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Two Teachers in Zion
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T. Edgar Lyon: A Teacher in Zion
Brigham Young University Press, 2002 |
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Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life
Greg Kofford Books, 2002. | ||
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Reviewed by:
R. W. Rasband | ||
Two remarkable biographies have recently been published about much-loved LDS professors, both written by close family members with special access to documents and people. Together they present a fascinating picture of the LDS church at its intellectual epicenter on the Wasatch Front during the 1940's to 1980's. Those were great times of growth and new challenges. Both men became sort of Forrest Gump figures who came to be involved in some of the most famous occurrences of those times.
T. Edgar Lyon: A Teacher in Zion was written by its subject's son Ted Lyon, a professor of Latin American literature at Brigham Young University. The elder Lyon, along with the legendary Lowell L. Bennion, directed the Salt Lake Institute of Religion near the University of Utah from the late 30's to the early 60's. Lyon was a remarkable man. Shy and reticent, he nevertheless did graduate work in theology at the University of Chicago with some of the most famous religious scholars of the era. He was a walking encyclopedia of LDS history. His students used to play a game; they would select a date at random (say, January 6, 1842) and Lyon could give a detailed exposition on what happened in the church on that day. He was one of the most captivating and beloved teachers in Mormondom. He was devoted to the church; he was a mission president in Holland at 31. He was one of those hard-working mid century academics from Utah like Bennion, Sterling McMurrin, and Brigham Madsen who had also been ranchers, farmers, and builders and loved hard physical labor. Together he and Bennion mentored thousands of young latter-day saints into full activity.
I admit I was surprised by the candor in this book, given that it was published by BYU. That institution is to be commended for not ducking in this account the controversies that marked Lyon's later career. The same stories are also told in Mary Lythgoe Bradford's biography of Bennion, but here we get Lyon's perspective. The two institute teachers fell afoul of their administrative superiors possibly because they expressed private skepticism about the priesthood ban on blacks and Elder Joseph Fielding Smith's rigid opposition to the theory of evolution. (Interestingly, Lyon also wrote in a private letter to his wife that he had a hard time accepting the doctrine of plural marriage as it was practiced early in church history.) Then Lyon was asked to review a book that was a published version of a graduate thesis written by a protege of several politically ultraconservative church leaders. Lyon published an unexpectedly negative but fair review (allegations of plagiarism later dogged the same book.) Apparently some church leaders were offended and questioned Lyon's loyalty. His immediate boss ordered him to write a letter of apology to church president David O. McKay, even though there is no record that Pres. McKay ever required such a letter. These controversies eventually led to Lyon and Bennion's removal from the Institute in 1962. Bennion took his act "across the street" to the University of Utah where he continued a fruitful humanitarian career. Lyon didn't have that option. These episodes look like an ugly little turf war and the administrators, led by Ernest L. Wilkinson, don't come off very well. My own opinion is that Lyon and Bennion were in the way of the new correlation movement in the church. They wanted to continue to exercise a degree of independence over what they taught. Lyon later wrote a lesson manual for the church that was rejected by correlation. He wrote: "I'm positive this will never get by the Correlation Committee. I should have done it two years ago before they came into power...There are too many unorthodox views and interpretations which are not of the 'faith-promoting' style that is now so essential..So it is too shocking."
A degree of vindication came to Lyon when he was later ordained a stake patriarch by Elder Boyd K. Packer, and he became the chief historian to the church's effort to restore Nauvoo, Illinois. His vast lore of knowledge became essential. I'm sure he remembered during his time of trouble that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." This is a fine book that reminds us that, in the phrase of Leonard Arrington, in this church we are all saints without halos.
Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life has already been much discussed on the list, and I can only add my voice to the chorus of praise. This is one of the most satisfying biographies I have read in a long time. Especially useful are the chapters which are essays on the different facets of Nibley's varied career. I wondered why this book wasn't published by FARMS, but its thoroughness and intriguing blend of detachment and sympathy set it apart from the polemical style largely favored there. This is a book that is not afraid to tackle tough questions from a variety of points of view. Petersen, Nibley's son-in-law, is willing to discuss uncomfortable subjects like the difficulties with Nibley's daughter Martha, and the painful circumstances surrounding Nibley's parents. He can also challenge Nibley's opinions when it seems appropriate.
Nibley's greatest value to ordinary members of the church was in his profound explorations of latter-day scripture. One cannot come away from Nibley's work without confessing that there is more to the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price than just 19th century frontier fiction. I did not know that some of the essays in Temple and Cosmos, his most mind-blowing book, were lectures given in the Salt Lake Temple at the request of general authorities. (The book versions have some sensitive material redacted.)
Nibley has also been a prolific and forceful social critic, and on these writings Petersen is invaluable. He lets us know that Nibley as a soldier visited the Nazi concentration camp Dachau shortly after its liberation in 1945. We can only imagine what horrors Nibley witnessed there because he has refused to write or even speak about it. Petersen speculates that Nibley is unable to fit this experience into his overwhelmingly pacifist attitude towards war. "Let the wicked punish the wicked" has been Nibley's motto, but perhaps he has been unable to admit that genocide is worse than war and sometimes self-defense is necessary.
Nibley's strained relationship with his parents sheds light on his later attitudes towards capitalism and commutarianism. (His parents were financially ruined during the Great Depression with devastating consequences for their personalities.) Nibley remains stalwartly devoted to the commutarian doctrines of early church history. In my own reading I have been impressed by the Catholic writer Michael Novak's book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. It became a text for Eastern European nations near the end of the Cold War. Novak argues that capitalism is no longer the cutthroat thing it was during the 19th century, the years of the restoration of the gospel. The combination of capitalism and democracy, he argues, has produced a system much more humane and progressive for the greatest number of people than socialism. Nibley has obviously thought deeply about this, but I wish more LDS scholars would take up the subject. Instead, we get lip service to the law of consecration while too many Mormons rush to participate in the most predatory, Enron-like ways of making money. Surely there is a golden mean to be had in our political economy. Nibley himself has lived an exemplary life of consecration.
Nibley's funny prose reminds us that he grew up in the day of H.L. Mencken, that great horse-laugher. Some of Nibley's best work has been satiric in style and intent. A lot of LDS prose has been correlated into blandness. Sometimes it seems the greatest Mormon sin is to make your neighbor uncomfortable with questions and wit. That was never Nibley's problem, as this very cool biography demonstrates. I wonder if we will ever again see teachers of the larger-than-life qualities of Lyon and Nibley, or whether that kind of individuality is gone forever.
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R.W. Rasband September 17, 2003
| Reviewed: 17 September 2003 | Copyright © 2003 R.W. Rasband |