Testimonies

I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, into what in those days was called a part-member family. My mother was a member of the Church but my father, although he was supportive of our activity in the Church, was not. So from a young age I attended Church and enjoyed the support and friendship of a small community of LDS people that in time grew to be quite large. My first memories of Sunday meetings are of an Odd Fellows Hall in Beaverton, which served as our meeting house at the time. Often there were little brown beer bottles left on the window sills from some Odd Fellows activity from the night before, and I remember going around with other members collecting them and putting them in the trash can. Over the years, our little branch grew into a ward and our ward into a stake, and I remained active in the Church.

I cannot say when I first knew that I had a testimony of the gospel. One thing I do remember is the sweet, peaceful feeling I had one summer afternoon as I sat in Sacrament Meeting in our ward—by then known as the West Hills Ward—listening to a talk. At the time I must have been a deacon or a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood, because I was sitting on the front bench in the chapel, after the Sacrament had been administered. It was a warm day, and the side door was open, and as I listened to the speaker I was looking out and up into the leaves of a tree outside. I didn’t hear an angelic voice or see anything out of the ordinary—just the rustle of the leaves and the sight of the sunlight playing its usual games of light and shadow. But as I sat there I had a sense that this was the place I should be, maybe even the place I was meant to be.

This feeling, and support and encouragement from my mother and ward leaders, sustained me through adolescence. At that time I knew I loved books and schoolwork, but I had no dream of becoming a scholar. Only after serving a mission in Japan and beginning my studies again at BYU did I start to think that I might become a college professor. A few years of graduate school at UC Berkeley clinched the issue for me. But by then I was married and had a small family and enough sense to know that the road I had chosen would not be an easy one—not only because scholars don’t make much money but because I knew from my experience as a student that for a member of the Church, the academic world presented a constant challenge to one’s faith.

I cannot pretend that even now, more than thirty-five years after a determined to make my living as a scholar, I do not meet occasional challenges to my religious beliefs and affiliations—both from without and from within. But long years of coping with that problem have taught me the efficacy of exercising faith even in the presence of doubt, which is a crucial thing for someone in the doubting business, which for good or ill (both, I think) is what the academic life is. And in my mind I always remember the story, in the Gospel of Mark, of a man who came to the Savior asking for help for his afflicted son. When the Lord, no doubt knowing the state of his heart as a father desperate for help, said to the him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth,” we are told that “the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” I am greatly encouraged that despite this honest expression of doubt, the Lord accepted the man without rebuke and healed his son. Whenever I think of that story I remind myself, first, that there are those who depend upon me, whatever my limitations, to seek the Lord’s blessing in their behalf; and, second, that if I go to the Lord honestly, not dissembling, he will not turn me away—although how he chooses to answer my requests must of course be left to Him. Not all children will be healed, but all fathers must have the courage to ask.

When I first decided to pursue a doctoral degree, I did so with the rather stern counsel of Jacob (in 2 Nephi 9:28-29) in mind: “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. And they shall perish. / But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsel of God.” All in the household of faith who aspire to be learned should heed that counsel, and I am glad that I had the benefit of it from the very beginning of my career as a scholar. I am happy to say that over the years I have found echoes of that counsel in the writings of scholars, too. One of my favorite quotations is from Pascal, who in his Pensees says, “The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it.”

No truer words were ever spoken. The older I get and the more I experience the vagaries of human existence, the more I am also aware of the “infinity of things” beyond the power of empirical and analytical methods to adequately define or comprehend. Despite all my strivings, I do still have doubts. I am fortunate, however, that that feeling of peace I first experienced as a young man still comes over me often in my activity as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints striving for help with his unbelief. I know this is not an accident; I know that it comes from exercising faith even in times of doubt. I hope and intend to continue, then, to do precisely that, hoping that in time the Lord may say to me what John was asked to write the church in Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 8): “I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.”

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Steven D. Carter (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) holds the Yamamoto Ichihashi Chair in Japanese History and Civilization at Stanford University, where he has also headed the Department of Asian Languages. His research and publications focus on Japanese poetry, poetics, and poetic culture; the Japanese essay (zuihitsu); travel writing; historical fiction; and the relationship between the social and the aesthetic.

Posted October 2010

“It is I; be not afraid.” (John 6:20)

“Theology is the science of communication, or of correspondence between God, angels, spirits, and men, by means of visions, dreams, interpretations, conversations, inspirations, or the spirit of prophecy and revelation.” – Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology

Having been born of goodly parents who consistently chose the good part, I was taught from a young age about revelation, the power of prayer and fasting, and the reality of the Atonement of Christ. Great students of the scriptures, my parents inculcated in me many gospel principles and gospel teachings.

One of my earliest memories is consciousness of a Heavenly Father with whom I could communicate. The possibility of dialog with God has been a constant presence in my life. I have heard his voice from time to time speaking to me through the Holy Scriptures, and on other occasions He has whispered to my soul about things I should do or not do.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen I began to pray about the Book of Mormon and the prophet Joseph Smith. During this time I consistently read and re-read the Book of Mormon, but I never had a witness through prayer that the book was true. I sincerely wanted a witness for myself that these things were true, but I wanted it for the asking. Nearly five years of indifferent asking passed, and still nothing.

When I moved away to college at the University of Wyoming I found myself living in a dorm room alone. The loneliness of that first week cannot be exaggerated, but I was fortunate to meet Ryan Carrington, who would become my friend and roommate, my second Sunday at church. Through the next year we would study, discuss, and pray together in anticipation of serving missions for the church.

Soon I made other friends through church. These friends were very helpful to me because, during my freshman year of college, in the quick succession of one month after another after another, my brother, aunt, and grandmother died. Each of these deaths felt like a giant wound, but in each case I found comfort through the Book of Mormon. I knew that God knew me, but still I did not connect this to a testimony of the restored gospel. I wanted Moroni’s promise fulfilled for me. I wanted an answer to prayer.

In the early months of 1994, in room 614, McIntyre Hall, on the campus of the University of Wyoming, the answer came. For the first time, my asking was different. In this prayer I called upon God for a witness that the Book of Mormon was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God—as had done before—but the difference this time was a strong intention to abide by the answer—whatever it might be. All the earlier attempts had been a mere asking—this time I knocked with every intention of going through the door, if it was opened, or of walking away, if it wasn’t. This time was more like Abraham, for I was not only asking but arguing, claiming that I no longer wanted to know for curiosity’s sake, but because I intended to live it until I die. And the witness came. It was an overwhelming feeling in my heart that God loved me, had restored his church through Joseph Smith, and had given the Book of Mormon, and that what I had been taught by my parents was true.

On occasions too many to count since then I have been troubled by questions about my faith or my life that have led to prayer, study, and more prayer, study, and fasting. In every instance, my mind has been satisfied with what I have discovered. Understanding the things of God depends in equal parts on faith and knowledge—a testimony grows organically, with the proper nourishment and care. Without that, it withers and dies, like a vine without water, sunlight, and soil.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” (John 15:1)

A testimony grows line upon line, precept upon precept, from grace to grace, until we receive a fulness—or not at all (D&C 93: 11-18). Until we receive a fulness—sometimes feels like an interminably long time. In the meantime, we may content ourselves with considering new perspectives on and trying to understand and practice the lines and precepts we’ve been given—even if they seem or feel like too little, or too late. A true dialog must always be open to new turns.

Like Nephi, I do not know the meaning of all things, but I know that God loves his children (1 Nephi 11:17). I have every confidence that one can get nearer to God by reading the Book of Mormon. I know that fasting is a divine principle that opens lines of communication between God and man. I know priesthood power can heal. I know God lives and prepared an infinite and eternal sacrifice to save us from our sins through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know the Lord can speak to us through the power of the Holy Ghost.

All of these things I knew before I had even the slightest pretense of being, or, some might say, posing as, a scholar. In the years since, while trying to make my way as a scholar and teacher of rhetoric I have not encountered good arguments for leaving my faith behind. Instead, I consistently encounter new knowledge, perspectives, and understanding that increase my faith and my awareness of being in the world. Likewise my faith has consistently benefited my scholarship and informed my understanding of the world.

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David Charles Gore is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is the son of Douglas Allen Gore and Margaret Christine Larsen (née). He was raised in Aurora, Colorado, where he graduated from Smoky Hill High School. In the fall of 1993 he attended the University of Wyoming on a swimming scholarship. From 13 July 1994 to 17 July 1996, he served for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the England Manchester Mission. He has a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Wyoming in Communications and Mass Media. He twice graduated from Texas A&M University, with an M.A. and Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Affairs. His research interests are in the Scottish Enlightenment, including the moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith, as well as Mormon Studies. On 1 March 1997 he was sealed to Kathy Ann Foti, R.Ph., in the San Diego Temple. They are the parents of four daughters and one son.

Posted October 2010

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my theism. In 1990 I was an angry autodidact in semi-rural Utah, reading Sartre and announcing my agnosticism to audiences both willing and unwilling. I wore my hair long and my clothing torn as badges of adolescent independence.

Over a long summer, I came to a muted respect for the tradition of my family, for the clear-sighted and powerful faith of my mother. I remained agnostic but felt open to involvement in a church community and to the moral responsibilities of the adulthood I sensed before me. An experience involving the LDS sacramental prayers on the first Sunday in August provided my initial experience of the Divine in a formally religious setting. That numinous conversion—were I evangelical I think I would call it my rebirth or regeneration—forever altered the course of my life. Four weeks after my change of heart, I left the Rocky Mountains to begin college in the Northeast.

I arrived in Boston in the fall, surrounded for the first time by a critical mass of people who loved to read and argue and expatiate. I cherished this new environment of intellectualism and energetic debate, even as I found myself stretched as a neophyte believer. I attended church, bore testimony on most Fast Sundays, volunteered in a homeless shelter, expropriated food from the cafeteria in the Freshman Union to feed people busking near the subway stop. And I read books, constantly. Toward the end of my freshman year, I developed doubts about the intellectual integrity of Mormonism, realizing dimly that I had been converted to theism that Sunday morning in August but not to a specific tradition. Mormonism is not a religion born in the late twentieth century, and I believe in retrospect that I was experiencing with the vivid intensity of early adulthood the incongruity between the world I was learning to inhabit as a college student in Boston in 1991 and the world in which Joseph Smith revealed the faith tradition within which I had come to God just a few months earlier.

Like many aspiring intellectuals with religious yearnings, I turned to C.S. Lewis to locate myself within Christianity. There was something in the self-assurance of that strange man, of his love of words and books, that made me think that I could one day believe that Christ was Divine. I could not yet entirely imagine myself as a Latter-day Saint.

Having already submitted my application for LDS missionary service and taken a leave of absence from college, I decided that I would follow my hunch of August 1990 and serve an LDS mission. Following the prescribed sequence for missionaries in preparation, I soon found myself, an earnest theist beginning to imagine myself as a Christian, sitting in a comfortably dark room in the temple in Dallas, Texas, four seats from my mother. I understood that I was to learn the secrets of eternity in that endowment room, but instead I found the temple rites frustrating and disorienting. For two intensely painful weeks I debated leaving the Church. My mother, ever wise, expressed to me only her love, her confidence that I would find my way, and her support no matter where my paths would lead. I prayed energetically, and at the conclusion of the fortnight of struggle felt only that God would warn me if I were on the wrong path. He did not warn me against a mission for the LDS Church, so I continued on my charted course.

The Missionary Training Center (MTC) looms darkly in my memory to this day. Still smarting from the insult that had stolen from me a mission to Russia (I had studied Russian in college and always assumed I would serve there but was instead detailed to southern Louisiana), I found the MTC foreign and disorienting. The horrible, angry tension of the two weeks after my temple endowment returned. My branch president, sensing that I was a readerly boy who could still be saved by the bard of Mormon bookishness, loaned me copies of Hugh Nibley’s key works. Nibley allowed me to think that it was not wholly absurd to embrace Mormonism as the setting for my discipleship. Most importantly, no matter how tense my experience, I did not hear God tell me to leave. I remained in the MTC, and though I struggled for many months to feel that I belonged, I served diligently, even obsessively, in southern Louisiana.

There were times during my mission, moments of profound power, when I felt God communicating to someone else in my presence, perhaps even—though this was harder for me to believe—through me. As I counseled with and loved people drowning in multigenerational poverty, as I interacted with other missionaries and local Saints, I felt both love and the power of conscious commitment. I chose those people, chose to love them, to commit to them, to sacrifice for them, to see them as God saw them. In this sacred exercise of my will, I felt God’s divine affirmation. By the end of my mission, I found myself believing in the Jesus of the Latter-day Saints, committed to Christ and the Church, delighted at the cosmic and human mysteries explored in the temple. My initial conversion to theism was an urgent, visceral response to an overwhelming divine encounter. Though I had sought God, there was something inexorable in that first conversion. The transformation I experienced during my mission was anything but inexorable. My path from general theism to specific Mormonism represented a series of choices and commitments made, a network of relationships on which God’s seal rested. This belief in Mormonism was no less real, however, than my first belief in God.

Since those first turbulent years of commitment and belief, my faith has weathered many vicissitudes, bright days of dazzling light and cold winter nights of uncertainty and self-doubt. By acts of my divinely affirmed choosing, Mormonism has been my life these last two decades. I believe in God as much as I believe in my own consciousness, and I believe that he has called me to be a Latter-day Saint, a calling I have chosen to accept, a calling I have given my heart to.

Some Protestants, uncomfortable with traditional theology, have begun to advocate an extension of process theology that they term relational theology. Much of the writing on relational theology is muddled; some represents little more than pop psychology. Despite my misgivings about such applications in Protestantism, for me the concept of relational theology points toward something critical about the nature of religious truth and community. The God I worship is a God who relates, and the truths I seek are found within Divine relationships. Of all the various facts and propositions that can be entertained, accepted, or disputed about the nature of Divinity, it is those that serve relationships among humans and God that matter most to me.

In the two decades I have spent reading and digesting the documents of the earliest Restoration and its contexts, I have been increasingly struck by how radically and powerfully Joseph Smith preached a gospel of relatedness. From his model of scripture as the whispering of voices from the dust to his adoption theology, from the patriarchal priesthood and the power of Elijah to the creation of the “stakes” of Zion’s grand tabernacle, Joseph preached a Gospel of cosmic interconnectedness. When he encountered funerary papyri filled with Egyptian hieroglyphs, he found in them the promise of relationships among peoples and planets, tying connections between spheres of existence into the salvation narrative of the cosmos. Through long study of religious and cultural history, my mind has joined my heart, and my commitment to the LDS Church has expanded.

When I worship with the Saints, I feel God directing me to stay, telling me that these are my people, my ethnos, my Tribe of Israel. I feel with Paul the magnificent power of the “Spirit bearing witness” with my spirit that I am a son of God and that through my membership in the Church I stand in fellowship with the Saints as an heir of God, a joint-heir with Christ. I have come to think of the familiar distinction between the “Gospel” and the “Church” as reflecting relational networks—the Gospel represents our relationships with God, while the Church represents our relationships with each other.

Understanding truth and theology in terms of relationships serves for me as a natural analogy for understanding the role of the will in the exercise of faith. I believe that the image of Christ as the groom and the Church as the bride has more to teach us than the marital customs of Second Temple Judaism. New Testament images of marriage between God and people point out parallels between our intimate relationships and our religious faith. In marriage I understand more about my relationship to the Church. I love my wife; I believe in her. I am aware of her flaws and failings, her insecurities. I also see her glory, her brilliance, her kindness, her future. My marital love is not just the passionate attachment that first drew us together; it is my choice, my commitment. Not every moment is blissful, but we are more together than we are apart, our family is more than the sum of our experiences. Thus it is with my faith.

My relational testimony not only allows me to give my heart to other people and to the Church, it has left me free to pursue Truth at my own pace, to allow time for better information, to avoid snap judgments, to recognize that not every requirement of sense or logic will be satisfied the first time I encounter a problem. I find in this relational testimony a close parallel to the way I think our minds work. Though I am not trying to make a strong claim about cognitive science—the fluid and tentative maps academics draw from brain to active consciousness—I am struck by how readily our minds find order, meaning, relationships in the sensations presented to them. Our capacity to make connections, to see the mind of God in the song of a swallow or human fate in the magnificent orbits of celestial bodies, is at the core of our religious being. It is a capacity we should be reluctant to separate ourselves from.

Borrowing language from the Hebraist’s “cloud of witnesses,” (Hebrews 12:1) I see life, religion, and science as containing a “cloud of meanings.” We seek patterns within this cloud, but we do not exhaust its scope with any particular pattern we identify or propose. I do not believe in the extreme relativism that stands behind most expressions of postmodernism. That a phenomenon contains a cloud of meanings does not mean that it cannot be understood, that nothing about it is True, that it is entirely limited to the subjectivity of observers. I believe in Truth, believe in our need to pursue it methodically, earnestly, assiduously. Simultaneously, recognizing life’s cloud of meanings allows me to respect ways of understanding that do not rely on external validation through experimental reproductions of specific hypotheses.

Professionally I try to understand human bodies in states of severe physiological stress, life-threatening catastrophes in which multiple organs are failing. These organ systems are profoundly and irreducibly complex. Those of us who try to understand these systems recognize, in an aphorism popularized by statistician George E.P. Box that “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” I seek patterns and rhythms that are not immediately apparent to the untrained eye in a quest to identify specific types of patient who may benefit from particular therapies and to understand which patients are likely to recover. I hope that these models will allow me to devise better treatments to improve the quality and quantity of human lives. I do not expect or require that those models be perfectly true, though I am glad to move closer to Truth with each of these approximations.

My work in biomedicine parallels my work in cultural history, in which I attempt to understand how worlds and ideas are interconnected, trying to envision the inner working of cultural and conceptual systems as people lived them in the past. I hope that my models will illuminate and expand our understandings of the human condition, that making rich conceptual connections explicit will allow us to situate our consciousness within a cosmic order. The same quest for connection and understanding motivates much of my religious life.

With specific reference to Mormon history a relational theology allows me to embrace a dialogic revelation in which prophetic ideas arise in a network of meanings. I am not forced to believe that the doctrines of the Restoration must not be found in the cultural milieu in which Joseph Smith lived and heard the voice of God. I can find meaning in the ways Joseph Smith, at God’s direction, altered and refracted ideas from other religious and intellectual traditions to uncover, restore, and expand the cosmic secrets of identity. I can also imagine the ways that God would continue to communicate with us as individuals and communities in our current era.

I am whole in the Gospel through the relationships it engenders with my wife, my children, my friends and neighbors, the members of my ward and extended family, even with strangers. I am whole in the Gospel through its illumination of the great connectedness of humanity, the sense I have from Joseph Smith that everyone with a “friend in eternity” will find her way to eternal blessedness. That is my testimony, a testimony standing at the core of my consciousness.

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Samuel Brown graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in Linguistics with a minor in Russian, then received his MD from Harvard Medical School, where he was a National Scholar and Massachusetts Medical Society Scholar. After graduation he completed residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he remained on faculty as an Instructor in General Medicine at Harvard Medical School before moving to the University of Utah, where he completed fellowship training. He is now Assistant Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Associate in the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah, based at the Shock Trauma ICU at Intermountain Medical Center.

Samuel began his scholarly career studying the epidemiology of hospital-acquired infections in resource-limited settings within the former Soviet Union, a project funded by USAID that ultimately evolved into the development of outbreak detection algorithms with an MIT-trained group of engineers, which resulted in the successful development of a software package deployed in US hospitals to track and control hospital-acquired infections. More recently, his interests in serious infection, computer models, and complex analysis have led to scholarly work on the sepsis syndrome. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, he investigates patterns in cardiovascular function to identify markers of disease severity and responsiveness to treatment in patients with life-threatening infection. This work evaluates hidden rhythms in heart rate and blood pressure that may be able to guide the resuscitation of individuals in septic shock. He has published and presented widely on the epidemiology of infectious disease and critical illness.

In his off-hours Samuel tries to understand how believers have employed religious concepts in coming to terms with embodiment, sickness, and death, a quiet avocation that has yielded several publications. His book, In Heaven As It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011), explores tenets of the early Restoration that support an LDS relational theology within the context of the struggle to overcome the effects of death.

Samuel missionized in the Great Louisiana-Baton Rouge Mission in the early 1990s and has since served in a variety of roles in the church, including bishop’s counselor, ward mission leader, Gospel Doctrine teacher, physical facilities coordinator, sub-assistant scout master, and, most durably and importantly, husband, father, and home teacher.

Posted October 2010

As many Jews discussed who they thought Jesus was, our Savior asked his disciples, “Whom say ye that I am?” Peter readily responded, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”¹ Peter had received this confirmation through personal revelation from his Father in Heaven. The same question is asked of us, with the following addendum: Has the Son of the living God restored what he established during his ministry, but which was lost through apostasy? My answer to the question, like Peter’s affirmation, is “yes.” This personal testimony has been confirmed many times by the peace and assurance that have come to me through study, prayer, and experience in His service. It is true that by doing His will we come to know the truth of His doctrine.² My testimony prompts me to use a few more of Peter’s words. When some of his disciples took offense and “walked no more with him,” Jesus asked the twelve whether they, too, would go away. Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”³ These are my words, too.

Personal testimony is a source of comfort and motivation in a postmodern world that seems to have lost its moral compass and is drifting with whatever wind prevails. The knowledge we have received through the restoration of the Gospel provides us with principled direction and firm anchors in troubled seas. Much of the restored knowledge is in the form of modern scripture, and it supports, clarifies, and adds to what we have in the Bible. The Book of Mormon, for example, is a remarkable source of information that clarifies doctrines alluded to in the Bible.

I believe there is enough evidence in the content and structure of the Book of Mormon to convince any fair-minded jury, or individual, beyond reasonable doubt that it is an ancient text. Once that verdict is established, one must face the conclusion that Joseph Smith’s explanation of how he received the book is true. For nearly two centuries detractors have suggested other origins for the book, only to have their theories debunked. Their theories have not resulted from a study of evidence; rather they have been built on hope that the book is false and on attempts to find evidence to support that hope. It is telling that many of the book’s detractors dismiss the book out of hand, confessing that they haven’t even read it. I have read it, and I find it to be a marvelous source of truth, wisdom, guidance, and a testimony of our Savior’s mission. Its harmony with the Old and New Testaments is both exciting and satisfying.

I confess to personally receiving the guidance of the Spirit in unlikely and unanticipated ways that have blessed me in both professional life and in church service. A series of unlikely events led me to complete a PhD in linguistics, which in turn led to a rewarding professional career and to enjoyable Church service. In retrospect I, like the men on the road to Emmaus,⁴ can recognize the spiritual element in those events with more clarity now than I did at the time they took place. On the other hand, there are times when the spiritual element has been clearly obvious. Such was the case when, as a young missionary in Finland, I found myself in a challenging situation, with only rudimentary language ability, trying to explain a gospel principle to a member of another faith. Suddenly I found myself putting words together and expressing myself at a level that I had never experienced before or for some time thereafter. Somehow, I knew what I was saying was correct and that I was experiencing a gift of the Spirit. It was such an impressive event that, upon returning to our apartment, I thanked my Father in Heaven for the gift, and promised myself that I would never forget that wonderful moment. Perhaps it was an early indication of a career in linguistics that was one day to follow.

Many years later, as a mission president responsible for the welfare of over one hundred young missionaries in Finland, I experienced the guidance of the Spirit in making decisions that affected many lives. With the passing of time, it is gratifying to confirm that more wisdom than my own was involved in many of those decisions.

As I have studied the doctrines of other churches, I have found they contain much that is good and true. They have much to respect and emulate, but I have never found the spirit, or the fullness of understanding, that exists in the LDS faith. Its doctrine welds the Old and New Testaments and modern-day scripture together in a satisfying, complementing fullness that confirms for me that much, indeed, has been restored, that Christ is our Savior, and that in this church and in its temples are the “words of eternal life.” Where else would I go?

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Notes:
¹ Matthew 16:13-17.
² John 8:31-32.
³ John 6:66-68.
⁴ Luke 24:13-35.

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Melvin J. Luthy received his undergraduate degree from Utah State University and a PhD degree in linguistics from Indiana University. His teaching experience has been at Indiana University, Wisconsin State University-Oshkosh, and Brigham Young University. He served as a Captain in Military Intelligence in Washington D.C and Vietnam. He has served on the Academic Advisory Board of the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, California; as a national officer in the Society for Scandinavian Studies; and as a linguistic adviser to WordPerfect and Novell Corporations. He has authored and coauthored books on Finnish linguistics, and has published chapters in textbooks as well as articles in journals such as Language Learning, Scandinavian Studies, College English, College Composition and Communication, and Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Finland and has received the designation of “Finland’s Ambassador of Goodwill.” At BYU, he has been the linguistics department chair, chair of the Faculty Advisory Council, associate dean of the College of Humanities, and founding director of the Center for Language Studies. In church service, he has held many positions of responsibility, including mission president and later temple president in Finland. He currently serves in the Provo Temple. He is married to the former Anne-Maj Savstrand and they are the parents of four children and grandparents of eleven.

Posted September 2010

The Story of My Conversion

I was born in Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, right in the middle of the Italian peninsula. I was a happy, normal Italian girl, an only child with loving parents. I was reared in the Catholic Church, and, in our family, traditions and good moral principles were very important. I attended a Catholic elementary school, with nuns as teachers, who tried to convince all boys to become priests and all girls to become nuns! Well, that was not my vocation, because I always wanted to get married and have children.

Every morning we had Catechism, religious education for Catholic children, where we memorized many doctrinal principles, and we were also tested on them. During those classes, some questions started to come up in my mind: Why don’t we have a prophet today? Does the Lord still love us? Why do we have to repeat memorized prayers? Why can’t we use our own words to speak to the Lord? Why can’t we participate in the Sunday Mass instead of having to listen to the same priest every week? What is Paradise like?

My teachers told me that we didn’t need a prophet any more, because we were in modern times and we had a Pope who took care of us. They said that we are not wise enough to know how to address the Lord in prayer, so we had to rely on the words that others, much wiser than we, wrote; then the Lord would understand the needs of our hearts, so we didn’t need to say anything else. And then, in church, of course, we were not educated enough to preach or to participate, while our priest had studied and was well prepared to conduct the whole meeting. Well, I was a little rebellious, I guess, and I started praying with my own words at night, before going to bed. I was not taught how to pray in my own words, or how to address my prayers, so I started like “Dear God . . .” and ended up with a “. . . good night.” It was the best I could do, but those simple prayers gave me peace and happiness.

And as for my question on Paradise… that question got me into some trouble! My teacher said that Paradise was a beautiful place where we can go if we behave well during our life on earth, that it was a place like a great theater, where we can earn a seat that we occupy eternally to contemplate God. Well, to a seven- or eight-year-old girl, the promise of sitting and contemplating eternally is not what she thinks of as eternal happiness! So I responded that I didn’t like it, and that I preferred to go somewhere else, because I wanted more, I wanted to do things with my family, I wanted to be active even after this life. As a result, my teacher condemned me to stand facing a corner for what seemed an eternity to me….

In the meanwhile, I was growing up. My life was good, my daily prayers gave me peace, and I started missing the Sunday Masses more and more until I went just a few times a year. Even though I am also thankful to my former religion for the good principles it taught me, I had new feelings, or just different ideas, and I knew that I was going to be all right, that something was going to happen to me, and that I would have more, because what I had till then was not enough. In the meantime, I was growing up.

Then, one late August day in 1974, someone rang the bell in my apartment, on the seventh floor of our building. My mother was home alone; she looked through the peephole, and saw two young men in suits, white shirts, and ties. Through the closed door she talked to them and noticed a foreign accent. They looked like good people, but, the week before, her friend had been assaulted by strangers in her home, so she didn’t trust them and told them that she was the maid of the house, not allowed to let anyone in. Next day, the missionaries came back, and the same scenario happened. No luck for them. So they crossed our address off their book and went way.

About a week later, my mother was downtown and noticed a group of people in front of a street board. She approached them and saw some missionaries. She started talking to them, saw the pictures on the board, and was about to accept a copy of the Book of Mormon when it suddenly started raining. It was a downpour, and everybody ran away to shelter. Another week went by.

Then, as it often happens in Europe and Italy, there was a strike of public transportation. The first two missionaries that came by my home were tracting in a distant part of town, and had to walk home. My house happened to be along their way. As they were walking by my building, one of the two told his companion: “Elder, I feel that we need to enter this building again!” His companion answered that they had been there several times already, and that nobody was interested in their message, but the first missionary insisted. They went into the elevator, and chose one floor, the seventh, and the door on the right. They rang the bell. Again my mother answered through the door, looked through the peephole, recognized the missionaries, and opened the door. Up to this day, many years after, tears come to my eyes to see how the Lord had prepared the way, how one missionary was inspired to knock at my door a third time, how my mother was prepared to open her home to them. And they taught her the first lesson.

That evening, when I returned home, my mother told me: “The Mormons came today, and they’ll be back tomorrow.” I had no idea of who or what they were, but I had the feeling that I had to be home for that second appointment. Maybe it was curiosity alone, maybe inspiration, but I made certain that I was there for the second lesson. And they taught us the Joseph Smith story, the story of a modern prophet of the Lord, who restored His Gospel on the earth. Finally, I had found my prophet! Everything the Elders taught us seemed to me so normal, so natural, so true. They just confirmed the beliefs that I started having as a little girl in elementary school: prophets, prayers in our own words, activity in church, a Paradise where we continue working and learning together with our eternal families. What I had desired for such a long time was true and possible. A new dimension and perspective had been added to my life.

The missionaries invited us to church for the following Sunday. We went. I felt at home, just as after a long journey: I felt that I had finally arrived at my destination. I am so thankful to those two missionaries who didn’t give up, who followed their inspiration and knocked at my door that third time, till my mother let them in. Both my mother and I joined the church. Those missionaries listened to the promptings of the Spirit and found us.

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Cinzia Donatelli Noble (Dott. in Lett., Università G. d’Annunzio-Chieti e Pescara, Italy) is a teaching professor of Italian language and literature at Brigham Young University.

Posted September 2010

I am a Mormon Because I am a Feminist

I am a convert to the Mormon Church from Roman Catholicism, and gained my testimony as the result of spiritual experiences that I cannot deny. In this essay, however, I will discuss instead why, as a feminist, I remain a steadfast member of the LDS Church.

It is very difficult to be raised in one of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), as I was, and not come away with some fairly unpleasant conclusions about women. Depending on the religion and sect involved, one may be taught that the first woman was feeble-minded or a murderess and that all her daughters are marred by that fact, that a woman’s body is unclean, that God meant women to submit to their husbands and in general be subservient to men, and that divinity is male and male alone. (Of course, echoes of such teachings can be found in other faith traditions besides the Abrahamic, as well.)

After decades of studying LDS doctrine concerning women (and carefully distinguishing it from LDS cultural understandings and practices, which in quite a few cases contradict that doctrine), I have been liberated as a woman from the erroneous and harmful beliefs about women that haunt those raised in Abrahamic traditions. How remarkable and in some senses ironic it still seems to me to have experienced “women’s lib” by conversion to Mormonism!

I will first review the main points of doctrine that make Mormonism the most feminist of all the Christianities in my view, and then proceed to re-tell the story of the Garden of Eden from the vantage point of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Restored Gospel teaches that the term “God” means an exalted woman and an exalted man married in the new and everlasting covenant (D&C 132:19-20). We are taught that there is no God without men and women loving each other as equals. Heavenly Father is not an eternal bachelor; he is married to our Heavenly Mother. In fact, the one who’s an eternal bachelor is Satan.

Second, the Restored Gospel teaches that all will have their male or female body forever. It is not a curse, but a great gift and a blessing that each soul had to prove itself worthy to have. Women readers, your breasts, your womb, your ovaries, are not unclean cursings; they are blessings. And the Restored Gospel also teaches me that I will be married forever, and that I will have children forever, and that the life of being a woman married to my sweetheart and having children forever is the life that will bring me the fullest joy in the eternities—as it has here on earth.

Third, LDS doctrine teaches that men and women are equals before the Lord and before each other. “Equal” does not mean “identical”—for example, there are no two men who are identical, and yet they stand as equals before each other and before the Lord. Can we imagine an understanding of equality that means that a man and woman, though different, can be equals before the Lord and before each other? That is the vision of equality that the Restored Gospel teaches.

Elder L. Tom Perry, an apostle of the LDS Church, said in 2004: ““There is not a president and vice president in a family. We have co-presidents working together eternally for the good of their family . . . They are on equal footing. They plan and organize the affairs of the family jointly and unanimously as they move forward.”¹ What an incredible vision, especially for a Christian denomination, many of which believe in some type of doctrine of submission of wives to husbands. The LDS do not preach submission of wives.

In my opinion, we cannot fully understand this revolutionary doctrine of the LDS Church unless we go back to the story of the Garden of Eden. Again, let us start with three main points of difference in the telling of that story from the vantage of the Restored Gospel.

Number one: the LDS do not believe that the Fall was a great tragedy. Rather, we believe that the Fall was foreordained, that it was for our progression, and thus the Fall was a blessing. Number two, the LDS do not believe that Eve sinned in partaking of the fruit of the First Tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And number three, because the LDS do not believe Eve sinned, we also do not believe that Eve was punished by God for her role in partaking of the fruit, but rather rewarded.

The Great Plan of Happiness devised for the children of God mandated that they leave their heavenly home, receive a mortal body as a blessing, enter into full agency by being separated from God, and then return once more to their heavenly home to be judged for how they used their agency. That is, the Plan was to be a “round,” if you will: it would take us from our heavenly home and, if we walked that path well, the plan would bring us back to our heavenly home, now much more like our Heavenly Parents, with much more knowledge, a fuller agency, a desire to choose the right, with so much more than we ever could have acquired if we had stayed in heaven with a pale or dilute version of agency.

Only the children could choose to leave, and to bring to pass a separation from their divine parents. And so in the Garden were placed a son and a daughter of God, and two trees. Two persons, two trees.

Both Trees represented doorways along the journey of the Great Plan. The First Tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, symbolized the doorway leading from heaven, and the ordinances of entering mortality with a mortal body, gaining full agency, and having the light of Christ awakened within. The Second Tree, the tree of eternal life, symbolized the ordinances of salvation and exaltation, and the doorway back to our heavenly home.

Eve was created second, then, not because she was derivative of Adam: she was created second to highlight that the giving of the gift of the First Tree was the gift to be given by women in the Great Plan.² It is through women that souls journey to mortality and gain their agency, and in general it is through the nurturing of women, their nurturing love of their children, that the light of Christ is awakened within each soul. And we should include in that list of souls Jesus the Christ. Even Christ our Lord was escorted to mortality and veiled in flesh through the gift of a woman, fed at his mother’s breast, and awakened to all that is good and sweet in the world. Women escort every soul through the veil to mortal life and full agency. It is interesting to think that even Adam, who was created before Eve, entered into full mortality and full agency by accepting the gift of the First Tree from the hand of a woman. In a sense, Adam himself was born of Eve.

If Eve was foreordained to give this good gift as her stewardship in the Great Plan, then she did not sin—and that is LDS doctrine. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle of the LDS Church, has said, “Some Christians condemn Eve for her act, concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it. Not the Latter-day Saints! Informed by revelation, we celebrate Eve’s act and honor her wisdom and courage in the great episode called the Fall.”³ We believe that our Heavenly Parents, and also all of the rest of God’s children, were happy and grateful that Eve offered her gift.

Eve, then, was not the worst among women; Eve was the best among women! She was the most courageous, the most full of faith. It was also right, then, that the first mortal being that the resurrected Jesus showed himself to was not a man; it was a woman. Jesus’ performance of the Atonement repaid Mother Eve’s faith in the Plan, her courageous opening of the door represented by the First Tree.

Did God curse Eve? We know that the ground was cursed for the sake of Adam and Eve—is this a cursing of Adam and Eve? In the teachings of the LDS Church, we do not believe that that was a curse meant to punish them—it was a curse meant to start that law of opposites that undergirds agency: virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, light and darkness, truth and lies (2 Ne 2:11-13). Eve was told she would labor in childbirth—was this a cursing of Eve? Again, from the LDS perspective, absolutely not. To have children, to be able to fully give the gift of Eve, is one of the most soul-satisfying parts of a woman’s life that she will either experience here or in the hereafter if circumstances have prohibited it here.

And then in the King James version of the BIble, we are told that Eve, as part of her punishment, was told that Adam would rule over her. Is that what the LDS believe? Actually not. Elder Bruce C. Hafen, a seventy in the LDS Church, says: “Genesis 3:16 states that Adam is to ‘rule over’ Eve, but… over in ‘rule over’ uses the Hebrew bet, which means ruling with, not ruling over…. The concept of interdependent equal partners is well-grounded in the doctrine of the restored gospel.”⁴

So the LDS alone among all Christian religions assert that not only did Eve not sin, but she was rewarded for her courage and wisdom, and God was assuring her that, just as she fulfilled her role in the Great Plan of Happiness, Adam would step up to the plate, and he would perform his role in the Great Plan of Happiness, and that would entitle him to rule with her. This is absolutely revolutionary and astounding doctrine among all the Christianities!

What gift will Adam give to further the Great Plan? The LDS believe that Adam and his sons will give the gift of the fruit of the Second Tree to the children of God, those who are worthy to receive it, just as Eve and her daughters give the fruit of the First Tree to all who are worthy to partake of it. The fruit of the Second Tree is the ordinances of salvation and exaltation administered by the sons of God. Just as the doorway through the veil into this life is administered and guarded over by the women, the daughters of God, so the doorway through the veil that brings us home is administered and guarded over by the sons of God. And those that have accepted the gift of the Second Tree from the hands of the sons of God will pass through that veil and back to that celestial place where they can be with their Parents once more.

Just as Adam was asked to hearken to Eve and received the fruit of the First Tree, Eve is asked by God to hearken to Adam in accepting the fruit of the Second Tree. We would be remiss if we did not see that there were two hearkenings, two gifts given, two gifts received, two stewardships.

That means that priesthood, in the LDS understanding, is not some extra given to men and denied women. Priesthood is a man’s apprenticeship to become a heavenly father, and it is clear from LDS doctrine that women have their own apprenticeship to become like their heavenly mother. The ordinances—and they are ordinances—of body and of agency—pregnancy, childbirth, lactation—the spiritual ordinances of the First Tree are not less powerful or spiritual than the ordinances of the Second Tree.⁵ Women have their own godly power.

Some have erroneously felt that the Church and its male leaders preside over the members’ families, and that somehow that means that men are to rule over women. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Restored Gospel helps us see that the Church is intended to be the gift that the sons of God give to the family, just as the daughters of God give a great gift to the family. The Church, then, is but an auxiliary to the family, which stands above it in the eternal plan. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle of the LDS Church, has said, “There might be wards and stakes in heaven—I don’t know anything about them—or there may well be some other organization that we don’t know much about. What we do know will exist in heaven is families. And most of what has been revealed about our afterlife, our eternal life, our celestial life, focuses on family organization….”⁶ The family is the divine organization, and we know from LDS doctrine that, in the family, women and men rule as equals. President James E. Faust, of the First Presidency of the LDS Church, said: “Every father is to his family a patriarch and every mother a matriarch as coequals in their distinctive parental roles.”⁷ Notice the drumbeat, again, of equality.

I remain a steadfast member of the Mormon Church because, for the first time in my life, I understand why it is not a curse to be born a woman, and how it can be said with a straight face that men and women stand before God and before each other as true equals. I understand now that women are that they might have joy (2 Ne 2:25). And, odd as it may sound to some, I believe that one of the most profoundly feminist acts one can commit is to share the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with others. The Restored Gospel not only restores right relations between man and God, but right relations between men and women, making it the strongest, most progressive force for women in the world today.

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Notes:
¹ L. Tom Perry, “Fatherhood—An Eternal Calling,” Church News, 10 April 2004,:15, hard copy version only; the original wording is in the audio version of the 2004 April General Conference address at http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2004/apr/4/4_2english.mp3
² Alma Don Sorensen, “The Story of Eve,” in Alma Don Sorensen and Valerie Hudson Cassler, Women in Eternity, Women of Zion (Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, 2004), pp. 68-101
³ Dallin H. Oaks, “The Great Plan of Happiness,” Ensign, November 1993, pp. 72-75
⁴ Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen, “Crossing Thresholds and Becoming Equal Partners,” Ensign, August 2007, pp. 24-29
⁵ Analiesa Leonhardt, “The Sacrament of Birth,” SquareTwo, Vol. 3 No. 1, Spring 2010, http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleLeonhardtBirth.html
⁶ Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, LDS Church, February 9, 2008, p. 12
⁷ James E. Faust, “The Prophetic Voice,” Ensign, May 1996, p.4

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Valerie Hudson Cassler (http://vmrhudson.org/) was born in Washington, D.C., and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1971. She attended Brigham Young University, where she received her B.A. in political science, with minors in International Relations and Russian. She obtained her Ph.D. in political science from Ohio State University. She taught at Northwestern University and at Rutgers University before joining the political science faculty at BYU in 1987. She served for eight years as director of graduate studies at the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies, and is the recipient of several teaching honors, including the Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award.

Dr. Hudson Cassler is the author, co-author, or editor of many scholarly books and articles on international relations, national security, and foreign policy, including Foreign Policy Analysis: Classical and Contemporary Theory (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), Culture and Foreign Policy, Artificial Intelligence and International Politics, and, with Andrea Den Boer, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Populations (MIT Press, 2004). Among numerous academic distinctions, she won the Otis Dudley Duncan Award from the American Sociological Association in 2004 and, in 2005, the prize for the Best Book in Political Science from the American Association of Book Publishers. In 2009, she was named among the 100 Most Influential Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. She has written considerably on Mormons and Mormonism, as well, having, among other things, edited multiple books with Kerry M. Kartchner on Latter-day Saints and their relationships with United States foreign and security policies, and, with A. Don Sorensen, published a substantial article on Latter-day Saint views of feminist theology in David L. Paulsen and Donald W. Musser, eds., Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christianity (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2007). She is also one of the co-founders of the on-line Latter-day Saint forum SquareTwo (http://squaretwo.org/).

Valerie Hudson Cassler is married to the artist David Cassler, and they are parents to eight children. They reside in Orem, Utah.

Posted September 2010

I appreciate the invitation to participate in this “Scholars Testify” project. For me a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Savior’s atonement, and the restoration of God’s true Church on earth is above and beyond a witness of the Holy Spirit. Nor is it simply an inner feeling or confirmation of a set of truths, knowledge and facts. It’s more than rituals such as genealogy and temple work. It’s different than just a social movement, although Mormonism is greater than any in world history. It’s not simply attendance at Church and Sabbath rules, or adherence to the Word of Wisdom. Nor does it only signify that we are willing to sacrifice our time in local Church programs, pay tithing, or go on missions.

For me, my faith centers in the Savior Jesus Christ, His mission and great atonement for all people, the reality of His resurrection, and the promise we each have of eternal life. Another part of my testimony is the sure knowledge that Joseph Smith was the Prophet of the restoration and that the Church today is God’s kingdom on earth. No one can ever be more certain about these convictions than I am.

Born and raised in Utah, I was the son of an Ohio Protestant father who converted to the LDS Church, and a Mormon mother whose ancestors crossed the plains as early pioneers. Most of my youth was spent growing up in Salt Lake City. I was baptized under the historic Tabernacle on Temple Square, and when I was in high school my bishop and stake president sought to have me called as a missionary for the Church at age 16. I sat at the feet of a number of Church apostles in my youth as they would come to my ward, seminary class, or fireside, as well as when I would visit their offices at Church headquarters.

I read the scriptures voraciously, memorizing some 400 verses before becoming a missionary. I also continually sought Gospel books. I would scrounge used bookstores where I found, purchased, and read hundreds of hard-to-find volumes back in those days like Discourses of Brigham Young, the entire set of the Journal of Discourses, Parley P. Pratt’s Autobiography and Writings of Parley P. Pratt, George Q. Cannon’s Gospel Truths, John Taylor’s The Mediation and Atonement, Joseph Smith’s various volumes known as History of the Church and Lectures on Faith, Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, Sterling McMurrin’s The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion, most of John A. Widtsoe’s dozen volumes, including A Rational Theology, Heber J. Grant’s Gospel Standards, Orson Pratt’s The Seer, and B.H. Roberts’ multiple volumes in his Seventies Courses in Theology, and other intellectual treatises. I think I read over a hundred books when including old as well as contemporary (1950s-60s) volumes by Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, Leonard Arrington, Hugh Nibley, Lowell Bennion, and other favorites.

I added notes from these books to my scriptures, and was always delving into the wide-ranging doctrines of the Gospel. Over the years I have read and pondered greatly the truths of the Book of Mormon, a volume written by ancient prophets which is the word of God. I came to appreciate what Joseph Smith meant, that “a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book.” I came to understand what the Doctrine and Covenants means when we are instructed to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118).

These intellectual and doctrinal expositions helped ground me in deep Mormonism, not just the stuff of Sunday School classes. But they were not sufficient. My soul longed for spiritual confirmation as to the veracity of my growing beliefs. Over the years, my faith solidified through daily prayer, much fasting, and meditation. How well I recall praying alone, not only in my boyhood room as I grew up, but also in the wilderness. In my mid-teens I worked each summer at a Scout Camp where I learned how to pray more intensely. Later, employed by the U.S. Forest Service up in Wyoming for a summer, I felt the sweet Spirit even more, including several times experiencing a burning in my bosom that not only erased all doubt, but confirmed the witness of Mormonism’s truth. On Sundays when I couldn’t get into a town, I would hold my own religious service while sitting along the rushing waters of a mountain stream, or a quiet beaver pond. I would read the scriptures aloud, and then call upon the same God who appeared to Moses and Joseph Smith. Such experiences are too sacred to discuss in public, but they were very real.

They fortified me as I served a two and a half year mission to Brazil, and through years of academic study at BYU, the University of Utah, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I learned to drink fully of the teachings of the Church and my numerous experiences in sacred places like the temples, as well as in chapels and at home, all served to strengthen my convictions. Over the years, I have been empowered through the priesthood to literally be a part of many miracles—whether healing the sick, blessing others with counsel from the Lord, lifting up the hearts of those who suffer, or similar things. I’ve been privileged to see blessings pour down upon the heads of those who repent and draw unto God. He reaches out to all His children if we only seek His blessings.

The greatest blessings in my life are the love and support I enjoy from ten children and especially from my wonderful wife, Kaye. Beyond our triplets, our adopted kids, and those born to us are others who lived in our home while going to college. We consider them each part of our family, as well as our growing tribe of grandchildren. Through many ups and downs over the decades, our eternal sealing in the holy temple has grounded our marriage and family in the rich soil of Mormonism. Years of early morning devotionals in our home, daily family prayer, weekly home evenings, temple attendance, opportunities to serve in the Church and make a difference have all made my life meaningful. We live in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood, surrounded by wonderful friends with whom we experience a genuine sense of community.

Early in my studies at the University of Utah and at Brigham Young University, I focused on many academic and religious fields. Philosophy, sociology, religion, political science, and psychology were my primary interests.

Later, in pursuing a master’s degree and Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, I moved into whole new arenas of higher education that included management and business, ethics, organizational behavior, and other interests. I learned what the Church teaches, that “the glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36). As I interacted with others of various backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and cultures I came to understand how inclusive our religion actually was.

Over the years I have labored long-term in the U.S. with Jewish rabbis, radical pastors in inner-city Detroit, Black Muslim leaders in Cleveland, Protestant ministers, Catholic priests in Hawaii, and evangelical pastors. Years ago in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I served on the interfaith community council where we sought to learn of and appreciate our spiritual traditions. In more recent years, I have represented the LDS Church on the Utah Valley Ministerial Association board, working to build bridges of mutual understanding and respect. The same openness may be said about my ongoing relationships with leaders of various political and social ideologies, whether their values emphasized communism, socialism, capitalism, Americanism, conservatism, libertarianism, or liberalism. I am at home with Latin American advocates of Liberation Theology, as well as Hutterite religious leaders in rural Canada. The same is true of my collaboration with Palestinians and/or Israeli kibbutzniks.

Thus, I am something of an ecumenical or inclusive Mormon who literally believes what the Prophet Joseph Smith argued: “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may” (Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 199). Further, he declared that we don’t ask those of different faiths to throw away the good they have, but to simply add our truths to theirs. Thus, I have been blessed to interact, learn from, and pray with countless individuals of other religious persuasions, and have done so comfortably. Whether they were disciples of Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, or Islam, it didn’t matter. We were and are brothers and sisters.

For some thirty-four years now I have been blessed to be a professor at BYU, where I have had the privilege of building communities of learning and faith with wonderful students from around the globe. I’m a Professor of Organizational Behavior (OB) at Brigham Young University where I teach Consulting and Organizational Change, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, Third World Development, Social Entrepreneurship, and Introductory OB for both MBAs and undergraduate students.

I carry out academic research designing and conducting studies, particularly doing action research, carrying out analyses, and writing/publishing them in appropriate journals. So far I have authored or co-authored ten books, over a hundred published articles, and some two-hundred-plus conference papers. In much of such work I have sought to integrate the spiritual and the secular, trying to figure out for myself and my students how a holistic education can be achieved. I have always sought to make my students critical thinkers, as well as, at the same time, become more grounded in Mormonism’s beliefs. Thus, I have pursued the ideal of which Elder Neal A. Maxwell spoke, that of becoming a “disciple-scholar.”

One of my great passions as a teacher is mentoring students in change projects, advising them on doctoral, master’s, and honors theses, and providing career counseling. A goal each year is to prepare and assist students to go on to graduate studies at top universities. Much of this is done by offering to sponsor students and collaborate in research and the production of papers for conferences and journals. This greatly facilitates their acceptance over other bright students from other schools who haven’t had the experience of actually designing research, collecting data, and getting to a finished product. Many of my students become partners in reaching out to civic engagement projects as we seek to improve the quality of life for those around us. Additionally, I provide pro bono citizenship services to various groups within BYU, and in national academic associations, and serve as a board member for various companies, community non-profits, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working throughout the world.

My approach to scholarship is that of action research, not passive theories and number crunching. I have more to do than just conceptualize, which explains why I spend way too many hours at work each day. I have a lot more on my plate than simply teaching students in a classroom or drafting articles. But it has been very edifying to see my student colleagues grow and develop intellectually, as well as spiritually. Many of them have found their own academic success, having begun careers at Harvard, MIT, Ohio State, Dartmouth, Michigan, Pitt, UCLA, Cornell, and a hundred schools elsewhere.

A core element of our action learning is to build the best models of organizational behavior we can. This involves envisioning how firms and nonprofits may be more effective, more efficient, and more ethical—enterprises in which people feel their work has meaning and significance beyond a paycheck. Criteria include an emphasis on organizational virtue, quality of working life for all members, and democratic values present in organizational culture. Too many jobs have merely become eight-hour rat races instead of a means by which employees may discover their true potential. Our goal in the discipline of OB is to liberate the human spirit at work.

This brings me to the Church as an organization. It was never intended to be a slick model of efficiency, but rather, a mechanism for building community. With congregations in size from 200-300 members, the “ward” is usually full of people who know each other by name, who band together to serve one another, to lift each other’s burdens. As such, the organization becomes a laboratory for connecting individuals into a single community, a fellowship “having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another” (Mosiah 18:21). Mormons aren’t just passive attendees at church, but active participants who collectively build the kind of social entity they want and need. The emphasis is not upon rituals and ceremonies, but the creation of covenant communities which serve to counter modern alienation.

The Church’s emphasis on the pragmatic, on action, not just doctrine or ideology, is a core value I greatly appreciate. We are taught to do the will of God, not just profess it. Many years ago, I shifted my life’s focus from simply reading, teaching, and writing about Mormonism to applying it in my personal life. I moved from preaching to practicing the Gospel. Ever since then, my life has been filled with amazing spiritual experiences among some thirty-four nations where human suffering and poverty were a way of life and early death. I have labored high in the Andes among the poor in the Sacred Valley of the Inca, where we built schools and other structures for impoverished villagers. More recently, I worked with an NGO implementing a Family Preservation Program among ten villages in Mozambique. My students and I have been privileged to assist in the recovery of Honduras after Hurricane Mitch destroyed the country in 1998, helped to rebuild three villages in Khao Lak, Thailand, following the terrible devastation of the Asian tsunami in 2004, and most recently raised funds, mobilized, trained, and took many young LDS volunteers to Haiti after the horrendous catastrophe of the 2010 earthquake.

These attempts to actually live our religion, rather than just cite its teachings, have given great meaning to my testimony. Thus, my professional career as an academician is given significance far beyond narrow conceptual and theoretical treatises read by a few scholars in an obscure journal. I have been privileged to speak to thousands of people annually, all over the planet, about how to change the world. A blessing to me has been the chance to improve society and witness lives getting better, children healthier, families becoming more self-reliant and sustainable through literacy programs we offer, microenterprise training, schools we build, economic development through tiny loans (microcredit), clean drinking water, family gardens, and so forth.

In the process, we have raised millions of dollars, trained hundreds of thousands of the poor, and now have over seven million clients receiving loans through microfinance. And we’re just getting started as many groups of Mormons and their neighbors are establishing their own action groups or family foundations to bless the global poor. Some two hundred NGOs have been launched by Latter-day Saints who seek to have personal impact among those who suffer, above and beyond what the institutional Church can offer. Such individuals heed the declaration to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness” (D&C 56: 27).

The highest level of Mormonism is that of Stewardship and Consecration, meaning we are called to practice what we preach. While some Mormons feel that such practices are reserved for some future date when the Church announces we should begin building consecrated lives, many of us understand on deeper levels that the time to do so is here and now. The bulk of my adult and family life has centered on offering all I have to God and His children. Related principles are equality, simplicity, sacrifice, pure motives, cooperation, and other United Order values which inspire us to serve the poor and needy. As saints of the latter days we are told to give of our time, money, and skills to building Zion, a condition in which there is no poverty, no tears, no sorrow.

While some U.S. Mormons seek successful careers, huge mansions, and designer clothing, many of the humble in our Church live simply, sharing their surplus with those in need. This becomes a conscious choice. The words of the Prophet Joseph have been the mission of my entire adult life. He declared: “A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race” (History of the Church, 4:227).

If I have done any good in the world, I must humbly acknowledge the hand of God, according to the spiritual values and principles of the Mormon tradition. All I have ever sought to do is serve a greater purpose, find and carry-out my own calling in life, and use my time, skills, and resources to bless those in need. Being prompted throughout my years by the Holy Spirit, I hope that the world is a tiny bit better.

My testimony is a matter of practice, a way of living. My life is my witness. Service to others is Warner Woodworth’s testimony.

In conclusion, let me affirm my commitment to the practices of the LDS Church. It is an article of my faith that I believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all. I believe all things, I hope all things, I have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, I seek after these things.

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Warner P. Woodworth (Ph.D., University of Michigan) teaches and carries out research at BYU in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy within the Marriott School of Management. He is an author or co-author of a variety of books including Working Toward Zion, Small Really is Beautiful, Industrial Democracy, and Managing by the Numbers, among others. Founder of dozens of NGOs, he advises governments, corporations, and nonprofits in the social sector around the world. Although based at BYU in Provo, he has had a number of visiting scholar appointments which have enabled him to take his family so they could learn of other cultures, religions, and lifestyles—including back to Ann Arbor as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, the University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Vilnius University in Lithuania, the International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland, Hawaii, and most recently, as the first Peter Drucker Centennial Scholar at the Drucker School of Management, Claremont University in Southern California. He is joyously married to Kaye Colvin Woodworth, they are parents of 10 children and 16 grandchildren (so far). For more details, see http://marriottschool.byu.edu/emp/WPW.

Posted September 2010

I have a great many academic colleagues throughout the world who probably wonder if I am crazy because of my adherence to religion and my steadfast refusal to drink exotic draft beers and expensive vintages of wine. We live in an age when it is politically correct among academics to adopt a rational, secular, and often atheistic view of the world. I am writing this brief statement of beliefs with these non-religious colleagues in mind. I appreciate their friendship, their tolerance, their insights, and their outward acceptance of my apparent eccentricities. I am also grateful for the gallons of mineral water, sparkling apple juice, and diet soda they have provided in various social settings over the years. Now, I would like to tell them why I believe in God, the nature of the God I believe in, and why this belief is compatible with my work as a scientist.

God is a real, living individual who communicates with man. This I know, not because I have seen him, but because I have felt his influence in my life. Profound personal experiences, inspired thoughts, and deep feelings allow me to accept by faith what my religion teaches about God, and also to accept without reservation the words of credible witnesses called prophets who have spoken with God directly.

My religious views do not conflict in any way with my ability to function as a professor of Biology at a large (and famously liberal) university. I cherish the privilege of teaching the precepts, methods, and theories of biology and geology, including evolution and the age of an ancient earth, as they are understood by modern science. The Mormon Church allows me to do so without any reservations or restrictions. Many years ago, I was offered a job at Brigham Young University, a job that I ultimately turned down. One of my interviews was with one of the general authorities (worldwide leaders) of the Church, in an office just next door to the famous temple in Salt Lake City. I asked him if I would be allowed to teach evolution at BYU. His answer was something like this: “Of course. We want you to teach truth as you understand it, but please do so without damaging the faith of our young people.”

Faith has proven indispensable in my practice of science. Often I have turned to prayer when research puzzles seemed insurmountable, when facing formidable audiences of brilliant academics, when expeditions were beset with bad weather and personnel conflicts, when fresh ideas were needed for grant proposals, and when facing dangers on the shore or in the depths of the sea. My prayers have been answered consistently, most often with comfort and clarity of thought, but also with amazing events and circumstances. Perhaps I could share just one example. I was leading a research cruise in the Bahamas in which we were diving in a four-person submersible to the ocean floor. We needed a particular species of sea urchin in numbers sufficient for an experiment that was critical to the performance of our federal grant. We had sought these animals for several days in an area where we had seen them before, but they were not to be found. The end of the cruise was approaching and failure seemed virtually certain. That night, I said a silent but fervent prayer in my berth, asking God to help. In the early morning hours, I awoke suddenly with the clear thought in my mind that we should launch the sub on the North Side of Goulding Cay. I arose and went to the bridge, where I pointed to a spot on the chart and asked the mate on duty to steam to that particular place for an early morning launch. The other scientists were surprised to find themselves in a different area when they awoke, but we found our animals there in tremendous numbers. Such experiences have been far too numerous to explain away as statistically credible coincidences. Moreover, much of what I have accomplished in life should have been impossible for one of my limited intellect and modest abilities. I know from experience that we can receive divine help.

LDS (Mormon) doctrine tells us that if we were to see God, he would look like a man. We would be able to touch his physical body. Although he is capable of inspiring us internally by means of an emissary who goes by the name of “Holy Ghost,” it is entirely possible to converse with him directly “as one man speaks to another.” We know this because Moses and other prophets, credible witnesses all, have testified in writing of their direct conversations with God. How can one discount the moving and fervent testimonies of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and apostle Sidney Rigdon, who detailed a specific encounter with the resurrected Christ on February 16, 1832:

And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father—That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God. (Doctrine and Covenants 76:22-24).

Joseph Smith sealed this testimony with his blood, at the hands of an angry mob that refused to accept the claim that he had actually seen God.

Although we were created in His image and are thus similar to Him in form, God surpasses us in a number of essential attributes. Among these are omniscience and omnipotence. A unique insight of Mormonism is “The glory of God is intelligence, or in other words light and truth” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:36). Omniscience, or knowledge of all things, is therefore the attribute that gives God his glory. Imagine knowing all of the laws of nature, of physics, of chemistry, and of microbiology. Imagine knowing everything that ever happened in prehistory and throughout historical time. Imagine knowing every species of plant, animal, and microbe. Imagine knowing how all of these organisms function, what keeps them alive, and how they respond to challenges in their environments. Imagine understanding all of the geological processes by which the solid earth is formed, and the chemical reactions that power the stars and galaxies. God understands all of these things, whereas we understand only those small portions that we have learned through science and other human endeavors. In my opinion, the attribute of omniscience gives God his other key attribute of omnipotence, for it is axiomatic that knowledge is power. The concept of omnipotence has been used by generations of philosophers in their arguments against the possibility of God (“If God is all powerful, why does he let evil happen?” etc.) LDS theology, however, makes it clear that even God cannot do things that are impossible, such as creating something out of nothing or violating the eternal laws of nature.

We can’t begin to fathom how much God knows, but we can become ever more like God by learning as much as we can. I am thankful, therefore, for the opportunity to learn, and I am motivated by the prospect of approaching omniscience, even though it may be at an agonizingly slow rate. As a scientist and academic, I find it inspiring to accept the direction of the Lord to diligently learn and teach:

Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms. (D&C 88:79)

This instruction justifies my study in every field of natural science and human endeavor; indeed, it instructs me to explore all knowledge and all truth. God’s specific instructions are to learn these things by two different methods: study and faith. As I have progressed in my ability to learn throughout my life, it has become apparent to me that we cannot know everything unless we apply both approaches.

Some (perhaps even most) of my fellow biologists deny the usefulness of faith as an epistemology, a method of learning. They subscribe to the scientific method, a collection of approaches based on empirical observation and experimentation, as their only means of obtaining knowledge. I am dismayed when these individuals, including arguably some of the smartest and most articulate people on earth, display the arrogant attitude that all may be known with the use of one’s own limited senses. One long-standing example (not the only one) that has damaged both science and religion is the misuse of evolutionary theory. I freely confess to my religious brethren that I believe in the usefulness of evolution as an explanation of natural, observable phenomena. I also confess to my scientific colleagues that I believe in the usefulness of religious faith as a way of understanding things that cannot currently be learned by empirical means. When my colleagues use the true, but limited, observations of evolutionary biology to deny the existence of God, they abandon the very scientific method that they profess to espouse. Modern science progresses by falsifying hypotheses. Because the hypothesis of God’s existence cannot be falsified without searching every corner of the universe, vehement atheists resort to inductive arguments. Induction, or the drawing of conclusions by the preponderance of evidence, has been shown by philosophers of science to be limited in its usefulness. Bertrand Russell, one of the most notable atheists of the twentieth century, illustrated the fallacy of inductive reasoning with his analogy of the inductivist turkey, who concluded on the basis of personal experience that he would be fed every morning at the turkey farm. On Christmas Eve, his inductive conclusion proved to be wrong when he lost his head.

No amount of inductive evidence in science can disprove the existence of God. The persuasive arguments of Richard Dawkins et al. notwithstanding, atheism also cannot be justified by the positive facts that support evolution, no matter how convincing or correct these facts may be. Ironically, the only way one may be an atheist is to have faith in the atheist philosophy. This was understood by pioneering evolutionary biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (who coined the term ‘agnostic’) but is inexplicably denied by many of our modern scientists. The evidence for God is available, but it is conveniently rejected by those who don’t wish to believe it.

I have been teaching and investigating evolutionary biology for my entire career, which extends back more than thirty years. The word “evolution” appears repeatedly in my articles and books and I currently serve as an editor of a scientific journal with the word in the title. I have also been an actively participating member of the Mormon Church for my entire life, where I have had many opportunities to teach theology and provide ecclesiastical leadership. At no time has my belief in God been successfully challenged by the methods or conclusions of science. It is clear to me as a scientist that much of what we have learned about biology, including evolution, is correct and true. It is also obvious to me as a man of faith that principles received by revelation from God are true. The profitable approach to knowledge, therefore, is to accept the general statement that there is a creator, while also accepting the self-evident truth that all of his mechanisms are not outlined in the first chapters of Genesis. Just as science does not refute the existence of God, the scriptures do not refute the operations of natural processes.

I agree with my colleagues that “creationism” is not science and should not be taught as an “alternative paradigm” in our public schools. This does not mean, however that God does not live. To me, the important issue is that God and evolution are not alternative paradigms, but two approaches to understanding non-contradictory truths about the world and the universe.

When we think of God as an omniscient being, it becomes easier to visualize him as a creator who operates within the bounds of the natural laws he understands. Any thoughtful person who looks around can see that everything was not created “in the beginning.” Plate tectonics, volcanism, and erosion create new geological structures on an ongoing basis, just as cell division and a bewildering array of reproductive processes create new individuals all the time. On a longer time scale, processes such as natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, and allopatry ”create” new species and varieties of organisms. Another doctrine unique to Mormonism leaves latitude for these natural processes to act on their own, without God’s intervention at every step:

And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon. (2 Nephi 2:14).

I don’t understand why some churchmen find it hard to believe in a God who understands nature and lets nature accomplish the creative process. I believe that God operates within the eternal principles of physics and chemistry. Unlike the God of fundamentalist Protestantism, who was virtually invented by committee at the time of Constantine, God is comprehensible and natural (part of nature) and not a supernatural (outside of nature) mystery with self-contradictory attributes. Thus, he is not everywhere and nowhere, without body parts or passions, large enough to fill the universe but small enough to dwell in the heart, etc. In a famous funeral sermon, the prophet Joseph Smith preached:

Now I ask all who hear me why the learned men who are preaching salvation say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. The reason is they are unlearned . . . God had materials to organize the world out of chaos, chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory . . . pure principles of element are principles that can never be destroyed, they may be organized and reorganized but not destroyed.

Mormonism’s remarkable doctrine that “the elements are eternal” is repeated in section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a canonized book of scripture dating from the early nineteenth century. Even as fundamentalist Christianity holds tightly to the concept of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), the alternative espoused by Joseph Smith and attributed to revelation from God conforms perfectly with the laws of conservation of energy, conservation of matter, and equivalency of matter and energy as formulated by modern physics. That same section of modern scripture that tells us about the eternal nature of the elements also gives us a clear statement about how we may know God:

VERILY, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am;

This is not much different from the famous philosophy of Augustine—“I believe that I may know” —a principle elaborated by the ancient prophet Alma, who recommended that one “experiment” (his word, not mine) by exercising a tiny bit of faith. This small experiment, he said, is like planting a seed. If the seed grows and bears fruit, then it must be a good seed. If it keeps growing, one may eventually come to a perfect knowledge of the principle. One cannot know God from a position of non-belief. One cannot know God by arguing about his existence. A more thoughtful approach was advocated in the book of Psalms (46:10): “Be still and know that I am God.”

I look forward to the day when I may meet that scholar who knows all things about the natural world. In the meantime, I can testify from more than a half century of personal experience that one may draw close to Him through obedience and prayer. I am grateful for the privilege of learning about the world and the universe by the application of the complementary and non-competing epistemologies of intelligence, logic, study, observation, and faith.

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Craig M. Young is a Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon and the director of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, a beautiful marine lab campus on the Oregon Coast. He grew up in California, where he discovered tide pools and science books at an early age. Following an LDS mission in southern Italy, he studied at Stanford University and the University of Washington, receiving B.S. and M. S. degrees from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Alberta. He has held faculty positions at Florida State University and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, and adjunct academic appointments at Florida Institute of Technology, King’s College London, and Florida Atlantic University. He serves on boards and advisory committees for numerous state, national, and international organizations. Professor Young’s main field of interest is the reproduction, life-history biology, and embryology of invertebrate animals, particularly those living in the deep sea. This research has been supported continuously by the National Science Foundation for thirty years. He has visited the deep-sea floor dozens of times in eight different submersibles. His work takes him to marine laboratories and universities throughout the world, and he has led more than eighty research expeditions in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. He has published nearly two hundred peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, has served as editor of twelve books, and has worked as an advisor on documentary films for the BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic. Dr. Young has a strong interest in the history of science and religion, and has published a number of articles on the history of marine science. He received the 2009 Honored Alumni Award from the College of Life Sciences at BYU.

Craig Young has been happily married for thirty-four years to his wife Robyn, and they have four children and two grandchildren. In the church, he has served as a missionary, a branch president, a counselor in three bishoprics, an elders quorum president, a high priest group leader, a youth leader, a scoutmaster, a gospel doctrine teacher, and a high councilor. His favorite church calling, however, was “nature counselor” at the church girl’s camp when he was seventeen years old. Robyn was one of the campers, and she participated enthusiastically in Craig’s nature hikes, swamp walks, and star studies.

Posted September 2010

Knowledge and Sanctification, a Perennial Quest

I became a member when I switched from studying biology to cultural anthropology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. As a prospective anthropology student I was maybe not the most probable target audience for the missionary message, and my first openness for the Mormon message was from pure curiosity: I was becoming an anthropologist, and that is what anthropologists do—study people and beliefs, and the stranger the better. So I contacted them through a street board, and they did not mind coming. What I looked for and what I found were not the same. I was looking for ‘an interesting church’, and what I found was the notion that a church really could be true. That struck deep, for that was not how I was raised. Raised in a quite liberal mainline Protestant tradition in a rapidly secularizing country, the ‘Divine’ had already lost any form, any concreteness, thus shedding also any way of relating directly to ‘It’. In this tradition you could believe anything, as long as you believed it just a little bit. God had become a principle, a thought experiment, a warm feeling, in effect a cuddly cloud. (‘Liberal’ in Europe has a different meaning, implying mainly ‘freedom’). And then I found in the restored gospel what I was looking for, albeit without knowing so: a relationship with the divine, both through the concreteness of God and through the collapse of the distance with Him, all in the simple notion of revelation. The message struck home: a Heavenly Father who loved me, and Jesus as my Elder Brother who took me by the hand to come home. The heavens were not only open, as Joseph Smith’s story made crystal clear, but also close. Not only open to him as a prophet, but also to me. And, we were all family.

At the time of first contact I indeed was changing my study topic, which meant a lot, as I had to do my army duties first before entering a new academic discipline. In fact, I encountered the missionaries just before entering the barracks, not the easiest situation by far. Living the Word of Wisdom as a recruit took some determination, and when my mates discovered that I did not drink alcohol and in their eyes abstained from anything that was ‘fun’, they tested me! Once they decorated the whole sleeping quarters with pinup photos, and were all watching me closely when I came in. The test was clear: what would I do? Humor is essential in such a situation, so I declared that it was time for an immediate ‘impromptu inspection’—in conformance with the army manual!—and would do it first myself, then ask the sergeant major to perform a regular one. So I ‘inspected’ all the photos closely, declared them all great and wonderful, and then said that I would go to the sergeant major in fifteen minutes to have him inspect the quarters. Within ten minutes the photos were back on the inside of the lockers, and I never had any problem whatsoever again. Later, when other platoons offered me a beer, my own mates immediately explained that I did not drink, effectively shielding me. I was ‘their Mormon’, thus, I’m afraid, serving also as their moral excuse to do exactly what they wanted. At that time I was not even a member yet, as I was baptized as a ‘private’ a month later; I still have the letter in which I ask for a day’s ‘special leave’ for ‘Baptism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’. I got that day, and was baptized. Later, during shooting practice the next week, our lieutenant came over to me while I was shooting, asking what that meant to me. So between the shooting rifles, I explained to him what the gospel, the restoration, and the Book of Mormon meant to me—a strange experience, having a gospel talk on the shooting range.

I finished my study in anthropology, got married, got children (four eventually), went to Africa with my family to study the Kapsiki (an ethnic group way back in the Mandara Mountains of North Cameroon), wrote my dissertation, received a post at Utrecht University, and served in the Church in many ways, including three times as branch president (this is not Deseret!) and as stake president of the Rotterdam Netherlands Stake. Looking back on those forty-five years of membership it seems just a flash, and sometimes I wonder how I did deserve these wonderful years (and the ten fantastic grandchildren I have now). I hold the chair of Anthropology of Religion at Tilburg University and a joint appointment with the African Studies Centre in Leiden, and consider myself very blessed. Being LDS inside Dutch academia, one is a rara avis. And how did my colleagues react to my membership? Was my membership a hindrance for an academic career in Dutch academia? It would have been nice to say that I never experienced any drawbacks from being the ‘religious man out’, but that would not be true. I did experience some setbacks in my career due to my being a Mormon—though it was never expressed that way—but the problems were with confessional universities, never with the secular ones. Having a professorship now at such a—formerly—confessional university feels like a vindication. And with my colleagues my being a Mormon never was a problem.

Faith or a testimony (the difference is not really that large) develops, evolves, changes, matures, and is never finished. A testimony is not a product but a project, like a bicycle on a long road that you have to push to get to your goal (a very Dutch metaphor), sometimes swooping downhill, sometimes struggling uphill (not so Dutch here, we have no real hills), at times driven by the wind in the back, then laboring against a heavy gush of rainy wind from the front (now we are back in Holland). Inevitably my testimony has grown, evolved, and matured through all experiences, with the almost inevitable journey from the simple true-false discourse of early membership to the insight that doctrines are less important than principles, that truth claims are less important than existential meaning, and that symbolic signification is much more inspiring than historic actuality. My deep appreciation of the two African traditional religions I studied in depth and at length prevents any simplistic dichotomy of us versus them, and I am deeply convinced that we do not need such defensive mechanisms in the restored gospel.

Science and religion do not mix easily; after all, as Karen Armstrong said, logos and mythos are uneasy bedfellows. But as a Mormon I feel God did not want life to be easy, nor religion to be comfortable, while science can never be simple. We are here on this earth not as a place of exile—though we do have perpetual yearnings for a better existence, and I do cherish the notion of preexistence—but as an arena of learning, and I believe we have several pathways for accruing knowledge that are independent of each other: revelation and research. Earth is our home. I have the deep feeling that our existence here has a mission, other than just being tested and going back; anyway, even after our return to our Heavenly Father we ultimately will dwell again on this earth. We are creatures of earth, each gifted with a heavenly spirit, and this is exactly the tension that is our challenge throughout life. ‘Je suis mon corps comme esprit incarné ouvert au monde‘ (I am my body as an embodied spirit open to the world), the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty wrote in his Phénoménologie de la Perception, and though he did not believe in a pre-existence, it fits perfectly. Life is a challenge to grow, and that is, in essence, what I find the most stimulating in being a Latter-day Saint. Our bodies have evolved through the eons of time, becoming intelligent enough to comprehend some of the light and wisdom that emanate from the divine realm. As the only ‘animal with a supercomputer’ we have developed a brain complex enough to understand something of the laws that govern the universe, but also a body plus a brain that are deemed worthy to receive that part of the divine we call spirit, our deeper self and our eternal core. That I find beautiful in Mormon thought, our being co-eternal with God and with the whole universe. Science tells us that we share deep genetic roots with all life on earth, as the provisional end product of a wonderful great process of evolution of living beings, and that insight I cherish deeply. We share a fundamental identity and unity with all life on earth, and on top of that our Latter-day revelations tell us that God not only meant us to be one with life, but also that we have stewardship over this great creation, that we are meant to mean something for all the other forms of life. The wonderful symbolism of the creation story makes it very clear: the non-human animals were here before us and we had to take care of them, to ‘cultivate’ the ‘garden’. The very first commandment was to give each of them a name, implying the recognition of common kin bonds, thus bringing them and us all into one family through that unique, divine gift of language. And ‘Adam’, meaning in fact red man of the earth, is still busy doing just that, as he is not finished by any measure. Not only is naming the animals far from completed—biologists estimate than less than 10% of all animal species are named and known—but we are still exploring our garden in all aspects, in the largest project ever undertaken by humanity, the quest for knowledge and truth. So the first commandment to mankind is to create knowledge, and I cherish the garden tale as the story of how we became human, and how creating knowledge is the very essence of our humanity. One lacuna in the revelations is insight into the eternal goal of animals, plants, of life in general. Someone said: “I can envisage heaven without people, but not without animals.” I do not agree on the first item, but definitely on the second. The creation tale gives us a tantalizing hint that all life is extremely valuable—as that wonderful ‘Apocalypse of Moses’ (Moses 7:48, 49) does for the whole Earth—but what the sanctified future of living beings is, remains almost completely blank. Here I wait for further light and knowledge.

The garden story goes even one step further, because the knowledge about good and evil—i.e. about ourselves in our relation to deity—in principle makes us godlike. Whereas we are the only animals who can sin, just as we are the only ones who can lie, we are also the only ones who can (and have to) repent; non-human animals have no need for repentance. So as red men we are also fallen and have to live with that. (At least I am; others have to speak for themselves). That fallen state brings me limitations in my quest for truth, limitations that can only be overcome by another source than experience and observation—i.e. through divine grace in the form of revelation. For me, Mormonism is the door into that revelation, which is given lovingly but sparingly as it is contingent upon worthiness, meaning my ability to integrate it not only in thinking but also in doing, in theory plus practice. We are human not only because we discern between good and evil but also because we perform both of them ourselves. So the divine spark of our pre-existent spirit needs a norm that transcends our earthy origin, and that is what the Restoration of the gospel has given me. Earth is not only home, but also a field of growth into becoming better, more godlike. So I need two things, knowledge and revelation, and none of them can be missed. Then and only then can I proceed on my road to salvation, working out the many choices that life on earth presents me with, using knowledge and inspiration, in a reasoned mix that I have to work out for myself.

The quest for knowledge and truth is not over. By no means. We are here in a collective and perennial quest for knowledge and truth, but we do have the tools to do so. The gospel is one, and thus the church is one entrance into it. For me the church is my door into the house of the gospel; the two are not identical. When I was stake president, Ronald Poelman once was our visiting authority, and we connected very well. He had just remarried and was happy to be back in his mission field as a GA, even speaking quite acceptable Dutch. Later he gave a General Conference talk that has become famous, in which he expressed the same: the church as a gateway, a facilitator into Christ, our real goal and test being our relationship with Christ. The church is a means, not a goal in itself. I never forgot it and I have sincerely tried to implement it in my own service in the church: the institution, also my priesthood—of which I have a real testimony—as the means to help people. Without the priesthood we have empty hands, without inspired leadership we have little direction, but ultimately the gospel is a relationship—with God, with Jesus, and with our fellow men.

We are here to sanctify the world we live in. Here, Joseph Smith became my great example, not only for the revelations he purveyed, and thus for the information that was unavailable in any other way, but especially for the way he sanctified the immediate world around him. He sanctified America through the Book of Mormon, transforming it from a backdrop into sacred history, from a terra nulla into a land of choice, linking America to the risen Christ. Even Jerusalem, so deeply rooted in the Old World for all other Christians, received its American counterpart, when first the frontier in Missouri became Zion, and then even the place of self-chosen exile in the Rocky Mountains became Zion. Thus, Joseph imbued his life, his people, and the lands he encountered with sacred meaning, and it is this project of sanctification which is for me the other side of our perennial quest for truth. First of all, of course, I have to sanctify myself, a duty to my Heavenly Father, because relation with Him has been restored through the church. But then, as I will not be saved in ignorance, the quest for knowledge has become my personal pathway to sanctification. The restored gospel gave me one other precious insight, the assurance of free agency, embedded in one of the most profound revelations of our time, Doctrine and Covenants 93. I do have free agency, I do have the right to inspiration, and I do have the assurance that the gift of reason is the basis of our human condition. All that is precious for me, and should never be squandered, as it forms the basis from which I can go out of the garden into the world and produce knowledge, in order to be fully human.

For me that world is anthropology, which started out as the study of the ‘other’ and which has rightly turned towards our own culture as the ‘study of ourselves’ as well. The study of religions is not the easiest topic to square with the acquired texts and interpretations of the Church. Logos and mythos are different ways into knowledge, and though the gospel defines all truth as one, there is no reason the two projects at this stage of human development have to produce identical results. At this stage . . . both in science and in the church. Science is never finished, and we know very well that all scientific knowledge, as all knowledge, is socially constructed. ‘Doubt is the chastity of the mind,’ Robert Zelazny said, and that holds. Though some insights are more hypothetical and other theories are more sturdy, all are with us till something better comes along. But the same holds for religious knowledge: the steady increase in revelation, the developing interpretation of texts, and the deepening of our understanding of ancient and modern texts all lead to more insight on the revelation front as well. One major advantage of the restored church is the insight that revelation is never finished: the heavens are still open. We know partly, like Paul said, both in science and in revelation. The symbol of the Book of Mormon’s sealed part is poignant, and throughout the restoration there are many hints to other and future revelations and texts. It reminds us that—just like science—texts, interpretations, doctrines, and testimonies are also socially constructed. Anyone who has ever listened to a testimony meeting knows that very well, but we cherish revelatory experiences till new insight supersedes them. That is what a prophet means for me, as I see in Joseph Smith: not the simple purveyor of messages from above, but the creative translator of eternal values to our own time and culture. Like all prophets, Joseph was a religious genius who, in being diaphanous to God, gave us a glimpse of the eternal.

Historically, science set out as an apologetic exercise, a project to underwrite the doctrines of Islam and Christianity (yes, Islam came first here!). Now the tables have been turned; science has become mature, weaned from religious dogmas, and all for the better. Now it is scientific knowledge that sets the limits of believability; for instance, preaching a flat earth—as implicit in the Flood tale—would find few eager ears now. Wisely, the church indicates that we leave knowledge about the world to the relevant scholarly disciplines, among which is anthropology. The advantage of this primacy of science in our present world view is that the gospel has been redefined to its core, which is to save human beings. It took me some time to realize that the two types of knowledge do not necessarily have to meet in the middle, but that they are speaking about different levels of reality, facts against salvation. To think that scientific knowledge eventually will come around to our present texts and our present interpretation is a failure to acknowledge the fundamental epistemic difference between ‘history’ (what happened?) and ‘sacred history’ (what message God gives us in history). We tend to treat the two as identical, and it would solve quite a few problems if we stopped doing so.

I think we are more than just scratching the surface of reality by now, from both sides, science as well as revelation. Challenges are there, inevitably, and for me one of them has been evolution. It no longer is. Biological evolution is a fact, well established, with overwhelming evidence from a large array of scientific disciplines, and with an integrating theory (called ‘natural selection’) that has been tested empirically and come out with flying colors. We know now that our bodies were formed in a long process, which in Africa resulted in early human forms from which we descend. At least our bodies did. For me, the tension between this fact and those parts of the scriptures that seem to deal with human history is a challenge and a stimulus. When I start out from these scientific facts, the scriptures accrue a deeper message, a more empathic voice, directing our eye not to the ‘how’ of our genesis, but to the ‘why’, to the ‘in order to what?’ of our existence. The same holds for the scriptures themselves. The convoluted history how we inherited these texts becomes a wonder in itself, first for the very fact that they did make it through the ages, but also for the additional insights we glean when we analyze them in their historical context. Both the old and the new, evidently. And then I see God acting in our history, deep as well as recent history. He created those very processes of evolution into which we have some insight now, and then he inspired prophets to comment on his work, in the language and the symbols and within the culture of their own times and our own time—the deep Mormon privilege—commenting on a world which is not only wonderful but also highly meaningful, a world waiting to be known, waiting to be studied, to be loved, and to be sanctified.

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Walter E.A. van Beek was born in 1943 in Beverwijk, the Netherlands. He attended secondary school (Gymnasium, comparable with junior college) in Utrecht, and studied cultural anthropology at Utrecht University. After his MA in 1968, he set out with his wife and—then—two children for North Cameroon, where in the Mandara Mountains he performed anthropological fieldwork in 1972-1973. As Assistant Professor at the Department of Antropology of Utrecht University, he defended his PhD thesis ‘Bierbrouwers in de Bergen: de Kapsiki en Higi van Noord Kameroen en Noord-Oost Nigeria’ (“Mandara Mountain Brewers”; PhD theses have to be published in the Netherlands) in 1978. In 1979-80, he performed a second major field research in Mali among the Dogon, again with wife and—now four—children. Since then, he has continued to return to the two field sites, traveling to Africa at least twice a year, to the field houses he has at each location. Since 2003, he has had a joint appointment at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and in 2006 he moved from Utrecht University to Tilburg University, to assume the Chair of Anthropology of Religion. He just became the proud grandfather of his tenth grandchild.

He has published widely on both African groups, Kapsiki/Higi and Dogon, as well as on the anthropology of religion in general. A conference on religion in Africa he co-organized at Brigham Young University (a university situated in Provo, Utah, it seems . . .) resulted in Religion in Africa: Experience and Expression, co-edited with Thomas Blakely and Dennis Thompson (Currey 1994). An article on religion and climate change in 1999, entitled ‘A climate for change’, won a prize from the Dutch Science Federation. Recent publications are Dogon: Africa’s People of the Cliffs (New York, Abrams, 2001, with photos by Stephany Hollyman), Meeting Culture (Maastricht, Shaker 2003, co-edited with W. Pansters & M. Fumerton) and Reality Reviewed: Dynamics of African Divination (Brill 2010, with Ph. Peek of Drew University). He has just finished two manuscripts: one, The Dancing Dead: Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki and Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria, is now under peer review at Oxford University Press, and the second, African Hosts and their Guests; Dynamics of Cultural Tourism in Africa, an edited volume with Annette Schmidt, is now under review at Currey, Oxford. At this moment he is working on a monograph on Kapsiki blacksmiths, a project for Indiana University Press.

In addition to his work on African religions, he has also published on Mormonism in Europe in several articles in Dialogue, International Journal of Mormon Studies, as well in scholarly publications in Europe. His ‘Mormon Europeans or European Mormons?’ won the prize for the best non-fiction article of Dialogue of 2005. His main themes are European Mormonism and Mormon ritual. In June 2010 he hosted the fourth annual conference of the European Mormon Studies Association at Tilburg University. His work as an international sports administrator led to several publications as well, on sports-and-religion and the culture of sports officials.

Walter van Beek has held many positions outside and inside the church. He was president of the Dutch Anthropological Association twice (1975-1978, 1984-1987), and, following his lifelong fascination with the mind sport of draughts, from 1992 – 2003 was president of the World Draughts and Checkers Federation (FMJD), and, from 2003-2007 even president of the African Draughts Confederation (Africa is very strong in draughts), and is now ‘president for life’ of the FMJD. In that sports arena he was surprised to see very few Mormons in international sports bodies. In the church he has served in many functions and capacities, among which are his three times as branch president. He was stake president of the Rotterdam Stake, and is presently on the high council of that stake, while also teaching Institute and Sunday School. He is also member of the national Public Affairs Committee of the church in the Netherlands, and often translates for General Conference. In 2008 he received an official royal distinction for his various services, as ‘Ridder in the Orde van Oranje Nassau’ (‘Ridder’ means ‘knight’, a distinction comparable in the USA with a Congressional Medal).

Posted September 2010

It is often said that people tend to follow the religious belief or traditions of their parents. If this is true then I am not typical of a religious believer. My parents were not Christian and so I wasn’t baptised into any church as a child. My first contact with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came through the missionaries proselytising along our street. I can remember well that the only reason I let them into my home was because it was pouring with rain outside and I felt sorry for them. I had no intention of joining the “Mormon” faith or any other religion, but on listening to them their message struck a chord with me. I cannot really explain what it was, other than it seemed familiar to me. I had never really heard anything about the Mormons so this was not the sort of familiarity that occurs as a result of having heard something on the radio or TV, but, rather, something much deeper.

The missionaries taught the first discussion to my wife and me that evening and, as we were moving home that very week, we lost contact with them soon after. After we settled in our new home we decided to see if we could find the address of the local LDS church so that we might resume our lessons. Unable to find anything, I settled with reading a book from the local library written by a non-LDS author. The book was fair to the Church and by chance a few days later I met some missionaries in the street and, after invitation, we received the lessons and were baptised. That was over thirty years ago and my life has changed dramatically as a result of my church membership.

I left high school with very little in the way of qualifications. There was never any real expectation placed upon me and as a result I never had a profession or career to speak of. Joining the church helped me to appreciate my potential in ways that I would never have imagined. This, coupled with the LDS view on education, made me realise that I could do much better with my life. When the opportunity arose, I went to university and now find myself teaching philosophy here in New Zealand. This may not seem very remarkable, but when I consider that my grandfather was a gypsy and that no one in my family ever received any tertiary education, it is, in the least, very humbling.

Occasionally I am asked if my religious belief conflicts in any way with the discipline of philosophy. I can honestly say that philosophy has never raised something that is a serious issue to my religious beliefs. Sometimes I may not have an answer, but in those instances I am content to leave the matter in suspension. In most instances I find that my belief in the church is strengthened. For example, one of the courses that I teach at university is an introductory course on the Philosophy of Religion. Aside from looking at the traditional proofs of God we also discuss arguments against the existence of God. What I find interesting is that the arguments against God’s existence, which are often difficult for mainstream Christianity to answer, are not a problem for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have come to realise that through the ages religious truth has been distorted and, as a result, many denominations of Christianity now find it difficult to defend themselves against their critics. So much so that some of the basic tenets of Christianity are now being questioned, even by the leaders of these denominations. This is not the case with LDS theology. Because of this apostasy there needed to be a restoration of the gospel. The Church’s doctrine remains constant because it is the restoration of truth here upon the earth. I know that there is a God in Heaven, and that He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins. I know that the gospel has been restored through a young man named Joseph Smith. And as remarkable as that story seems, I know it to be true, not through any academic exercise but by the witness of the Holy Ghost.

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Stephen Duffin teaches philosophy at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has published in the fields of environmental ethics and Christian apology, and has a book published on thinking critically. He lives in New Zealand with his wife, Carole. They are parents of four children.

Posted September 2010