Then the good senator gave those of us who are teachers one legislative session's time "to get the people who are out of line into line." I do believe that we are headed for a Scopes trial right here in Deseret.
If I were lucky enough to take the part of Clarence Darrow for the defense, my one fear would be that William Jennings Bryan would offer Buttars up as absolute evidence of anti-Darwinian thought: Politically, we seem to be faced with the survival of the least fit.
And this is not necessary. One can believe, as I do, in a creator God and also believe in Darwinian thought. This big tent has always existed in Mormon thought, from Joseph Smith through Brigham H. Roberts, James E. Talmage, John A. Widtsoe, David O. McKay, my grandfather Hugh B. Brown and a host of others.
As I began this response, I opened a book written by Grandfather, a collection of his broadcasts over KSL radio from September through December 1947 and published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the same year, with the telling title, Rational Faith.
( In that portion of my library now housing my grandfather's books, I also found, for the first time today, his hand-drawn notes for these radio lectures, I think consciously designed in purpose much like C. S. Lewis's lectures on Christianity broadcast by the BBC during World War II. Grandfather listened to Lewis while he lived in London working as coordinator of LDS servicemen and women serving their country in the European theater during World War II.)
These notes were carefully transcribed by Grandfather, obviously for simultaneous publication, as he had noted references by page number, often from a book he treasured highly, the great work, Human Destiny, by Lecomte du Nouy, published in 1947, the same year as Grandfather's broadcasts over KSL radio.
Each work by the great Roman Catholic scientist and scholar and by Grandfather dealt with Darwinism. Both found sustenance, not dissonance, therein for their faith in God. In his hand-drawn manuscript, Grandfather repeatedly relied upon Lecomte du Nouy's Human Destiny and its life-affirming and science-affirming message.
Grandfather was a loving friend and a disciple of B. H. Roberts, the great historian of Mormonism and its undisputed intellectual leader of the first rank.
Of all his works - the Comprehensive History of the Church, the Seventy's Course in Theology, the Gospel and Man's Relationship to Deity, etc. - Roberts himself considered his greatest to be a book just recently published: The Truth, The Way, The Life, edited by Stan Larson, with forwards by Thom D. Roberts for the Roberts family; by Leonard J. Arrington, the late historian of the Mormon faith; and by Sterling M. McMurrin.
In this great volume the reader will find a treasure trove of material. This manuscript, written while Roberts was president of the First Quorum of Seventy, treats centrally the whole question of scientific thought and Christian belief.
As this manuscript circulated from the First Presidency under President Heber J. Grant, to the Twelve Apostles and back again, marginal notations by Talmage, Widtsoe, and others, together with their letters, are included. The message: The story of creation exists for us all to see, explore, and consider, in the strata of this good Earth; in the stars of the heavens, within all God's creations among all forms of animal and vegetable life - and within the story of Genesis.
The former is treated in our public schools. The latter in our seminaries, our families and within our own heart.
Grandfather's hand-written conclusion in his reading of Human Destiny says with his own eloquence: "Let us pray that the light of faith may shine upon the facts of human experience and make a lantern of them, giving them meaning and significance and qualitative value."
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Ed Firmage is a University of Utah emeritus law professor and a peace activist.
