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Bad News and Good News
The bad news is that some issues of Dialogue at the U of U archive have been pulled in order to force purchase of the back-issues. This is certainly regretful since I live on the east coast and refuse to buy whole issues for one or two articles. (I do still have a brother at BYU who can make copies for me--take that, Dialogue!)
The good news is that Michael Ash's article, "The Mormon Myth of Evil Evolution" (one of those now unaccessible articles) is available on his website (pdf). Thanks to Clark at Mormon Metaphysics for pointing this out.
This article is a pretty good overview of the history of conflict over evolution within the church. More in-depth analysis of specific episodes are available elsewhere, but this article is a great (and free) place to start.
Although the article is pretty well documented I do have one complaint. It mentions rumors of a rift between David O. MacKay and Joseph Fielding Smith, but provides no documentation on this point. Does anybody know where this comes from or what the specific context was? Maybe Quinn's "Extensions of Power" (which I do not own?)
3 comments:
I noticed the lack of documentation there, too. It may come from Bergera and Priddis, _BYU: House of Faith_ (I don't own a copy). Perhaps Greg Prince's forthcoming biography of McKay will have further information.
Extensions of Power does not say a whole lot on the subject. Quinn notes that Joseph Fielding Smith battled with other apostles on the subject of organic evolution and the age of the earth for nearly twenty years. He mentions that the dispute involved Smith and B.H. Roberts at first, and then included Talmage, Widtsoe, and Merrill. Quinn writes: "After Roberts, Smith, and Talmage publicly refuted each other's views, President Grant imposed a moratorium on public expression concerning the topic."
But Quinn says that "[l]ongevity gave Smith the last word," as he outlived Talmage, Roberts, Grant, Widtsoe and Merrill. "As sole survivor of the controversy, Smith told a quarterly meeting of apostles in 1953 his version of 'Pre Adam-theorist-Talmage-Widtsoe and others.' Without consulting new church president, David O. McKay, in 1954 the Twelve's President published his anti-evolution Man: His Origin and Destiny. The book was a comprehensive attack on organic evolution and geology. Later that year the First Presidency refused to allow the book to be used as a text in LDS seminaries and institutes. McKay explained verbally and in writing that Smith's book 'was not published by the Church, and is not approved by the Church.' Concerning this and other doctrinal questions, J. Reuben Clark commented, 'some matters have come to my attention where the Brethren not only differ among themselves, but where they differ with the First Presidency'" (p. 64).
Among other sources, Quinn cites to Duane Jeffery's "Seers, Savants" article (Autumn-Winter 1973 Dialogue), Richard Sherlock, "We Can See No Advantage to a Continuation of the Discussion" (Fall 1980 Dialogue), William Lee Stokes, "An Official Position" (Winter 1979 Dialogue), and his own biography of J. Reuben Clark.
Posted by Justin
I should add that Greg Prince has briefly discussed this episode in a Dialogue article, but he doesn't seem to think there was ever a "rift" between McKay and Smith (Greg Prince, "David O. McKay and the 'Twin Sisters,'" Dialogue 33/4 (Winter 2000), pp. 9-10.
Posted by Justin
Thanks for the info, Justin. Whatever the source, I'll bet the rift--if it existed--was nothing like one might imagine.
Posted by Jared
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