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I self-identify as a liberal-minded Mormon.[1] But I was just wondering, “How did I get this way?” I was pretty conservative as a kid, and it was not set in stone that I should grow up to become progressive in my religious views. So I thought I would think back over my life’s history and try to identify (at least some of) the influences that shaped my modern perspective on the faith.

My Father. My father was a conservative man, and when I was young I was similarly conservative-minded–largely from his influence. Politically he was a Republican; I remember that as a boy I supported Nixon (following his example). (He did like Jack Kennedy, but didn’t care so much for Bobby, for reasons I was too young to grasp.) Back in those days men in the Church used to be contrasted as either McKay Men or Lee Men (and before that, Clark Men), and my dad was definitely a Lee Man. (To be fair though some of this came from the fact that he was related to Harold B. Lee as an extended cousin; still, he very much admired President Lee.) Also, I remember one day when he was out working in the yard, a woman came by on a bicycle politicking for the ERA. My father responded that he didn’t want to have to share bathrooms with women, and that was it, there was nothing to discuss and no more to his decision than that.[2]

My dad was certainly not a liberal, but he was very much an intellectual. He was a college professor in a farming community ward, so this aspect of his relationship with the Church tended to stand out more due to the contrast. He was a reader and our house was filled with books. Our front room shelves featured the hardbound History of the Church (which went to my sister after his death; I have my mission paperbacks), and the B.H. Roberts Comprehensive History of the Church (which I still have on the shelves in my living room, a beautiful first edition from 1930). He had and read a lot of other Church literature; I recall he was a particular fan of Sterling W. Sill.

I think of my father as having been a UoU Institute type of Mormon. He really admired T. Edgar Lyon (with whom he had had classes), and I still have some Lowell Bennion books that came from his library.

My dad was willing to stand up to leadership, which embarrassed me no end as a boy, but which in retrospect I greatly admire. One example that comes to mind, my high school physics teacher was a convert to the faith and attended church with us. During the summers he drove a moving van cross country to make ends meet. When he was able to make it to church for a Sunday service during those summers he would be rather casually dressed and show up without a tie. The bishop dressed him down over this (pun intended) and told him he had to wear a tie to church, and my dad pushed back against the bishop and insisted that no, he didn’t have to wear a tie to church. (I suspect my dad’s position came from his background growing up on an Idaho farm.) My father won that little battle of wills, and so no, that high school teacher didn’t wear a tie to services during those summers when he was long hauling furniture. That is perhaps a trifling example, but my father was very sensitive about the little guy getting (unnecessarily, in his view) pushed around by church leadership.

My Mission. I served in Colorado in the late 70s, and it was there that I gained my first interests in scholarship. Early in my mission I attended a Know Your Religion fireside where C. Wilfred Griggs read from the NT translating on the fly from the GNT, which I thought was insanely cool. (Before that I’m not sure I could have even told you that the NT had originally been written in Greek.) I soon discovered Hugh Nibley (sort of the patron saint of liberal Mormons), and I began obtaining and reading things that he talked about. By the end of my mish I was lugging a huge chest of books around on transfers.

BYU Post-Mish. My mission had primed me for what I found at BYU after the mission. I was like a kid in a candy store. I ended up majoring in classics, whose professors had similarly been influenced by Nibley and tended to be quite liberal (by BYU standards, at least), but classics was so small that no one cared what those guys thought about anything, which gave them way more freedom than prevailed in Religious Education. I also gained lots of friends with progressive views of the Church, and that social interaction certainly was an influence on me. In my married student ward, John Sorenson was the HC rep (and was there every Sunday); he called me to my very first teaching calling in the Church (EQ), advising me not to follow the manual (which was a “Personal Study Guide” for the elders to study on their own, but we should do more in our quorum meetings). Blake Ostler taught GD in that ward using socratic method, something I’ve never seen anyone else do before or since. I got a job as a teaching assistant to S. Kent Brown in Ancient Scripture (a true gentleman of a scholar). My BYU experience was idyllic. (It was also there that I first discovered Dialogue and Sunstone, simultaneously, from a big display in the BYU Bookstore. Hard to imagine now, but I swear it’s true.)

Urbana Student Ward. This all continued when I went to law school at the University of Illinois and we attended the student ward there. (All students, both single and married; they were not segregated by marital status.) Going to church in that kind of a university environment is a heady thing. My EQP was Michael Hicks, the long-time professor of music at BYU and a now lifelong friend, and just knowing that tells you what you need to know about my church experience there. It was fantastic. I also was first called to teach GD in that ward.

Adult Life. After graduation I got a job as an attorney in Chicago and we moved to the NW suburbs. I began to publish articles on Mormon subjects (mainly relating to scripture; as an amateur scholar I’m primarily a scripturist). More teaching callings followed (several GD stints and a long-term stake “institute” calling.) When I was teaching a church history class I decided I had better subscribe to the Journal of Mormon History, and one subscribes by joining the Association. I eventually screwed up my courage and attended the 2003 conference and had a blast; I’ve endeavored to attend every year since. I’ve also branched out to the JWHA conferences; since I live in the midwest, they tend to be convenient for me.

Blogging at BCC has been a great experience for me as well. It has given me a forum to think out loud about all sorts of aspects of the faith and church life. My blogmates epitomize what it means to be a faithful but intellectually curious Mormon.

So those are some of the circumstances in my life that seem to have been instrumental in turning me from my youthful, slavish conservatism into having a more liberal-minded take on the faith.

How about you? Do you consider yourself conservative, moderate or liberal (or something else)? [I mean religiously, not necessarily politically.] What in your life shaped you to having the outlook and perspective you do today?

[1] By that I mean that I consider myself an active, faithful member of the Church, but I tend to take liberal positions on matters of scripture, doctrine, history and practice.

[2] For years I accepted the Rex Lee view that the ERA was unnecessary due to the 14th Amendment. I would support the ERA today, which is an illustration of my trajectory from a more conservative to a more liberal point of view.