My adorable cousin Sharisse sent this article to me in response to this semi-battle I think most LDS students face in an academic setting—secular knowledge vs. religious belief. Can the two co-exist? Do they always have to create controversial conversations that lead to heated debates? Does the act of expanding our minds open us up to the possibility of dislocating our faith?
I would answer no to all of these questions. As a 90-year old graduate at the University of Washington recently stated to those continuing their education: “get all the education you can”, I too believe that education makes us better human beings, or at least has the capability to do so if we allow it. I think one of the problems that LDS students face is the fear of “worldly” knowledge shaking their faith. And yet the Lord asks of us in D&C 88:118-119: “And as all have not afaith, seek ye diligently and bteach one another words of cwisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best dbooks words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith. aOrganize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a bhouse, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God”.
As this professor eloquently stated, just because someone makes a claim about something “factual” does not mean truth is automatically asserted. Truth, as my English professor once said to our class in departing BYU, is something you need to push, something you need to continue to search for by asking hard questions, by seeking to understand and by continuing to be a student of learning the rest of your life. Going back to my previous statement about education making us better members of humanity, I think education can not only bring us out of ignorance but it has the ability to teach us compassion, to give us understanding, and to help us respect those outside of our “community;” those who may not share our religious beliefs but STILL have an equal footing in the eyes of the Lord, for as Peter once said: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no arespecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).
Thank you for sharing this with me; I think it was beautifully stated in a way that makes all of us who unnecessarily fear knowledge, exhale a sigh of relief! J
(I bolded parts I personally thought were most insightful).
(Excerpts from) RUGS AND PILLARS:
How I View Myself as a Teacher at an LDS University.
(Prepared for Sunstone TheologicalSymposium
Panel on "Pillars of My Faith," August 21, 1986)
James B. Allen
If anyone can go from Heaven to Hell and back again in two minutes or less, I did it one day in the mid-1960s during a surprising conversation with a student. That conversation so affected me in its implications that I have never forgotten it. "Brother Allen," I can still hear her say, "I want you to know that in your Church History class you pulled the rug right out from under my testimony--but you replaced it with pillars that can never be shaken!" At first I was stunned, and for a moment my mind could not get past the first half of her statement. What had I done or said? How could I possibly have "pulled the rug" from under anyone's faith in the Church I had worked so hard all my life to support, sustain, and bear witness of?
I dimly heard myself asking the student what she meant, but as she began to answer I still worried. Did the "rug pulling" take place all at once and, for a time, leave a void of doubt? Or, had the pulling out and replacement process proceeded somewhat smoothly and simultaneously? I desperately hoped so, as my mind gradually tuned in again to what my student was saying.
I'm not sure she had the "rug" very well defined in her mind, but I sensed that it consisted of at least two things: a lack of knowledge, and a tendency to place more faith in individuals than in what we in the Church call the testimony of the spirit. The "pillars," on the other hand, were certain intellectual and spiritual tools that I hoped I could help all my students acquire and learn how to use.
Most of these tools were attitudinal in nature. One, for example, was simply the love of knowledge--the thirst for information and understanding that comes as one begins to live the life of the mind and feel the profound pleasure of having a whole new world open up through the process of thoughtful reading and inquiry--especially in the field of history. Another tool, however, was the realization that knowledge of historical facts is not necessarily synonymous with knowledge of "truth." Contrary to popular myth, facts seldom, if ever, speak for themselves. Rather, historians and other scholars constantly sort, analyze, and interpret facts, both old and newly discovered, in an effort to get closer to historical "truth," and my student had begun to understand that all history, including Church history, is interpretive in nature and that no historian's interpretation of the facts is beyond challenge.
Another of her new tools was a mature awareness that people will be disappointed if they expect perfection, even among the Saints of God, and that one's faith in the Church should not be built upon the "arm of flesh," or the assumption that any person, even a prophet, is above human imperfections. The many times Joseph Smith was called into account for his own mistakes soon convinced my student of that. More recently, Elder Neal A. Maxwell commented on the attitude of world-famous LDS scientist Henry Eyring: "Though much of his life was spent in the midst of the ordered world of molecules, practical Henry nevertheless reminded us that, while God and His world are perfect, we are wise to make allowances in our faith for the imperfections in each other."1
A fourth pillar for my young student's slowly maturing faith was an increasing confidence in her own ability to use the power of reason in separating truth from folly and in discovering for herself patterns and principles that would help her make sense from her growing world of both religious and secular knowledge. As a hymnist once wrote:
Freedom and reason make us men;
Take these away, what are we then?
Mere animals, and just as well
The beasts may think of heaven or hell.2
Too often, my student had discovered, people appear to want their faith handed to them by others--they seem afraid to use that wonderful, God-given power of reason that separates humans from animals and is fundamental to our belief that individual salvation is really dependent upon how effectively one exercises his or her free agency. I sometimes remind students of what Elder J. Golden Kimball once said in general conference:
Some people fancy that because we have the Presidency and Apostles of the Church they will do the thinking for us. There are men and women so mentally lazy that they hardly think for themselves. To think calls for effort, which makes some men tired and wearies their souls. . . . Latter-day Saints, you must think for yourselves. No man or woman can remain in this Church on borrowed light."3
Closely connected with this was another pillar: the ability to realize that we will never, at least in this life, have all the answers either to the mysteries of the universe or the mysteries of godliness. If one's faith is based on the assumption that the gospel automatically answers all our questions, then, indeed, it is based on a rug that will slip and slide with every new vibration. My student was beginning to learn the truth of what Brigham Young said as long ago as 1855:
I am so far from believing that any government upon this earth has constitutions and laws that are perfect, that I do not even believe that there is a single revelation, among the many God has given to the Church, that is perfect in its fulness. The revelations of God contain correct doctrine and principles, as far as they go; but it is impossible for the poor, weak, low, grovelling, sinful inhabitants of the earth to receive a revelation from the Almighty in all its perfections. He has to speak to us in a manner to meet the extent of our capacities. . . .
The laws the Lord has given us are not fully perfect, because the people could not receive them in their perfect fulness; but they can receive a little here and a little there, a little to-day and a little tomorrow, and a little more in advance of that next year, if they make a wise improvement upon every little that they receive.4
In the world of secular knowledge, some degree of uncertainty is considered necessary to the adventure of learning itself.5 I am not saying, of course, that our intellectual life should be one of total ambivalence--far from it. But we must learn to live with at least some ambivalence for that, it seems to me, only opens the door for the kind of continuing inquiry necessary to the discovery of truth as well as to the development and life of the mind. And, at least for me, it helps make life exciting. In our religious world there are many certainties, but there is much left to be discovered and revealed, and, I try to teach my LDS students, we should be excited with the possibility of helping to discover it.
I also try to teach my students that if, indeed, they succeed in their eager quest for new information, knowledge, ideas, and insights, they must also equip themselves with two more pillars that, at least in my mind, are essential to building an acceptable house of faith: humility in what one knows and charity toward those with whom one may disagree. "In essentials let there be unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity," Elder B. H. Roberts once emphasized during a general conference of the Church.6 How like the spirit of Joseph Smith, who said of Pelatiah Brown: "I did not like the old man being called up for erring in doctrine. It looks too much like the Methodists, and not like the Latter-day Saints. Methodists have creeds which a man must believe or be asked out of their church. I want the liberty of thinking and believing as I please. It feels so good not to be trammelled. It does not prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine."7
In addition to all that, I tried to teach the students in that girl's class that once they gain enough knowledge to make authoritative statements about some topics, they should never let anyone, including themselves, assume that they can make equally authoritative statements about others. I remember hearing Henry Eyring mention an experience with Albert Einstein during World War II. The two of them had been working all morning in a physics lab, and when they went out to lunch they happened to pass one of the "victory gardens" that were planted everywhere during the war. Eyring observed a bean patch and innocently asked Einstein what kind of beans they were. "I don't know," replied the greatest scientist on earth, and in re-telling the story Henry Eyring simply remarked, "You see, Einstein didn't know beans!" The point, of course, is that I may know a lot about a few things, and I can make some fairly authoritative statements on them, but this gives me no right to dogmatize on matters about which I know little or nothing.
Certainly there are many areas where I don't know beans, and I hope my students realize that. "I don't know" is a better answer than giving information that a student may later find to be untrue. If I do know something, however, it is better not to hedge or hide it, even if it seems troublesome, once the student begins to probe. At the same time, I should explain how I have gone about separating fact from fiction, faith from fantasy, and essentials from non-essentials. And I must encourage students to learn all they can about the subjects of their interest, not being fearful of whatever truth they find. I should also teach them about the possibilities of misleading through historical interpretation. Hopefully, all this will help them see reason for sometimes suspending judgement--for not jumping to conclusions whenever a new piece of information pops to the surface of their intellectual milieu.
If students respect me as a scholar, and are convinced I am not trying to hide anything from them, then they will also respect my integrity as a person. This means that when I tell them of my faith they must respect that, too. Hopefully, they also know that the fundamentals I believe in include, but are not limited to, the reality of God, the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the literal reality of Joseph Smith's visions, the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the gospel of Christ through Joseph Smith, and the importance and validity of temple work. These and other doctrinal things are as real to me as anything I may have learned in the secular world, and I try to share with my students the fact that I can no more ignore such realities in my ongoing search for truth than I can ignore the physical artifacts that may be discovered through traditional scholarly investigation.
Finally, and most important, the young lady who talked with me that day was beginning more fully to realize that while all these attitudes were important to a mature faith, even more important was the testimony of the spirit. "If you want to know whether Joseph Smith's testimony is true," I often say to students, "then you must have the same experience he had--and you can." They know, of course, I am not implying that they will see visions or heavenly beings. Rather, I am telling them that the truth of the essential foundations of the faith can be known to them only by the same process Joseph Smith went through. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God," Joseph Smith read as a young man, and when he acted on that challenge, "in faith, nothing wavering," he received his answer. All the intellectual and attitudinal pillars were clearly essential, but this one was central to the structure of the house of faith I was trying to help my students build.
Before coming to this university I had spent several years teaching in the seminary and institute program of the Church. I knew well the intellectual problems often confronted by college students as the world of secular learning literally opened the skies with torrents of new ideas and information. Frequently their newly sharpened intellectual skills led them to see things they had never seen before, and find implications they had never found before, in both the history and the teachings of the Church. At times they also discovered new information about the past that seemed to fly in the face of something they had been taught as youngsters: some weakness or mistake, some heretofore unknown conflict, a change in some Church practice, or a modification in some Church teaching. Some who came with troubled questions seemed to want me to tell them that such bothersome things simply hadn't happened. Instead, I tried to help them understand how both the human and the divine could operate within the Church, and why they should not be surprised to see evidence of both in their study of Church history. I also tried to give them the tools by which they could separate essentials from non-essentials, and some deeper insight into how to gain the testimony of the spirit. No longer, I told them, could they rely on someone else's testimony--it was "do it yourself time."
One example was related to Joseph Smith's first vision. During Joseph Smith's lifetime he actually presented various differing accounts of the vision, and in the late 1960s I was invited to write about this in the pages of the Improvement Era. I was a bit dismayed that some people found it bothersome to their faith to learn that there might be some differences between the accounts. To me, it was only natural to assume that the prophet might emphasize different points as he talked to different people, or had different purposes, at different times. My training as a historian made that seem self-evident. I expected to find differences, but none that would negate the authenticity of the official account the prophet prepared for publication in 1838. Students, however, were asking about it, and I saw my article not only as a chance to say something in print that I believed deeply, but also as a tool that might help students as they wrestled with this kind of new information. "We believe," I wrote, "that Joseph Smith was telling the truth each time he related his experiences," and then I attempted to weave the various accounts into a composite analysis of this sacred experience in order to show their combined value and consistency. "We believe," of course, was an editorial expression, which really meant "I believe." And I could say that honestly because I had studied all of the accounts, and I had received my own confirming testimony of the integrity of Joseph Smith. There were, and still are, a lot of things about the Church that I did not know and did not understand, but on this I was sure, and I could say what I had to say to friends, students, and scholarly colleagues alike, whether they were in or out of the Church. "In the final analysis," I concluded, "the First Vision becomes truly meaningful in a personal way only when one seeks, as Joseph Smith sought, to reach God through private, earnest supplication."8
A few years later I had occasion to publish a different kind of article, that even more directly grew out of the needs of many of my students. In this case I deliberately used a historical event to help students work through their own contemporary problems related to the Church. I had been studying the debates in Utah, in 1919, over whether or not the United States should join the League of Nations. At the same time, I seemed to be inundated by students who were concerned with certain intense political controversies within the Church, and particularly with the fact that even some Church leaders seemed to disagree on political matters. Some of these students seemed to assume that there should be some final, authoritative, Church position even on the political issues of the day. Perhaps ironically, I had discovered that back in 1919 there were not only differences among Church leaders on the League of Nations, but that they did not hesitate to make their differences known. Even the President of the Church, Heber J. Grant, made a public statement supporting the League, but in doing so he made it clear that this was nothing more than a personal opinion, and he would never use the authority of the scriptures, or his position in the Church, to impose that view on others. In short, it seemed to me, what happened in 1919 wonderfully demonstrated the fact that one's testimony of the gospel should never compel a person to take particular political positions. What a golden opportunity, I thought, to use the events of the past to help students wrestle with their own problems of the present. Here was a way to build a pillar. So I wrote a speech, presented it before the Mormon History Association, and was able to get it published where it could become readily available to students and colleagues alike. I didn't mention contemporary political problems, but discussed in detail what had happened in 1919 and tried to draw important inferences from it. Differences of opinion are to be expected, I tried to show, but the important thing is to avoid bitterness in debate and accusations of lack of faith--something that had occurred, unfortunately, among certain unthinking members of the Church, and something that President Grant decried. As he talked to the Church about the controversy, in fact, he quoted something that President John Taylor had said to him when he was a young apostle:
My boy, never forget that when you are in the line of your duty your heart will be full of love and forgiveness. . . . You can know the difference between the Spirit of the Lord and the spirit of the adversary, when you find that you are happy and contended, that you love your fellows, that you are anxious for their welfare; and you can tell that you do not have that spirit when you are full of animosity and feel that you would like to mow somebody down.
"And so the Church went on," I began my concluding paragraph, and what followed was really my personal message to my students:
Perhaps at no time in its history had there been such divergence of opinion among its leaders, but it seemed to have little effect upon their working together in harmony to build the Kingdom. Does this answer the question as to whether they should have been unified? Perhaps not, but at least it demonstrates that, in this instance, those who really wanted to follow the example of their leaders would not avoid debate or the expression of personal opinion, but would refuse to let that opinion stand in the way of good will based on genuine respect for the right and responsibility of each man to think and speak for himself on such issues. In this case there is a moral in history.9
Frequently I think back on that early, unsettling conversation about rugs and pillars, and on my determination to set the example for students in the integrity of both my scholarship and my faith. I'm sure I have not had a perfect record, but my blessing is that I can continue to try, then try some more, then try and try again. For some reason, I keep finding rugs that need replacing, and I sincerely pray that my ongoing efforts to exercise both responsible scholarship and abiding faith will continue to provide some pillars with which to do it.
1 .Kermit Eby, "Education for Sectarians." This address was distributed to
Seminary and Institute teachers sometime in the late 1950s, with the compliments of Ernest L. Wilkinson, Administrator, Board of Education. A copy is still in my possession. Eby was identified as Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago.
2. Neal A. Maxwell, "In Memoriam: Henry Eyring, 1901-1981," Brigham Young University Studies 22 (Winter 1982): 3.
3. "Know This, that Every Soul is Free," by William C. Clegg, in Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, No. 90. In that spirit, Lowell Bennion also reminds us that “In man’s search for truth the mind palys a leading and continuous role.” Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1959), 29.
4. Conference Report, April, 1904, p. 28.
5. Journal of Discourses 2:314. Address delivered in the tabernacle by President Brigham Young, July 8, 1855.
6. "For myself," wrote a prominent scientist, "I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians." Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain. Reflections on the Romance of Science (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 18.
7. Conference Report, October, 1912, p. 31.
8. Joseph Smith, History of the Church, ed., BH Roberts (Salt Lake City: Deseret News: 1949) 5:340.
9. Proverbs 4:7.
10. .James B. Allen, "Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision--What Do We Learn From Them?" The Improvement Era, April, 1970, pp. 4-13.
11. See James B. Allen, "Personal Faith and Public Policy: Some Timely Observations on the League of Nations Controversy in Utah," Brigham Young University Studies 14 (Autumn, 1973): 77-98.
