when Charmian would sleep most peacefully. Around midnight, as we were driving through Utica, New York, our car heated up and white steam plumed from our exhaust. I knew enough about cars to understand that we had blown the head gasket on our engine, and the car rolled to a stop. It was Friday night. Barbara and I uttered a humble prayer that we would know what to do. Fortunately we were by an exit so I pushed our car about a mile, and rolled down the exit ramp to the outskirts of Utica. As we drifted down we could see a Toyota car dealership about a mile from the exit and we knew our prayers had been answered. We sat in our car waiting for morning and praying for assistance.

As the sun came and people began to scurry about, no one came to the dealership. We decided to walk to a nearby gas station to get some information.

I asked the attendant who was changing the oil of a car up on the rack, “Do you know when the Toyota dealership will open?”

“Monday morning,” he answered abruptly.

“I blew a head gasket on my Toyota, do you know of anyone who could fix it here in town?”

“Not until Monday. That is the only way to get any Toyota parts.”

Dejected, I started to walk away, not knowing what to do. The owner of the car that was being serviced answered, “Wait a minute. I may be able to help. As soon as he is finished with my car I will be with you.”

A few minutes later he drove us to his house. “I am a banker, and I provided the loan to the Toyota dealership, perhaps I can help.”

As we arrived at his home and opened the door, on the wall facing the door was a large unadorned picture of Christ. When I saw the picture I was filled with light. I felt as if He looked right into my soul and whispered, “I am with you, fear not.”

The Baptist family welcomed us into their home. The banker called the owner of the dealership and, after suffering through a few grumbles, he agreed to meet us at his dealership to provide the part. After finishing with the dealer the banker called a service station owner who also was his customer. After telling him I could run his station while he fixed my car we were off. As I was busy attending to the car, the family hosted a block party for my wife and beautiful daughter. They enjoyed a barbecue, a pool party, and a celebration of their unexpected visit.

Late in the afternoon I finished with the car, unsuccessfully tried to pay the mechanic for his repair services, and returned to the home to find a celebration going on in our behalf. Tears filled my eyes at the tenderness of the family who had never met us before and whom I would never see again. I knew with certainty that they had been sent to us by our Savior who had heard our fervent prayer. They begged us to stay the weekend in their home, rather than leaving so late in the afternoon, but I insisted that we needed to be on our way, that they had already done too much.

We drove to Palmyra, entered the Sacred Grove all alone at dusk and kneeled to offer a humble prayer of thanksgiving. After kneeling for some time, both of us looked at each other, arose, and reverently left for the parking lot. Both of us had been filled with the light of His love, but neither of us felt worthy enough to utter a prayer in so sacred a place. Instead we kneeled in the parking lot and uttered our prayer that we knew that Christ wanted us to know that He lives, that He knows each of us personally, and would be with us in our hour of need if we would but call on Him with faith in His goodness and love. We also understood more perfectly that Joseph Smith had indeed been given an answer to prayer at that very spot so many years ago. Our experience had not been accidental or coincidental. It was a tender mercy of our Lord.

How many moments of light does it take?

A Teaching Moment and the Love and Prophecy of President Kimball

While attending law school I had the opportunity to serve in the Salt Lake Temple. I would always pick up 85-year-old Sister Blackburn between 5:00 and 5:15 a.m. for a 6:00 a.m. session. Every morning she would have a question for me related to temple theology. For more than a year I thought I was teaching her, but I had to admit that her questions always made me stretch spiritually to provide an answer. One morning she asked me a question and a flash of light filled my heart and soul. I understood by the Spirit something I had wondered about for years. I also understood for the first time that Sister Blackburn had been teaching me, not learning from me. I smiled as I realized she had been teaching me by her well considered questions.

In 1974 or 1975 I had the blessing of attending a solemn assembly for all temple workers held in the upper rooms of the Salt Lake Temple. Hundreds of workers crowded into the large room to hear President Kimball speak. When my Prophet arose I was filled with light when I heard him prophesy that, within the lifetime of many in attendance that night (the average age of the audience was probably 70), the number of temples in the world would double, triple, and even quadruple. He also prophesied that the Lord would prepare ways we could not even imagine to provide genealogical records to fill the scores and scores of temples that soon would be built all over the world.

I was so touched by the light of truth that enveloped me that, after the meeting, I worked my way down to the front of the hall to shake the Prophet’s hand. I did not want to bother him, but I felt compelled to touch him and feel of his love. When I finally arrived at his side and shook his hand I tried to quickly pull my hand away to give others a chance to share in his light. Before I could pull my hand away, he put his other hand on top of my hand and would not let me withdraw. He looked straight into my eyes to the bottom of my soul and smiled an understanding smile. His gaze filled me with light again and I knew that he loved me deeply and somehow knew exactly who I was and could be. I understood at some level how those touched by the Savior must have felt when he touched them and cleansed them from trouble, disease, and sin. I knew without a doubt that he was a prophet of the restored gospel, a messenger from my Savior.

How many moments of light does it take?

A Testimony of Christ

While attending Oxford University to obtain a graduate degree in law, I had the blessings of an International Rotary fellowship. It not only paid for my schooling and my expenses, it also gave me many opportunities to speak at various Rotary gatherings. On one occasion as I mentioned my faith and how it anchored my life, a Methodist Circuit Minister asked me if I would attend and speak about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at an annual dinner on comparative religions they had for their ministers. I agreed and on the appointed evening I arrived as I had promised. I thought that many religions would be included, but I learned that I was the only speaker; my church was the only religion that would be compared that night.

I spoke for a few moments attempting to give an overview of my testimony and the essentials of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I then opened it for questions. I answered the expected questions about polygamy, the gold plates, about genealogy, temples and work for the dead. The questions seemed evenly split between sympathetic questions evidencing respect and hostile questions demonstrating contempt.

What shocked me was an accusation that our church was not Christian, that we worshiped Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon rather than Christ. I explained that our name was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They discounted that title, claiming that it was used as a form of deception, but that we really did not truly believe in Christ. I tried not to become angry at the suggestion that our claimed belief in Christ was superficial or, even worse, deceptive of the real truth. For the next two hours (the last hour and one-half in the parking lot with those who stayed after the circuit minister had asked us to leave the building because of the late hour and my apparent willingness to talk about Christ into the wee hours of the next morning) I spoke nothing more than of our understanding of the majesty, glory, and honor we have for our Savior and Redeemer. I asked them to compare in their hearts all they knew of His majesty and to compare it with our restored understanding.

I started chronologically from the beginning to the eternal life we will enjoy with Him and our Heavenly Father: (1) Christ accepted His role and responsibility in pre-mortal existence and we each accepted Him as our Savior and Redeemer; (2) He created the earth and other worlds without end; (3) Adam was taught about Christ when he was driven out of the Garden of Eden and built an altar to offer sacrifice unto the Lord; (4) Christ is Jehovah, Messiah, Yahweh, or Lord of the Old Testament; (5) Christ had a miracle birth; (6) Christ lived a perfect life without sin and provided the example of how to live and sacrifice for others; (7) Christ established His church, ordained apostles and seventies, and extended priesthood authority to act in His name; (8) Christ atoned for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross of Calvary; (9) Christ was resurrected and redeemed us from the dead; (10) following His death, Christ visited other sheep, including descendants from Israel in the Americas, as recorded in the Book of Mormon; (11) following His crucifixion Christ established a ministry to the dead to enable all to receive the benefits of the atonement, dependent upon their acceptance of Christ in post-mortal realms; (12) Christ restored the true gospel in these latter days to Joseph Smith, including the sealing powers to enable all to return unto Him; (13) we believe Christ will yet come again in glory and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is the Christ; (14) we believe that Christ will reign in a millennial glory; (15) we believe Christ will judge all with perfect judgment; (16) we believe we will call upon the Father in the name of Christ forevermore; and (17) we celebrate these truths of Christ by baptizing, administering the sacrament, and performing temple ordinances in His name with His authority.

I ended by quoting a scripture from the Book of Mormon, a book they had suggested was not of Christ: “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:26). I asked them not ever to suggest we did not believe in Christ again.

How many moments of light does it take?

A Song of Inspiration

On a Sunday morning in 1978, while we were living in Oxford, I arrived at a small community building in Banbury, England, which doubled as a meeting place for the small congregation of Saints that attended from the area. I arrived early enough to clean up the beer bottles, open the windows to clear out the residue of smoke, and sweep the hall from the Saturday night party at this community hall. I had come to the Banbury branch as a high council representative to visit this tiny congregation. Soon everything was clean and the eight or nine priesthood members of the branch arrived for priesthood. I foolishly thought to myself, “I wonder why they keep this branch open. They are such a tiny branch and almost none of the members have any leadership experience in the Church. How can they function week to week, meeting to meeting?” The meeting began and I immediately had my inquiries answered by the Spirit.

They did not have a piano, but someone stood in the front to conduct the opening song a capella. I wondered if anyone, out of the ten of us there, would sing. Boy, was I surprised. Every one sang out with full voice, nothing withheld out of self consciousness or concern for the fact that most were singing off key. They sang as if the words of the song came from the bottom of their newly converted souls. They sang as if they truly believed all that they had been recently taught was true.

I remembered my moment in the Sacred Grove and I listened to the words of “Oh How Lovely was the Morning” a little more closely than I had ever before. The dingy, dirty room we had just cleaned up suddenly became a place of light and truth. I knew by the Holy Ghost that Joseph had indeed offered a simple prayer, from his humble fourteen-year-old heart. I knew that he had seen and talked with God and His Son, Jesus Christ. I also knew Joseph Smith had seen an angel, translated the Book of Mormon, and restored the gospel of Jesus Christ. I knew with the same perfect knowledge anyone filled with the Spirit knew, that the gospel had the capacity to bring us to Christ in humility, even in a humble social hall with beer stains and cigarette butts covering the floor. I knew that Christ held me close to His heart and that all would be well, come what may.

An Unexpected Death and An Answered Prayer

When my wife died suddenly on December 7, 1978, it seemed as if all the light of my life had been extinguished in one moment. I began to live for my children only. I longed to be with her in the eternities, but for my three tiny children who needed me to be strong for them. I prayed intently as I had never prayed before to be able to talk with her from her spiritual home, to know that she continue to exist, and was still aware of our plight. I wanted to feel of her Spirit and know she remained my eternal wife. I prayed and prayed and prayed with seemingly no answer.

About two weeks after her death I changed the focus of my prayer. I asked intently that, if I could not see her for whatever reason, my oldest child, a daughter of six years old, would be allowed to have a confirming dream to know that her mother still existed and still had her in mind. I prayed fervently for hours before falling asleep.

I awakened to the sweet sound of my daughter’s voice: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I met Mom last night in the Salt Lake Temple. She came to me and she was so beautiful; she was filled with light. We hugged and she told me that everything would be fine for our family. She told me that she would always love me and that she would always be with me when I needed her most. She told me to tell you that she will love our family forever.”

As she spoke these words to my wounded heart, I knew with perfect clarity that my prayer had been answered. I knew that the gospel was true, that Christ loved me and my children personally, and that all would be fine, despite the temporary loss of my wife and the mother of my children. I knew I had not been abandoned by my Savior.

How many moments of light does it take?

Ann: Another Answered Prayer

I kneeled in prayer trying to understand whom I should marry, who should become the second mother of my three children. I had been widowed for more than a year, had dated, but could not decide between two daughters of Zion, each of whom was more righteous, more loving, and more perfect than I would ever be. As I prayed in my bedroom the Spirit bore testimony to me that if I got off my knees and walked to the telephone in the other room, I would receive a call from my future bride. I was startled at such an unexpected answer, but I had prayed for an answer and I did as I had been prompted. As I walked down the hall toward the phone, I wondered if I had imagined this answer; I doubted for a moment the answer to my prayer. As I reached for the phone it startled me with its ringing. I hesitated for a moment, appreciative that the Lord cared for me enough to answer my prayer so specifically. I knew by the Spirit that the phone call was an answer to prayer. I picked up the phone and Ann answered in her humble voice. “I apologize for calling, but for some reason I wanted to talk with you for a moment.”

I answered, “I am happy you called. I am happy you listened as well.”

We married a few months later. Elder Neal Maxwell performed the sealing. As he gave us counsel, he talked of the pre-mortal agreement between Barbara and Ann to share in different roles in the nurturing of our unified family. As he spoke, the Spirit filled me with light and whispered to me the truthfulness of his words and of the love of the Savior for each of us. I knew that our marriage was meant to be and that our family had had pre-mortal roots and would flower throughout the eternities together forever.

How many moments of light does it take?

Healing Power

One of my home teaching sisters, Joyce Bore, called me one Saturday afternoon. She explained:

Michael, my grandson, needs you. My daughter took him to the public pool and left him and his brother while she went who knows where. I am sure it was for no good. His brother told the life guard that his brother Michael had not come up from the bottom of the pool and that he was scared. They emptied the pool and found what appeared to be his lifeless body on the bottom. They know he had been there for more than three to four minutes and were sure that he had drowned. They brought him to the hospital because he still showed signs of life. They told me he that he would either die that day or if he revived he likely would have severe brain damage.

In her tears she told me, “He needs the priesthood; he needs a blessing form you.”

I called a close friend, Blaine Blad, and we hurried to the hospital. As we arrived and received permission from the physicians (who shook their heads with their certainty that nothing could help), we entered the room and anointed his head, and I gave him a blessing. To my astonishment I pronounced with perfect confidence that he would recover from the episode and would have no residual problems. As I closed my prayer I knew that I had been filled with light and that my words had not been of my making.

We sat by his bedside with his grandmother and his brother for a few minutes. Suddenly he opened his eyes and looked straight at me with a smile and understanding. I asked him, “Michael, do you know who I am and what we have planned for this weekend?”

He answered with calmness and certitude: “You are Brother Mangrum and I am going to be baptized next Saturday because I am eight now.” He closed his eyes went to sleep and went home the next day with no problems from his apparent drowning.

How many moments of light does it take?

The Mount of Olives and our Savior

During the summer of 2008 I had the blessing of teaching a course on comparative law and religion at Hebrew University in a summer law class sponsored by Touro University Law School. During that summer my wife and I experienced countless tender mercies of the Lord. One tender mercy occurred as we were visiting the Mount of Olives near the area where the Garden of Gethsemane must have been. My mother, brother, and a niece and a nephew had come to visit, and we were absorbing the spirit of that sacred place. I leaned against an olive tree that was supposed to be hundreds of years old and wondered if it had been on the Mount when Christ had suffered all things in the Atonement. I sensed that even the trees knew how special it was to have shared the soil of that sacred space. I understood by the Spirit that the Savior’s love had made the Atonement possible.

I was impressed that I needed to obtain some olive oil to consecrate for future priesthood blessings from that sacred location. I had no idea where I could obtain the oil. I told my family I would return and I started off up the adjoining road. At the same time a local inhabitant in local attire began walking up the same road. He did not seem interested in talking, but I tried “Shalom” to see if he would respond. He answered “Hello” and, hearing a familiar accent, I asked, “Are you an American?”

He answered, “Yes, but I have lived here on the Mount of Olives for more than thirty years. I have a shop in old Jerusalem. I normally would be at my shop by now, but I was delayed this morning.”

I asked, “Where in America are you from?”

He answered, “You would not know it; it is a small city in the western United States.”

I answered, “What is its name?”

He answered, “Ogden, Utah.”

I asked, “I am originally from Utah. Are you a Mormon?”

He answered, “Oh, no, but I grew up with the Mormons. They were the friends of my childhood. I have never forgotten them.”

He asked me, “Where are you headed?”

I answered, “I need to purchase some olive oil, hopefully from this area, but I do not know where to go.”

I answered, “I will take you.”

He took me to a shop at the top of the hill and in Arabic told them what I needed. They pulled out a bottle of olive oil produced from the area and as I tried to pay for it, my guest purchased it for me and would not allow me to pay. He also showed me the spot on the Mount of Olives where his home was located and invited my family to visit any time I was in the area. As I thanked him, he hurried off late to open his own shop. I returned with an understanding from the Spirit that he had been specifically sent to aid in my effort to obtain some holy oil from that sacred mount. I returned and we consecrated the oil and made it holy through the priesthood as it had been made holy from the sacred soil from whence it sprang.

How many moments of light does it take?

It is Enough for Me: I Believe

I have been trained about rational skepticism at Harvard and Oxford. I have written about and lectured regarding the testimonial infirmities of hearsay and I have taught many students the art of cross examination and the flimsiness of many untested stories. I do not know how many moments of light it takes to overcome training in doubt and despair, but for me it has been enough. I have experienced many, many tender mercies attesting to the truth, light, and love of my Savior and Redeemer, as well as the restoration of His church in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have experienced enough moments of light, and I believe.

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R. Collin Mangrum holds the A. A. & Ethel Yossem Endowed Chair in Legal Ethics at the Creighton University School of Law.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1972; his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Utah School of Law in 1974, where he was Associate Editor of the Law Review; his Bachelor of Civil Laws from Oxford University in 1978; and his Doctor of Judicial Science degree from Harvard University in 1983. He was in private practice in Salt Lake City from 1975-1977, was Rotary International Foundation Fellow in 1977 and in 1978, and joined the Creighton faculty in 1979. He received a Visiting Scholar appointment to the University of Edinburgh in the fall of 1986 and held an appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the summer of 2008.

Dr. Mangrum has written articles for Creighton Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Utah Law Review, BYU Studies, International Perspectives on Church and State, the Enyclopedia of Religion, and the Journal of Mormon History. His book Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900 (written with Edwin Firmage; University of Illinois Press, 1988) won the National Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for 1989. Mangrum on Nebraska Evidence (2003) and Mangrum and Benson on Utah Evidence (2004) have been updated and republished every year since their initial publication dates.

Professor Mangrum teaches Advanced Trial Practice, Church and State, Evidence, History of American Legal Thought, Jurisprudence, and Scientific Evidence. He has been admitted to the state and federal bars in Utah and Nebraska, as well as to practice law before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Posted October 2010

In My Hands . . .

As I consider my “scholarly” thoughts on God, the phrase that keeps coming back to me is one I have noticed at scientific seminars and conferences recently. “In our hands,” the speaker will say, “the experiments turned out like this, and that proves our hypothesis.” Often, adding the phrase “in our hands” means that the results are different than what another researcher has reported. It can indicate that the experiment in question is sufficiently complex or challenging that it would be impossible to control every variable in the experiment, and it could be one of these uncontrolled variables that leads to the unique reported observations.

In my experience, use of this phrase in science should, if anything, be more frequent. When I start collecting data on a new experiment, multiple repetitions often give results that don’t fit with my expectations. Sometimes the problem is a mistake I’ve made, while other times I just haven’t controlled all of the important variables accurately enough. Of course, once I figure everything out, the mess that previously seemed at best random or at worst contradictory now fits together in a coherent story. But even then, it doesn’t hurt to preface a recounting of my results with “In my hands”—while I may see a story in the data, it is likely that there are layers to the story that I haven’t yet uncovered, and levels of understanding I haven’t yet reached.

Why does this phrase keep coming back to me when I consider my thoughts on God? To see why, try reading this passage from the Book of Mormon, Alma’s passionate testimony to Korihor (Alma 30:37-44) about the existence of God, while imagining the exchange taking place at a scientific conference.

“And then Alma said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God? And he [Korihor] answered, Nay. Now Alma said unto him: Will ye deny again that there is a God, and also deny the Christ? For behold, I say unto you, I know there is a God, and also that Christ shall come. And now what evidence have ye that there is no God, or that Christ cometh not? I say unto you that ye have none, save it be your word only. But, behold, I have all things as a testimony that these things are true; and ye also have all things as a testimony unto you that they are true; and will ye deny them? Believest thou that these things are true? Behold, I know that thou believest, but thou art possessed with a lying spirit, and ye have put off the Spirit of God that it may have no place in you; but the devil has power over you, and he doth carry you about, working devices that he may destroy the children of God. And now Korihor said unto Alma: If thou wilt show me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words. But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”

In my mind, I can see Alma standing in the front of a darkened auditorium, laser pointer in hand, going through a slide with a bulleted list. “Look at all this data I’ve collected. It is proof that there is a God!” Although he specifically mentions the earth and the motions of the planets, I think that when Alma says all things witness to him that there is a God, he really means all things, including every individual experience he has in his life.

For Korihor, the world looks different. He sees the same data, but is not convinced that they have anything to do with God. And in my mind, Alma’s approach to convincing Korihor is a bit off the mark. I personally know a lot of scientists who would laugh me off the stage if I told them that a closer look at the motions of the planets will prove the existence of God.

When I talk about God, I can’t help but feel the need to preface my comments with “In my hands.” The experiment is complex, there are a host of uncontrolled variables, and previous researchers have come away with a variety of different conclusions. But if that qualified testimony is the best I can give to other scientists, is there any chance a person will change from a latter-day skeptic to a saint? My answer is yes, because my hope is not that others will believe my testimony, but that they will be try the experiment for themselves.

My personal journey is taking me away from Korihor’s and toward Alma’s view of the world. This journey has inspired me to make changes in my life that in turn allow me to see God’s hand in the world more and more. This is something you have to experience for yourself to believe. I love the description of this experience given by Mark Wrathall in his 2006 article “The Revealed Word and World Disclosure”:

“Philosophers from Aristotle to Hubert Dreyfus have shown how, in developing habits and practicing actions for dealing with a particular domain, we acquire skilful dispositions so attuned to that domain that we can perceive things of which we were oblivious before. As I practice baking bread, for example, I gradually become sensitized to notice things like texture and elasticity in the dough, fine variations in colour as the bread browns in the oven, etc. The skills allow me to experience the world in a way that I could not without them. . . . Faith is, then, the condition of one who has acquired the skills of religious living, and thus has the dispositions to feel and act appropriately in the world that appears when one has those skills. . . . Faith will then not be amenable to proof in the way one verifies a cognitive state or proposition (i.e. demonstrating that it is true). But it will have the kind of confirmation or success conditions that all other skills have. Baking skills are confirmed or successful when they allow me to cope with the kitchen. Religious faith will be confirmed or successful when it gives me the practices and dispositions I need to cope with the world as a whole. As Father Zosima notes in Dostoevsky’s classic depiction of existential Christianity, ‘one cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.’”

In my hands, increased faith in God has brought more happiness and an increased ability to deal with life’s challenges. I hope you’ll try it in yours.

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Dula Parkinson is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.

Posted October 2010

I have had a very rich and happy life and, although I do not feel I have earned the many blessings that have come to me, I know that my saviour Jesus Christ and his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the source and the reason for the great joy and excitement that fills my life.

My parents were kind and loving and I was privileged to grow up in the freedom that New Zealand allowed a boy in the 1940’s and 1950’s. However, I often felt, sometimes keenly, that something was missing. I knew that God lived but knew little about him—it seemed that there was a great gulf between us which I needed to cross but did not know the way.

My mother and father did not go to church but I was invited to go with my friends from time to time. However, although there were things I enjoyed at these meetings, it always ended in disappointment when they taught their concept of a distant God without a body of any kind that we could understand, who seemed to be everywhere but nowhere. Somehow I knew that was not true. Perhaps it was because of Genesis 1:20, where God said that man was made in his image (I had not got much further than that in reading the Bible), that I was so confident in that aspect of my knowledge of God. I think that this knowledge was something I was able to keep as I was born into mortality.

On one occasion I accompanied my aunty Doris to a baptismal service in a Baptist church where the minister said that if we wanted to know God all we needed to do was to declare in simple prayer that we accepted Jesus Christ. He was so convincing that I decided to do this. I believe that those were my first prayers. However, nothing notable happened. I certainly did not feel any closer to God. I continued these prayers for several days but it seemed that God was not interested and so I abandoned any hope of finding him in that way.

However God was interested—the next religious experience I can remember was the arrival of two LDS missionaries, Elder Merril Dean Briggs and Elder Robert E. Walgren. When they tracted our home at 90 Fitzroy Street, Palmerston North, my mother invited them to come back in the evening when the family would be there. My father did not join the discussion but very quickly I was sure that what they taught was what I needed to know, that this would show me the way back to God. They told us about Joseph Smith’s first vision when God the Father and his son Jesus Christ visited him. They then explained what this taught us about God, using stick figures drawn with a pencil—God had a body of flesh and bone and so did his Son Jesus Christ. They were two separate beings. I had always believed this and now I knew it to be true, right then and there, before the lesson ended or a prayer was said. Had they asked me to be baptised that very evening I would have done it. I was convinced and totally confident that they spoke only the truth. However it was twelve days later that my mother, my sister, and I were baptised in the Manawatu River about a kilometre downstream from the bridge at the end of Fitzherbert Avenue, Palmerston North. It was March and the water was cold but I was infused with an inner warmth.

Since that pivotal event in my life, more than fifty years ago, my faith in Elder Briggs and Elder Walgren and what they taught us has been vindicated many times. I have been blessed with many experiences and each has reinforced my knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, for indeed it has passed from belief to knowledge. I truly know! I have been shown the way and have been led across the gulf that separates man from God. That way is through the atonement of Jesus Christ. It requires faith in him, repentance, a forsaking of all one’s sins, entering into a binding covenant to serve God and obey his commandments, and continuing in faith to the end of our mortal lives. We are given the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide, warn, and comfort us during this often difficult and perilous journey.

I know that God lives. He is the father of our spirits. We lived with him before we were born into this mortal life and it is his purpose that we should return to him to be crowned with glory and eternal life. We are created in his image and he has a body of flesh and bones, although it is glorified far beyond our mortal bodies. I know that he is kind and loving, with an intense interest in and compassion for his children here on earth. He knows us individually. He does hear our prayers and they are answered according to our faith and sincerity. He is more involved in our lives than most people realise.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only son begotten in the flesh. He is our saviour and all shall be resurrected because he atoned for Adam’s transgression. He also bore our sins, illnesses, and troubles, and if we trust him he will give us rest from them. Through the resurrection we will be brought before him to be judged and his judgement will be righteous. He is merciful and gracious.

I treasure the wonderful gift of the Holy Ghost. Its quiet whisperings to our minds and our hearts are real and how blessed are they who learn to recognise and obey its urging and encouragement. It is only through the Holy Ghost that we can obtain a strong abiding testimony of the Saviour and his Church. And through the Holy Ghost we can have the peace and confidence to face all the illness and troubles in our lives.

Joseph Smith was visited by God the Father and his son Jesus Christ. They spoke to him and he was chosen and called to receive the priesthood and all its keys, to restore the fullness of the gospel, and to translate and publish the Book of Mormon. He deserves our gratitude and respect. Revelation and prophets continue today in the leadership, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Book of Mormon is the word of God as are the Bible, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. It was written by revelation and inspiration and was translated by revelation, and it is an instrument of revelation to all who diligently and prayerfully study it.

These things are true. I know by experience, by practising them and enjoying the blessings they bring. This knowledge has made my life rich and joyous.

I offer no objective evidence to support this testimony—I believe that scientific method with its insistence on objective measurement is poorly equipped to help people to discover God, just as we do not use rulers or scales to measure love.

I am not worried that I am offending against my scientific training by making declarations without objective evidence. There are many things of great importance to us that are not amenable to objective measurement—we do not have objective measures for love, pain, taste, or smell but they are real and central to our experience as humans. The spiritual experiences which have brought me to know the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ are no less real and are of critical importance in my life.

I have little concern that my children and grandchildren should know my height, weight and eye colour but I am most anxious to share many experiences with them so that we know one another. Jesus Christ taught that God is the Father of our spirits. Would having an objective measure of God’s height and weight help us to know God? My experience is that through spiritual encounters, especially through the aid of the Holy Spirit, we can come to know God. If you want to know God, I recommend the Book of Mormon as a great place to start. If you read it with an open mind and, through sincere prayer, ask God if it is true, he will respond through the Holy Ghost and you will know.

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Personal:

I am a citizen of the small city of Palmerston North in the North Island of New Zealand, born there in 1942 to James August Dunlop and Loloma Emily Palmer.

In 1965 I married Frances Mary Gerrand and together we have five children and twenty one grandchildren.

Apart from my professional life I have been heavily involved in service in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Francie and I now serve as the President and Matron of the Hamilton New Zealand Temple of the Church.

As times allows (and occasionally in spite of some responsibilities) I enjoy escaping into old fashioned black and white photography. And I enjoy infusing all the above with music.

Education:

Victoria University of Wellington

• 1963 BSc – chemistry
• 1965 MSc (Hons) – chemistry

Aberdeen University, Scotland

• 1970 PhD Thesis – “The movement of potassium ions to the xylem of maize roots.”

Employment:

• 1960 Technical trainee, Grasslands Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Zealand.
• 1965 – 1967 Scientist, Grasslands Division, DSIR.
• 1970 – 2009 Scientist, Senior Scientist, Research Leader, Grasslands Division, DSIR (subsequently amalgamated and reorganised as AgResearch).

Professional:

Areas of research –
Biophysics applied to plant mineral nutrition and membrane function. Specific research topics include

• mechanisms of ion absorption of mineral nutrients by plant
• genetic differences in plant mineral nutrition
• competition for nutrients between pasture plants
• enzyme based potentiometric and amperometric biosensors
• ion channels in plant cell membranes
• bioelectric assessment of fruit maturity
• expression and isolation of mammalian of functional ion channel proteins
• biomimetic membranes on supports
• toxin detection using reconstituted ion channels in biomimetic membranes
• mechanism of action of lolitrem toxins from plant endophyte toxins

Organisations and distinctions –

• Member, International Council on the Genetics of Plant Mineral Nutrition.
• Member, Council of the New Zealand Society of Plant Physiologists.
• Principal Investigator, MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, New Zealand.
• Leader of multi-institute research programmes on phosphate fertiliser use and biosensor development.
• Prince and Princess of Wales Fellow.
• New Zealand – German scientific exchange fellow.
• Invited speaker at international conferences on plant nutrition, plant physiology, plant breeding, biosensors and bioelectronics.

Publications –
Over seventy papers published in international refereed journals and book chapters on the topics listed above.

Posted October 2010