John L. Sorenson – Thoughts From My 10Th Decade.

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The Passing Parade: Observations on People and Culture

 

These sketches, written in my tenth decade, portray aspects of people and culture I have encountered in my life that may be instructive, or at least diverting, to my extensive clan and friends.

 

[i (Curtis, JLS' son) choose to share these 40 or so observations from my father, hoping that one or more might add some meaning, or new perspective, to one or more members here. I'll ask that you be patient until I'm done before commenting/posting, I'd like to post an uninterrupted flow. Thanks. I will post at the end, indicating that "I'm finished."]

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

Not long ago (2014) I happened to read an article by Michael A. Goodman, an associate professor of Church history and doctrine at BYU, entitled “Correlation: The Turning Point (1960s)” (pp. 258-284 in Scott C. Esplin and Kenneth L. Alford, eds., Salt Lake City: The Place Which God Prepared {Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, and Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011}). It is an interesting history of repeated efforts at “correlation” of LDS Church activities and concerns by authorities of the Church throughout most of the 20th century. It’s based on minutes of meetings of various concerned committees and some correspondence of relevant Church officers and employees. What struck me about this history was its failure to identify clearly, let alone to document, the activities of the bureaucratic entity that the Church public knows as “Correlation.” That unit is the apparatus of actual control through which most correlation efforts have been carried out. My own experience with that apparatus may provide supplementary insight into the practice of “Correlation” in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

By the 1970s I had had considerable experience with and a record of publishing on the Book of Mormon and its ancient setting. My efforts to think seriously about those matters began at BYU in 1949 as a student under Professors M. Wells Jakeman, Sidney B. Sperry and Hugh W. Nibley; as an archaeologist in southern Mexico for the New World Archaeological Foundation in 1953; as an instructor in the BYU Archaeology Dept., 1953-55; as a predoctoral candidate in Anthropology at UCLA 1955-58; and as an avocational devotee of the subject to the present. In 1976 I was on the faculty at the Y attached to the office of the Dean of the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences and functioning as chair of the Department of University Studies (which allowed students to design their own “major” to fit their unique interests). On my own time I was engaged in synthesizing what I had come to understood of the Nephites and their scripture that I had developed by extended study of Pre-Classic Mesoamerican cultures. 

 

At that time I was approached by David Palmer, a professional chemist from the Chicago area and a Book of Mormon buff already acquainted with my published work. He desired an update on what I was doing. He then took it upon himself to talk with Jay Todd, editor of The Ensign, and persuaded him that he ought to hear what I had to say about the Book of Mormon. Brother Todd invited me to make a series of presentations at the Church Office Building where the magazine staff was located. For several months in the fall of 1976 I went to Salt Lake weekly to address an informal sort of seminar attended by various combinations of magazine staff and people from other Church departments (e.g., Curriculum). There I presented discussions sketching out the synthesis I had arrived at that constituted a plausible picture of Book of Mormon lands and history as having been located in Central America, based on geographical, archaeological and related data as well as the text.

 

Editor Todd enthusiastically accepted my presentations as constituting information that should be published in The Ensign. At his urging I prepared over the next few months a manuscript that incorporated what I had communicated orally in the Office Building gatherings and more. It was divided into seven or eight segments, each intended to form an article in the magazine. Edited, and repeatedly re-edited, this material was submitted more than once to Correlation for their approval to appear in The Ensign. That unit consisted of a small group of junior-level editorial employees under the supervision of Brother Roy Doxey, formerly a senior religion professor at BYU. The group responded with comments on points in the material they considered “inappropriate,” representing the point of view (i.e., theirs) of Correlation. I was given access to one set of such comments and concluded that they were logically and intellectually markedly inadequate. 

 

The jockeying between Correlation and Brother Todd over this material went on for six years or more! Without resolution.

 

At one point Jay told me, “If I could just get a copy of the manuscript to Camilla and she would read it to [Pres.] Spencer [Kimball] at night, he would approve it, I think.” (So much for the formality of getting approval from Correlation!) But he didn’t go that far. He also confided to me that Brother Doxey had let it be known that no document that claimed that the final battle of the Nephites took place any place other than in New York (which I implied and the scripture requires) would ever gain his approval, inasmuch as he was former president of the Eastern States Mission that included the New York Hill Cumorah (and its pageant) in its boundaries. In any case the impasse continued. 

 

Elder Mark E. Peterson had also weighed in with the opinion that my material, even if correct, was too great a challenge to the “tradition” common among Church members that the Nephites occupied all of North America, and “they were not ready for it.” Nor would Deseret Book consider publishing the work as a book when it had been turned down by Correlation for the magazine. Truman Madsen offered to publish it in the series he was issuing in his professorial role at BYU, but I felt that it was much more desirable that it should come out if possible under formal Church auspices to provide it a more authoritative cachet. During the early ‘80s I was asked by many people to provide them with photocopies of the ms., which had become widely known. Those I furnished at cost, a total of over 1200 (for example, my friend Leonard Arrington bought copies for all his family members).

 

Finally a break in the inaction came in 1983-84. Critics of the Church and the Book of Mormon at that time were pointing out that assuming the idea that the Nephites occupied the whole Western Hemisphere, as most Mormons continued to do, was contrary to many archaeological and anthropological facts plainly evident. A manuscript written years earlier by Elder B. H. Roberts that reflected indeterminately on such issues was finally being prepared for academic publication at the U. of U. Church authorities were concerned about effects such ideas were having on the faith of some Latter-day Saints. An ad hoc committee was formed to consider what countermeasures might be taken (apparently no minutes were kept). It consisted of Elder Peterson, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Elder George Lee, several other people from concerned Church offices, and, from BYU, Truman Madsen, John Welch and me (I was then in my fifth year as chair of the Department of Anthropology).

 

In several meetings in late 1983 and early 1984 the group came to the conclusion (under Elder Maxwell’s adroit, quiet leadership) that the idea of a whole-hemispheric scene for the history of the Book of Mormon would need to be quietly given up in favor of a limited geography that was more defensible.** 

 

I was directed to prepare for The Ensign two articles based on my extensive material. Those pieces implied a geographic limitation for the Nephites’ theater of activity in Mesoamerica without explicitly challenging the folk tradition that had earlier been of concern to Elder Peterson. Others of the group were assigned to prepare pieces for publication that clarified and supported certain other points in the Book of Mormon. My articles appeared as “Digging into the Book of Mormon: Our changing understanding of ancient America and its scripture. Parts 1 and 2,” The Ensign 14 (Sept. and Oct., 1984) [i offer downloadable digital scans of of the actual in-print Ensign issues here: Part 1 and Part 2]. At the same time a signal was given to Deseret Book that it was okay for them to publish my full material that had so long been struggling to appear in The Ensign. That book came out in 1985 as An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book and FARMS), and it has continued in print throughout the intervening nearly 30 years.

 

Obviously the history of Correlation, or of any other aspect of Church history, cannot be properly written without including nitty-gritty details of the sort I report here. It is equally obvious that no comprehensive account could (or maybe even should) be issued under Church auspices in all its necessarily messy detail. 

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** The logic and advantage of this stance was well phrased by Elder Dallin H. Oaks in a talk given in 1993 (published in 2001 in Paul Y. Hoskisson, ed., Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, and reprinted in 2012 in the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 21(1): 66-72). He said, “For me, [a now] obvious insight goes back over forty years to the first class I took on the Book of Mormon at Brigham Young University. The class was titled, somewhat boldly, the ‘Archaeology of the Book of Mormon’ [taught by Prof. Jakeman] …. Here I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all of the people who lived on the continents of North and South America …. Up to that time I had assumed that it was. If that were the claim of the Book of Mormon, any piece of historical, archaeological, or linguistic evidence to the contrary would weigh in against the Book of Mormon, and those who rely exclusively on scholarship [would] have a promising position to argue [against the historical validity of the record]. 

 

“In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of [what took place in just a part of] the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of the argument changes drastically.”

Edited September 17, 2014 by cursor

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In 1952, having just completed an M.A. degree in Archaeology at BYU, I was contacted by Thomas Stuart Ferguson, who had recently founded the New World Archaeological Foundation based in California. He invited me to join the planned first field season of research sponsored by the NWAF in southern Mexico in January. My friend and fellow graduate student Gareth W. Lowe was also invited. We were the only two Mormons to be involved. Despite our very limited personal financial resources, we both agreed when the Foundation agreed to pay $200 per month to “support” our families, minimally, for the six-month period.

 

The New World Archaeological Foundation caper in Mexico lasted from January 1953 into June. (The limited funding consisted of a few thousand dollars that mostly came from Willard Marriott, the Mormon hotel man in Washington, D.C.) Lowe and I first flew to Mexico City to join the man who would be our field director, Dr. Pedro Armillas, an archaeologist from Spain (a veteran of the anti-Fascist Spanish Civil War who walked with a war-caused limp). We went by train over 400 miles southeast to Huimanguillo, Tabasco, which would be our headquarters. There we were joined by three other students (one of whom, Bill Sanders, over the next 50 years graduated at Harvard, taught at Penn State for many years, and became one of the three or four leading archaeologists in Mexico, while another, Román Piña Chan, a Mayan Indian from southern Mexico, became one of that country’s top experts over the same period). We were digging there because of Ferguson’s belief that the Book of Mormon city of Zarahemla, which he identified with a place mentioned in the historical traditions of early Mexico, had been located in that area. In any case no digging had previously been conducted thereabouts. We dug one significant site of moderate size and mapped another couple of dozen during four months. 

 

Ferguson himself came among us in May, discouraged by the lack of any notable find which he could use to attract more money from donors. He wanted some promising if not sensational results. He had barely enough cash left for a last minute gamble. As a result of my study (with Lowe) of the Book of Mormon text during our evenings, I felt confident that the place to look was the Grijalva River basin in central Chiapas state, and I persuaded Ferguson of that view. The two of us flew to Chiapas, and in a ten-day reconnaissance by jeep in the area, until then essentially unexplored by archaeologists, we located 70 or 80 sites, some very large and dating to the Book of Mormon era. By 1955 those results permitted Ferguson to get support for further fieldwork, and the NWAF then dug at those places over the next 30 years. (On our results see  “An Archaeological Reconnaissance of West-Central Chiapas, Mexico,” New World Archaeological Foundation, Publication 1: 7-19 {Orinda, California, 1956}.)

 

That one season would prove to be my only experience as a field archaeologist. I planned further work, but two months after enrolling in the program for the Ph.D. in Anthropology/Archaeology at UCLA in 1955, my plan was short-circuited by the sudden death of Dr. George Brainerd, a leading Mesoamerican archaeologist on the faculty and my primary advisor. Thereupon I had to change to Social Anthropology to complete my degree (fortunately for my career!).

 

As the archaeologist “first on the ground” in central Chiapas, I continued in close touch with Lowe and others in subsequent years by correspondence. In a few years the LDS Church took over funding the Foundation, at Ferguson’s urging; eventually it was attached to BYU. The person designated to supervise the operation once the Church began to back it, was Elder Howard W. Hunter of the Council of the Twelve. For at least 20 years he served as the shepherd/”bishop” over the party that was based in Chiapas, about half of whom were not LDS. He made trips to see the operation at least annually, and he had administrative responsibility for operations, personnel and finance. He was assisted by an advisory board, although it turned out that they were not particularly helpful in practical terms.

 

In addition to my contacts with Lowe, once I had received my Ph.D. degree in Anthropology, I was treated as an informal “old-timer” advisor to the Foundation. At least I could address comments to Elder Hunter that he might choose to consider. A few times he invited me to meetings of the board of advisors, where I mostly listened and observed. The archaeological planning engaged in was sometimes contrary to what I advised Lowe, but no matter. 

I was independently maintaining a current avocational concern for Mesoamerican archaeology and Book of Mormon research. The NWAF professionals were precluded by Foundation policy from expressing opinions about scriptural matters; to professionals in Mexico their work was represented as straight scientific archaeology, and they gained a reputation for great competence. So the LDS participants went their own way--or no way --as far as my major concern, the correlation of the archaeological findings with my reading of the scripture, was concerned. I had long since concluded that central Chiapas was quite surely the land of Zarahemla, and when I began publicly to say so, the LDS archaeologists with NWAF thought it was impolitic of me to say so because their non-LDS colleagues in Mexico might be put off by any claimed relation between their work and the Book of Mormon.

 

My relations with Elder Hunter were always cordial. Once, upon boarding a flight from L. A. International Airport to Salt Lake City in the late 1960s, he graciously stood as I passed his first-class seat and greeted me warmly as “John.” When my book, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, came out in 1985, which depended heavily on the work of the Foundation, he wrote me a letter complimenting me on my important “contribution.”

 

As time went on my relationship to the Foundation drifted toward zero. Newer archaeologists whom I did not know well, or at all, went their own way. Meanwhile poor judgment by BYU administrators, who knew little or nothing about the value, history and accomplishments of the NWAF, has effectively gutted the activity in recent years, although the NWAF still exists within the Department of Anthropology. (Something like this decay or switch in emphasis is likely to be the fate of any efforts to continue institutional interests that seemed worthwhile to a previous generation of decision makers but are no longer obvious.) But at least I recollect with enthusiastic thanks the performance of Gareth Lowe and the other archaeologists and of Elder Hunter in doing and supervising scholarly research of quality and substance that proved very significant to my, and the Church’s, Book of Mormon studies.

 

(In regard to this topic, see also:  my 1974  “Brief History of the BYU New World Archaeological Foundation,” an unpublished paper prepared for the BYU Centennial History Project at the request of Ernest L. Wilkinson; and 1975  “The Role of the BYU-NWAF in Middle American Archaeology,” an address I gave at the opening of an exhibit on campus displaying the work of the BYU-NWAF, on the occasion of the BYU Centennial.)

Edited September 17, 2014 by cursor

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In the Fall of 1954, while I was employed as an instructor in the BYU Dept. of Archaeology, I was asked by Prof. Sidney B. Sperry to accompany a trip to the vicinity of Albuquerque, NM, to inspect a purported Hebrew inscription that had come to his attention. Elder Milton R. Hunter drove the party in his auto. We were Brother Hunter, Prof. Sperry, Prof. Hugh Nibley, Welby Ricks, an optometrist in downtown Provo and a Book of Mormon buff who was strongly interested in such material, and me.

 

The inscription has since been widely, if not wisely, discussed in print (Sorenson and Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography, 2 vols., Rev ed, {Provo, UT: Research Press, 1996}, identify and provide annotations on 18 items, listed in the index under “Los Lunas stone”), but in 1954 none of us were aware of any publication about the stone or its inscription. 

 

The two men who had contacted Sperry and Ricks about the matter took us to the location of the stone; it weighed at least a ton and lay at the foot of a mesa southwest a number of miles from Albuquerque. On a flat vertical face of the stone indeed could be seen a Hebrew inscription several lines long. Nibley and Sperry examined the inscription closely and concluded that the Hebrew was not the archaic form but essentially the medieval sort that could have been copied from a modern Hebrew volume of scripture. I scouted the area for archaeological remains and found nothing but minor Puebloan structures that would not date beyond a few centuries before the Spaniards’ arrival. The piece had no apparent relationship to Book of Mormon people.

 

As we prepared to leave, Ricks lingered behind and happened to overhear one of the two hosts say to his companion, “Do you think they bought it?” or a near equivalent expression. Of course that raised our suspicion when we heard of it. (But those men could not have been responsible for the inscription, for, it turned out later, it had been reported {obscurely} at least two decades earlier.) Nevertheless the combination of our group’s findings confirmed for us that the feature was not to be considered ancient.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

My physician in Rarotonga while I was a missionary [Cook Islands] — the only M.D. there — Dr. Tom Davis, a half-Maori from New Zealand, was very proud of his native nautical heritage. In 1952 with his young family and a crew of two he sailed a small boat from N.Z. across the South Pacific to Peru, then on through Panama and north to Massachusetts, as a cheap way to reach where he had a post-doc appointment awaiting him at Harvard. (His wife Lydia published a series of three articles about the trip in the Saturday Evening Post in 1953.) He later became a famous Pacific Islands medical administrator for the U.N., and was knighted, “Sir Thomas Davis.” He later was appointed New Zealand’s (political) Commissioner over the Cook Islands. A neighbor of mine from Provo met him in N.Z. some years ago and observed to him that he knew me, at one time a Mormon missionary in Rarotonga. Davis then modestly remarked, “I remember him. I have wondered if he would remember me”!

Edited September 17, 2014 by cursor

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In about 1973, I was asked by Leonard Arrington, Church Historian, to participate in the Sesquicentennial History project planned by the Historical Department at LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. (He confided that he consciously desired to have me, an anthropologist, involved in order to diversify authorship of the series beyond “historians” as such.) Target publication date was 1980, the sesquicentennial of the Church. I was asked to do Vol. 16 in the lengthy series, entitled “The Cultural and Social History of the Latter-day Saints in the 20th Century.” 

 

To that end I accumulated and began to process a large mass of data. (That included collecting hundreds of instructional manuals of all vintages; I eventually gave them to the FARMS organization.) I also organized a group of interested people into what I called a Committee on Mormon Culture and Society and issued a newsletter among them for several years.  

 

But after a time questions were raised among certain key Church authorities about the desirability of the project, and all the contracts ended up being cancelled. It appeared in retrospect that the initial project approval was given in the face of fairly strong minority reluctance among the general authorities, which, as the decade went on, became a majority. A few of the historians subsequently published their volumes as independent works, but most of the series that had been planned, including mine, were abandoned. I never published any of my material, although I have a lengthy draft of one chapter, “Deseret Mormons in 1900,” that I will someday post on my website (JohnLSorenson.com).

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I served with the Thrasher Research Fund Technical Advisory Committee, 1984-89. The fund was an adjunct to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was designated by the donor, Mr. Al Thrasher, to administer the fund for making grants to applicants around the world who proposed public health research and implementation projects. In this activity I worked closely with Dr. James Mason (previously head of the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta) and Dr. Alexander Morrison, a Canadian scientist, both of whom were later made members of the First Quorum of Seventy. In addition the advisory group included many other professional colleagues of high integrity, mainly from USU, the U. of U., and BYU.  Our main task was to evaluate proposals for grants, some of which were not adequate while others were highly commendable and proved productive.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In 2002 Merrill Bateman, President of BYU (and a Seventy) designated me as a “Special Representative” to work in support of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. Actually I had been serving as a researcher/editor/consultant with them since 1980. This call was considered a “church service mission.” The appointment was never terminated, but since I was dispossessed of office space at the organization in 2008, I consider it no longer in force from that date.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In the Fall awaiting my January, 1953, departure for Mexico and the NWAF archaeological expedition, how to support my family was an urgent issue. I had taken two years of study in the Hebrew language under Prof. Sidney Sperry as part of my B.S./M.A. study (one year of it sitting in his office with just one other student), and Sperry had become my strong supporter. He hired me to teach a beginning Hebrew class in the fall. There turned out to be only one student, Marvin Hill, who later got a Ph.D. in history and still later became a BYU professor. I doubt that the quality of my teaching was more than merely acceptable.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I am increasingly struck with what I call the compression of history. I mean by that that what appears to some to be an extended period of time, from another point of view seems much shorter. Put in terms of LDS Church history both my grandfathers (not my great or great-great grandfathers) were born in the 1840s while the Prophet Joseph  Smith was alive, one in Denmark and one in England. My own father was born in 1875, two years before Brigham Young died; and his birth dated only 12 years after the Bear Lake area was initially settled by Mormon pioneers. It is difficult for me to grasp how nearly my life coincided with the pioneer period that otherwise seems so distant for a person who is writing this item on a computer.

 

I think the same thing when I recall that when I was a 13-year-old deacon (in 1937), I attended a priesthood meeting in the old Smithfield Tabernacle where I heard an aged local resident, William Pilkington  (?), report that as a young man he had known Martin Harris, one of the original three witnesses of the Book of Mormon when the latter lived in Smithfield in his late years. He had heard Harris testify that he had been shown the gold plates by an angel. That was quite a case of compression for me, only a single lifetime as it were intervening between “the beginning” of the Church and me.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I have had some interesting relationships with leaders of the LDS Church, nearly all of them minor yet revealing about what kind of men they were. Of the total of 16 presidents of the Church, I have lived under the leadership of 10 of them. Of those I had personal experiences with five. In addition I have been associated personally with eight apostles My little stories about these associations convey two characteristics about them: they were good people devoted to their great cause but they were also humble and kind; and they were also humans sometimes exhibiting their own foibles, like all the rest of us.

 

(1) When I turned 12 years of age (1936), I was slated to receive my Tenderfoot badge as initiation into the Boy Scouts. Somebody decided to make a much bigger deal of it than usual. The Hyrum Dam in southern Cache Valley had just been completed and Apostle George Albert Smith, a noted Scouter, had been invited to dedicate the installation with a prayer. Our troop leaders hauled three of us new scouts 20 miles south to the site where Elder Smith would personally present us with our badges. We went and at some point stood up while Elder Smith saluted us in turn and pinned our badges on us (of course we had no uniforms). It may seem exceptionally minor but the event impressed me because of who he was and because of the large crowd in attendance. I was also impressed with the unaffected way he handled the affair, serious enough but with a hint of humor at the near absurdity of the ”award.”

 

Then in January 1947 (at age 22) I was staying at the Mission Home on State Street in Salt Lake City, about to depart for New Zealand. One afternoon we had been to the temple, and I was walking back to the Home with two other elders when then-Church-President Smith strode up behind us as we walked past the Hotel Utah. Putting his arms around our shoulders, he greeted us (it was obvious from our appearance who we were!) and asked what missions we were headed for. Then he said, “Well, I hope you enjoy your missions as much as I enjoyed mine,” as he turned up the steps of the Church Administration Building where his office was located. His warmth and congeniality were evident.

 

(2) In about 1939 the Church had completed construction of the very nice Institute building on the campus of Utah State Agricultural College in Logan. President Heber J. Grant was to come dedicate it. I was then a seminary student at North Cache High School in Richmond, a few miles north of Logan.   We seminary students were bused to the dedication session. It proceeded apace, then afterward, many of us were lined up in the men’s restroom to use the facility when aged President Grant shuffled in. He was of course allowed to go to the head of the line. I was at that point second in line. As he did his business, he said, “Boys, I’ll tell you something. When you are young, all you think about is making money. When you are old, all you think about is making water.” 

 

That comment made me appreciate his humanity. As I have got old, I  appreciate even more his sense of inescapable necessity.

 

(3) In 1969 I had arranged with the Department of Sociology at BYU to teach a curriculum in anthropology with them, and the name of the department was changed to Sociology and Anthropology. Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith eventually heard of the changes and sent word to me that he would like to interview me. I paid him a visit where he opened the brief conversation by saying, “I suppose you know how I feel about evolution?” I assured him that I did. He produced a sheet of paper from a desk drawer and offered it to me. On it were a series of statements condemning evolution as it was generally taught made by his father, President Joseph F. Smith, former president of the Church. (I was of course familiar with his viewpoint but interpreted “evolution” in a more benign way than he.)  He said no more about that topic but asked if I had a testimony of the gospel. I assured him that I did. He concluded by saying, “I do not presume to judge your academic qualifications. That is up to the BYU.” At that he bid me goodbye. The whole interchange took only a few minutes. There was no feeling coming from him of pressure or condemnation of my views. Courtesy was obviously key in our exchange.

 

“Evolution” was never a key concept as such in my teaching of anthropology, although I never hesitated to teach (my version of) standard anthropological thinking as it rose to attention in courses. As far as I am aware, no one ever complained about my teaching from either a Church or a scientific point of view. (See my “The Relation of a Scientific Picture of Man’s Appearance and Cultural History on the Earth to a Scriptural Picture.” Duplicated Book of Mormon Working Paper, No. 6.)

 

(4) In regard to my associations with Elder (later President) Howard W. Hunter, see elsewhere in this “Parade” my longish piece about my participation with the New World Archaeological Foundation that involved him.

 

(5) I had only a brief time in the presence of Spencer W. Kimball. I was taken by S. Lyman Tyler to Elder Kimball’s office while visiting my friend Tyler (probably in the early 70s). He was then employed as Director of the University of Utah’s American West Center. He was simultaneously connected (through his special area of historical concern, the history of American Indian relations) to Elder Kimball’s own special concern for the same folks. I don’t remember the specific topics addressed on this occasion, but with me there as Tyler’s incidental tagalong--perhaps made acceptable because I was “an anthropologist”--we sat in Elder Kimball’s office while they discussed some minor matters having to do with Indians. I came away with admiration for the leader’s gentle demeanor and courtesy in conducting bits of routine business.

 

My interests and qualifications also put me in association with a number of apostles:

 

(1) In about 1965 while working in Santa Barbara I was in touch with Dr. Lyman Tyler (BYU history professor and good friend), who was on a sabbatical leave serving a sort of “mission” attached to the office of N. Eldon Tanner, Second Counselor in the LDS First Presidency (the category “church service missionary” did not exist at that time). At Elder Tanner’s request, he was producing an internal newsletter on a bi-weekly basis containing excerpts from the world press that well-informed Church authorities ought to be apprised of and that Pres. Tanner shared with selected colleagues. Tyler was interested in studies I had been doing as chief social scientist for the Defense (later General) Research Corporation, a “think tank.” He suggested that the Church could benefit from “systems analysis” studies of the sort I had been doing. 

 

I stopped in Salt Lake City on one of my trips to the east coast intending to talk with Pres, Tanner about the possibility. The three of us had lunch (at the downstairs coffee shop in the Hotel Utah). As we talked, Elder Tanner said, “I know from my business experience [as an oil executive in Alberta, Canada] of the need for quality research. If you and (some LDS) associates could arrange to address some problem(s) of concern to the Church, it could be valuable.” I agreed. The initial topic we settled on was, “what problems keep missionaries from being more productive in the field?” I said that I knew some colleagues who could help out and sketched the kinds of questions we might pursue in interviews especially with former mission presidents. He noted, “Most of the Brethren have not had experience with this kind of study. It would be a good thing to keep this activity quiet, lest they wonder why they had not been consulted to authorize it.” (No funding was involved.) We began the study but, unfortunately, people we contacted in the process began to raise questions as to our authorization. It ended up that we could not perform as hoped and had to give it up.

 

(2) I enjoyed a long-time personal relationship with Elder Near A. Maxwell. He was always quick to encourage my research on the Book of Mormon, and he also appreciated the strong support I had given to Jack Welch and his Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) from the beginning. In 1980 at the World Conference on Records sponsored by the Church, where I gave a paper, my wife Kathryn and I were seated at the same tiny table for the accompanying banquet event with the Maxwells, where we enjoyed an intimate conversation. Beyond that I exchanged letters with him when I had something to report of special interest to him. He once wrote, “Please continue to share with me intellectually stimulating items that you come across that you think I might benefit from seeing. In this assignment, it is difficult to find time to keep the mind sharp. What you send me helps.”

 

In 1986 upon my retirement I made an appointment with him where Kathryn and I solicited his counsel about what activity I might best devote my energy to. His suggestion was that I would do well to serve as a kind of “translator” to see that research results on the Book of Mormon were phrased in a manner that non-specialists might have the benefit of their light. I took that guidance seriously, especially in editing (with Mel Thorne) a volume of just such essays, Rediscovering the Book of Mormon (FARMS, 1991), and in editing a redesigned Journal of Book of Mormon Studies (1999-2004). In 1986 he sent me a copy of his latest little book, “But for a Small Moment,” inscribed “To John Sorenson: With everlasting friendship! Neal,” which obviously I treasure.

 

I had always expected to live to a normal age, without thinking much about the matter. In the fall of 1984 I suffered a heart attack in early October at age 61. Inasmuch as I was in good health this was pretty shocking. (My cardiologist concluded that the apparent cause was excessive stress, that is, in my position as chair of the Anthropology Dept. at BYU for seven years, and having just been released as bishop of the BYU 99th Ward of married students, I had apparently taken on too many unresolvable tasks, especially those aimed at updating a stodgy department against my faculty’s will.) Elder Maxwell paid me an early morning visit the next day (Sunday) in the ICU having been alerted by BYU Pres. Oaks. He said to me, “Your ship is still a long way from port. This is just a warning shot across your bow.” He also requested my permission to insert my name on the “prayer roll” to be a recipient of prayer benefits in coming meetings of the Council of Twelve. I was quick to recover but decided thereupon to acknowledge the warning; I concluded that it was time to retire from BYU (at 62) the next spring.  I am grateful for the 28 additional years or more of life granted to me since then in fulfillment of Elder Maxwell’s prophecy.

 

(3) For my relationship with Elder Mark E. Peterson see the piece elsewhere in this Parade regarding my relation to “Correlation.” 

 

(4) The summer of 1958 saw the expiration of the three years of support I had enjoyed due to a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship that had funded my study at UCLA. I looked fruitlessly for a professorial position. Having been absent from the campus for a year doing dissertation research in Utah, I was also out of sight/out of mind of my familiar professors, who failed to help me. Vacancies that came to my attention all paid too little to support my family of then seven children. I finally even tried to find a non-professorial job, but that too failed. Of course I had an ultimate hope that anthropology would open up at BYU as a teaching field. When I left after teaching as an instructor in archaeology, Pres. Wilkinson said in general terms that I would be welcomed back, but the teaching of anthropology was not yet established. In a moment of frustration I made an appointment to see Elder Hugh B. Brown, Counselor in the First Presidency, one of the most open-minded of the apostles (yes, it was possible in those less hectic times to “make an appointment”!) and paid him a visit in his office. I asked him if he thought there would come a time when the study of anthropology would be opened up at BYU. He was knowledgeable in general about and sympathetic with my problem but cautiously chose not to answer my query one way or the other. (But through an odd channel within a few months I did find a way to begin teaching in my field at the Y.) 

  

(5) I was a missionary in Rarotonga, the Cook Islands, in 1948 when our group of four were informed by cable that Elder Matthew Cowley of the Council of the Twelve would be paying us a surprise visit. This famed apostle to the Pacific islands was in the Society Islands (French Polynesia) at the time. By some special arrangement he was deposited on our island by a French airliner on its planned nonstop way to (French) New Caledonia far to our west. It turned out that he intended only rest during a stay of a few days before catching the local once-every-two-weeks flight to New Zealand. (He was afflicted with a congenital heart problem that robbed him of normal strength.) Of course our few score saints planned an umukai (feast) and dance program in his honor, which he accepted graciously, but all his other activities were informal. (He was the first apostle to visit Rarotonga, and very probably is still the only one.) He stayed at the rented house in the “capital” (village) where missionaries Elder Trevor Hamon (New Zealander) and his wife (Canadian) lived. He spent some time with us discussing aspects of our work and of the fledgling church organization on the island. He advised my companion and me to go home when released, get an education, and prepare to come back as mission presidents if called (obviously that never happened). And of course he shared stories with us of his service as New Zealand mission president and of the church as it then existed in other Pacific islands. He made an impression on our members (including the blessing of a sick child) and on us missionaries as a very humble, gentle man of God.

 

(6) In about 1963 President Dallin Oaks came to our home one Saturday morning and said that Elder Boyd K. Packer had called him and asked if I could come see him. Of course I agreed and drove to his house in southeast Salt Lake City that afternoon. He was in work clothes, having been at work in his pleasant, large garden. We relaxed in garden chairs for our talk. His concern was about the Mexico City Temple then under construction. He showed me the design elements on the tower that the architect planned. He wanted to now if the vaguely serpentine figures, no doubt intended to be reminiscent of an “ancient” motif, might be interpreted in a negative, potentially embarrassing way. I examined them and gave the opinion that that result was unlikely but possible. (He acted on that concern, I believe, and the designs were not put on, as I recall.) 

 

He then asked me what I had been working on in relation to the Book of Mormon (of course I was always working on something). I quickly sketched my general view that the location of Nephite lands was Mesoamerica. He responded, “I think there may be something to that. The Church has been trying to do missionary work with tribes like the Goshutes in western Utah for generations, and we haven’t got anywhere with them. Yet we erect a tin-roofed little chapel in Guatemala, and the people practically beat the doors down to get in.” Elder Packer, like his fellows, was kind, considerate and humble.

 

(7) My relationship to Elder Jeffrey Holland goes back to when we worked together on a revision of the BYU general education program in the 1970s. He was then Dean of Religious Education, and I was one of the main figures on the General Education Committee. Both of us hoped for significant improvement in that curriculum, although the attempt succeeded only to a limited degree. As he moved on to President of BYU we were not often in close touch, but upon being called to the Quorum of the Twelve, he “inherited” in part the mantle of Elder Maxwell, along with Elder Dallin Oaks. Both of them share his special concern with Book of Mormon research. In a more general sense they evidently felt some stewardship over LDS “religious scholarship” as it came to be phrased. Elder Holland has kept current on my Book of Mormon research and has encouraged me in it in a number of letters. In a May 2007 letter he said to me,

 

Be sure to think of me as you continue your wonderful research and writing. I have loved you since I was a student (at BYU) and I will love you forever.

 

His most recent one (2014) reads in part,

 

We [he and Elder Oaks] both love you [and] admire you greatly …. John, may we take this opportunity to thank you again for a lifetime of devoted service and scholarship. You have been unique at BYU and unique in the larger Church in your archaeological and anthropological contribution related to the Book of Mormon … I have ,,, your marvelous Mormon’s Codex. What a contribution that is to all of us!

 

With warmest regards,

Jeff

 

(  I will add only a single instance of a relationship to one of the Presidency of the Seventy, Elder Oscar A. Kirkham, that is especially meaningful to me. In the summer of 1946, when I was just home from 39 months in the military, I chose to apply to go on a mission. In those days a visiting General Authority at quarterly stake conference interviewed applicants. Pres. Kirkham interviewed me on the occasion of a conference of the Smithfield Stake. I did not depart (for New Zealand) until late January 1947 because of lack of transportation. While at the Mission Home in Salt Lake City it was Elder Kirkham who set me apart as a missionary. Upon completion of the setting apart, when he removed his hands from my head, he said, “My, what a strong spirit you have.” I had not then, and have not since, heard such a phrase. I am still trying to understand the meaning of it.

Edited September 17, 2014 by cursor

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

One of the professors under whom I studied at UCLA was so uniquely thoughtful that he deserves a little memorial from me. He was one of a small group that I remember warmly. Harry Hoijer was one of the premier anthropological linguists in the world, but he was also an anthropologist in a wider sense.  (With Ralph Beals, another friendly type, he wrote an introductory anthro. textbook that was the leading seller during the 50s and 60s.) I had a linguistics course from Hoijer, probably in my second year, early 1957. I did well, and he knew me very specifically. When time came for the final, I was bed-ridden with a painful case of mumps. I had called the department secretary who was supposed to let him know that I could not be present. She failed to do so. Immediately after the scheduled test time he drove to my house to see why I had been absent. When he heard my situation, he was sympathetic and gave me a grade based on my work to that point. That prompt, sympathetic attention from a world-class scholar made a deep impression.

 

Another school story:  Ethnologist Bill Lessa was editor of the leading book of readings on comparative religion, so when he invited me, still a student, to talk (twice) to his large class about “the Mormons,” I felt rather validated as a budding anthropologist.

 

And one more: I missed out on one valuable aspect of graduate education. Because I was recipient of an NSF fellowship that secured me financially, I never was a teaching assistant like most other PhD candidates, so I never had access to the TAs’ joint office space and the bull sessions that went on there. I missed that socialization.

 

But here is the capper. For my final oral exam (in 1961 after turning in my dissertation; I was teaching at BYU by then), the questions were pro-forma. After they announced that I had passed and gave me congratulations, my new status was marked by Walter Goldschmidt, my committee chair, by inviting me into the faculty lavatory, which had theretofore been strictly off-limits! Then he sealed the deal by inviting me to lunch at the Faculty Club with him. Ah, the merits of ritual (especially to anthropologists).

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I had a few entrepreneurial notions in my student days at BYU. One that seemed to have possibilities was the idea of doing jigsaw puzzles for the LDS market (of course there could hardly be said to be such a market by 1951, let alone jigsaw puzzles to sell). I thought if I could find a hungry art student who could help me identify some pioneer/historical scenes, I might be able to figure out the production and sales end. So I visited Conan Matthews, chairman of the Art Department, where I asked if he knew any hungry, budding student artists who might cooperate with me. His reply was jaw-droppingly simple: “If that were a good idea, surely somebody would have thought of it and done it already.” In the face of such compelling logic, I quickly withdrew from his presence and never bothered to look elsewhere for an artist.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

While doing duty as a Social Science Librarian at the Y, employed for the 1958-59  school year in the old Heber J. Grant Library, it came to my attention and that of my office-mate, Victor Purdy, a historian, that Sterling McMurrin, the touted “Mormon intellectual”/philosophy professor at the  University of Utah, was slated to lecture on Blacks (the term was still ”Negroes” then) and the LDS Church at an African-American church in Salt Lake City one evening. We decided to attend. He was, it was well-known, alienated from the teachings of the Church at that point in time, although nominally still a member. But his treatment of the topic was largely historical and very interesting.

 

He maintained that the optimistic but basically fundamentalist Christianity of Mormonism was, or would be, of great interest to blacks in this country, especially after emancipation. He proposed that the effect of the (i.e., Brigham Young’s) black exclusion (from the priesthood) actually prevented the Church from becoming a black- majority nineteenth-century organization that would have kept it from reaching the white  American-European population. He did not, of course, see any “inspiration” in this matter, nevertheless he saw the outcome as very important for what the Church became.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

It would have been about 1954, when I was an instructor of archaeology at the Y, when I learned from Wilford Poulsen, an older psychologist on the faculty and local gadfly, that a group would be discussing the 1950 book by Hunter and Ferguson, Ancient America and the Book of Mormon, at the U. of U. He had the chutzpah to invite me (and someone else, I can’t recall whom). Quite obviously he expected that we would hear some things contrary to the book’s positive assertions. We went and found ourselves in a conference room at the U. With a score of people almost all unknown to us, with Sterling McMurrin prominent among them. (We heard later that they were known jocularly among themselves as the “cold-coffee Mormons.”)

 

A discussion was carried on by Charles Dibble, an anthropologist at the U. and a prominent Mesoamericanist concentrating on the Aztec historical traditions. It was immediately clear to me that his knowledge was substantially out of date and that he actually knew little about archaeology per se. He was not even aware of radiocarbon dating, a technique that was then about eight years old and results of which had been important to the Hunter/Ferguson argument by establishing some of the archaeological materials as at least a thousand years earlier than Dibble’s passé information held. (I had written an introductory article on the technical method three years earlier.) As the discussion opened up I took the occasion to point out, politely, that Dibble’s knowledge of chronology was not current and that as a result much of his critique of the book was not apt. (I could see that McMurrin, Dibble, and some of their vocal cohorts were wondering who this upstart young guy was.) Nobody had anything substantive to say to counter my comments. The upshot was that the impression left about the book was probably more confused and less negative than had been anticipated.  (I never did know Dibble personally, although he was clearly a major scholar in his field of expertise.)

 

After the event, in the rest room, I first met Leonard Arrington, who had come down from Logan for the event. He was interested in where I was coming from, and we became friends.

Edited September 17, 2014 by cursor

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

During my stint at Defense (General) Research, I became a regular reader of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in particular to search its wide-ranging reportage for materials on nationalist and guerrilla activities world-wide that I was studying then. Back in Provo I subscribed to receive my personal copy. (The cross-word puzzles were a favorite feature that Kathryn and I worked together.) That readership continued for another 25 years. After a lapse then of a few years, and the conversion of the Monitor to a weekly magazine, I re-subscribed, now running to the 40th year. It continues to be a mainstay of my look at the state of the world. I have said several times, and still mean it, that the education I have received by reading the Monitor for all those years was at least the equal of all the post-graduate education I ever had, including the Ph.D. (Unfortunately nowadays it lacks the beloved cross-word puzzles!)

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

During my time attending UCLA I wanted some additional income beyond what my NSF fellowship provided, although my available work time was limited. My bishop, businessman Ed Perkins (bless his soul) told me about an enterprise called the Minister’s Research Foundation that he and most of the other bishops in the Santa Monica Stake participated in financially. It had been organized by a Mormon, Benjamin Summerhays, originally from Salt Lake, to  provide (“a missionary”) contact with Christian ministers who subscribed to its service which was to provide sermon materials. I came up with weekly “stuff” that was mailed monthly and that was unobjectionably “Christian” (but how to put any Mormon slant on it as per the plan?) Once I mentioned this deal to a fellow graduate student in anthropology, with some skepticism, whereupon she said, “I used to work as a secretary for that outfit. There was something that didn’t feel right about it, so I quit.” I recalled her statement soon after when my paychecks began to be late, Finally it came out that Summerhays had gone off to Europe with his secretary (and the foundation’s “endowment” money). He was eventually brought to court with ugly publicity for the Church in the L.A. papers and embarrassment for the duped bishops.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

My tenure at General Research was in some ways disappointing. The pay was great, but the work schedule was rather nerve-wracking, and, sometimes it seemed worst of all, I missed teaching. So I arranged to teach an extension evening class (“The American Culture”) for the Santa Barbara school district in hopes that I would gain back some of that feeling I missed. I was appropriately credentialed on the basis of my record at BYU. I had about a dozen students enroll. The experience was not exactly disappointing; it had its good moments. Yet it turned out to be more of an added burden in my busy schedule than I had anticipated.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

Several times I was asked to consult on Book of Mormon film projects. I gained little satisfaction from any of them (and no dollars). I still have a computer file containing extended comments I made on proposed scripts, but rarely, as I recall, did my critiques (made from a cultural point of view) have any impact (that I am aware of) on the producers.  Well, maybe some because only one out of four possibles were carried to actual filming. A couple were private ventures that, thank goodness, never made it. One was a Church film made for seminary supplementary instruction that turned out not as bad as it might have done.

 

In general the problem was the imposition of “hollywoodism” on the planning. According to that thinking there had to be both “romance” and derring-do or viewers would not pay any attention. Of course actually there was little romance in the lives of the ancients and life generally was far more pedestrian than movie producers insisted on.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

My experience with the attempted revision of the general education at BYU in the 70s had some interesting moments to report. In general the idea was a good one. Instead of a small number of traditional courses that counted for general education credit and that all must take, the attempt was to provide a more carefully thought out and dynamic set of standards, including the ability to “test out” of some of them. Prime movers in the thinking about the revision process were Dean Terry Warner of the General College, a philosopher, British educated Arthur Henry  King, a noted English professor, Marion Bentley, a theater man, and me, with various others including a sizable group of faculty “on the committee.” We worked well together and agreed on a general scheme that emphasized teaching the ability to think and critique rather than a fixed body of “fact.” Selling it to the faculty in general was a difficult matter. Those departments who controlled, and had the advantage of, large enrollment classes (i.e., power) were not happy with giving up their advantage.

 

I was not in on the last gasp of the process but it did not turn out as we idealistically hoped. All kinds of compromises were required to reach “consensus.” At one point there was talk of forming a College of General Education, and my name was put forward to be its dean. Robert Thomas, the academic vice president vetoed that, saying, “John does not welcome fools gladly.” I took that as more a back-handed compliment than a slam. 

 

Among the real benefits to me of the process of thinking through a potential revision was to become acquainted with similar attempts around the country at other colleges.  I visited several interesting programs with Warner, especially Evergreen State in Washington and St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul. And I had the privilege of association closely with Dr. King, a clear thinker and excellent teacher, even sharing an office with him.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

In 1946 prospective missionaries were interviewed by whatever Church general authority came to the next quarterly stake conference (and one always did). I was interviewed by Elder Oscar A. Kirkham, one of the Presidents of the Seventy. In the course of it he asked where if anywhere I would like to go (not that my preference would necessarily make a difference). In my mind I thought (for no particular reason), well, maybe Australia or New Zealand, but I did not feel strongly enough about it to say so.  Then he said, “Well, with a name like Sorenson, you’ll probably be sent to Sweden or Denmark.” Whatever … I thought. When my call arrived, it was to New Zealand.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I was a Seventy in the Melchizedek Priesthood for 28 years. The office of Seventy was supposed to be concerned with promoting missionary work, and I asked to be ordained a Seventy at the time of my mission call. But it was never clear how that office was to be translated into action. Mostly we worked at projects to raise money for the ward missionary fund, yet it was never clear that raising a field of potatoes, or cutting and selling Christmas trees, or selling flags for home display, were particularly productive ideas. I did serve a term of four or five years as one of the seven presidents of the Seventies quorum in the Springville Stake.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

During my mission I felt impelled to master the native (“maori”) language of Rarotonga as well as I could. No language-learning materials existed, only the Bible translated many years earlier by Christian missionaries. I made relatively rapid progress, remarkably so in the eyes of the people who had never before seen a person of European ancestry actually become more or less fluent in the tongue. With the help of our more English-literate members (English was taught in the schools but not very effectively; the day-to-day language in use was strictly {Rarotongan}Maori) I first translated the sacrament prayers from English, then progressively we got out some items in the language that would help members in teaching gospel classes. Eventually we put out a few issues of a duplicated little “newspaper” that our members were delighted with; at last they had something to “study” at home. Progressively came the translation of two more ambitious “tracts,” Joseph Smith’s Own Story and The Plan of Salvation. Translation of the Book of Mormon had only got started by the time I left.

 

I decided to prepare a “grammar” for the use of new missionaries. I didn’t know anything about grammar, but I managed to borrow an old English grammar book from a Tahitian member of the Church that we had run across who was “living with” an old (Scandinavian) captain of a local sailing ship (he had a small library of older books). Using that as an out-of-date model I worked up a manuscript of about 30 pages that had in it statements about regularities and examples of everything I had learned about the language (I still have the original). When I got home (to Provo) I typed that document up and sent a copy back, where it was duplicated by the mission office. It was used to teach missionaries the language for at least the next 30 years.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

Bonneville Research Corporation emerged from my desire (which may almost have come across as a threat) to leave General Research to return to the life of a professor at BYU. After five years at Santa Barbara I lusted after the quieter life style and more relaxed schedule of an academic. I discussed my concern several times with Ben Alexander, who called most of the shots at GRC. I was their primary social scientist and they did not want to lose me, so a deal was struck. I would move to Provo where I would form a new subsidiary of the company with the specific intent to carry on their social science research from there. It was not a great solution but at least it put me adjacent to the university where I could use faculty as part-time employees depending on what contracts I could get. Business operations of Bonneville would be carried on by the main company in Santa Barbara. I didn’t get much relaxation in my schedule as a result of this arrangement, but the change seemed worthwhile. I retained my (relatively high) salary. For two years, from early Fall 1969, I carried on that way.

 

Our big contract came about by responding to a Request-for-Proposal published in the Commerce Department weekly. It called for re-doing the instruction in both Japanese and Korean for the Army Language School in Monterey, California. I cornered the services of Robert Blair (part-time), the first genuine linguistics professor at BYU. (I had corresponded with him while he was in grad school at Indiana U. and had facilitated his successful job application at the Y in English; Indiana was the university I had applied to to study linguistic anthropology several years earlier but they failed to act on my application). I also secured the services of Ernest Wilkins (full-time), a Spanish professor just released as head (and initiator) of the Language Training Mission (predecessor of the MTC). The two of them picked up a sizable staff of Japanese- and Korean-speaking personnel for the proposal. As I recall, the contract amount was about $250,000 over two years, a very hefty amount in those days. The work was very demanding as they proposed some new instructional methods, and pushing the crew to produce the final report on time was very stressful. 

 

I continued to propose on new contracts, but only a few minor projects came about. Eventually, since the office (downtown on north University Avenue) was operating on company overhead funds, GRC decided that we had to shut down. At that point I was fortunate to be invited by Dean Martin Hickman of the BYU College of Family, Home and Social Sciences, who was a member of the board of Bonneville Research and my good friend, to take a position in his office as a research coordinator, to try to spur and aid his faculty to propose and obtain new external research grants. That went on for two years before he gave me other assignments. The effort was not very successful. Many faculty had been reporting doing many hours of “research” that turned out on close examination to be mostly day-dreaming with little hope of obtaining grants.

 

Bonneville was the first off-campus firm or foundation to function in Provo. Unfortunately the naïve attitude of the administration people seemed to be, “You are taking the time, skills and ideas of our faculty and using them for your profit.” In fact nobody on the (social science) faculty was doing anything significant to bring in those research dollars that the administrators thought the school “deserved” to be getting.

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John L. Sorenson wrote:

 

I have been engaged for at least 35 years with a very interesting coterie of scholars known as “diffusionists.” They are more or less unified by a belief that pre-Columbian cultures in the New World were affected significantly by voyages across the intervening oceans from the ancient Old World. However they include a segment of the “schholarly” community who may well be called kooks. The overwhelming majority of scholars—historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers—believe to the contrary that no important contacts were made by such means aand thus that cultures in the two hemispheres developed independently. The diffusionists have always been such a small group that they have often felt scorned and even oppressed by the majority and have reacted negatively.

 

I felt a predisposition to the diffusionist position upon coming into the study of archaeology. Of course thoughtful Book of Mormon believers would agree, on the basis that the Jaredites, Lehites and Mulekites are pictured as originating from small parties of sailors from the Near Easter. Missionaries in Polynesia (for me New Zealand and the Cook Islands) were also predisposed to a Mormon tradition that claimed that voyages from America had settled in the islands. I never imbibed that notion as such, but Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki raft made its way from Peru to French Polynesia while was a missionary, and as a former ham radio operator, I made brief contact with a New Zealander operating his rig from Rarotonga and participated one evening with him as he contacted the raft’s operator during the voyage.

 

Obviously archaeology at BYU, when I entered the program, was in the diffusionist camp. For my M.A. thesis (1952) I wrote on “Evidences of Culture Contacts between Polynesia and the Americas in Pre-Columbian Times.” It was very substantive, without duplicating Heyerdahl’s material, little of which had been published by then. I did not particularly pursue a diffusionist bent for a number of years, but from the late 1970s I began to make contact with the leading figures in that minority movement,  particularly three capable geographers, George Carter at Texas A&M, Carl Johannessen at Oregon, Steve Jett at U. Cal.-Davis, and anthropologist David Kelley (we had corresponded at length since he was a student at Harvard in the 50s, when I had sent him a copy of my thesis), of the Univ. of Calgary. Eventually I proposed starting a sympathetic peer-reviewed journal, which Jett succeeded in doing (Pre-Columbiana: A Journal of Long Distance Contacts).

 

Around 1988 I undertook a major project (assisted by Martin Raish, a BYU librarian and pre-Columbian art history specialist) that resulted in Pre-Columbian Contact with America across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography. 2 vols. First ed.  (Provo:  Research Press). (Second, revised ed., 1996). In around 1200 pages, we summarized both the diffusionist and anti-diffusionist content of over 5,000 pieces of literature. This became a fundamental research tool for all serious research on the topic thereafter. In further features (“Bibliographia Pre-Columbiana”) published in issues of the journal Pre-Columbiana between 1998 and 2004, I supplemented the bibliography with several hundred more listings. Unfortunately that masterwork remained largely unknown to, and had little affect on the view of, conventional (“independent inventionist”) scholars. Because the bibliography had had little effect, around 1999 I began work on a paper intended to present “hard” data that showed that numerous species of  plants had been shared by both hemispheres before Columbus. Such organisms could not, of course, have been “independently invented” but must have been conveyed by voyagers.

 

In 2000 I was invited by Victor Mair, professor of Chinese Civilization at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, to present a paper on botanical evidence for contact between the Old and New Worlds at a broad conference on long-distance contacts. It seemed prudent for me to collaborate with a non-Mormon scholar in order to fend off any charge of bias. I invited Carl Johannessen, an indefatigable plant geographer from the Univ. of Oregon to join me in the project. Most of the spadework in the literature I did, but he added an important dimension because of his extensive fieldwork in South Asia in tracking down plants of American origin. At the conference at Penn in 2001 we presented our case using data on some 35 species of plants and more than a dozen species of disease-causing organisms. By 2004 our inventories had expanded significantly when we published our interim results in Mair’s Sino-Platonic Papers series on the Internet. In 2006 a volume of papers given at the 2001 conference, including ours, was published by the University of Hawai’i Press (Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World, ed. by Mair). Our revised paper in that book had grown to treat over 90 species of flora and fauna shared across the ocean. Johannessen subsequently published our still fuller data as a jointly authored book entitled World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009; revised and expanded edition by Johannnessen himself, for sale on Amazon, 2013) The latest version treats 100 plant species for which there is decisive evidence of presence in both hemispheres (plus scores more species for which there is partial evidence). Moreover 22 species of disease-causing organisms and seven species of other fauna are now decisively evidenced (plus scores of other partially documented species in those categories). Despite this overwhelming evidence most orthodox scientists are reluctant to grant the strength of our case; rather they seem to hope that it will all go away if they succeed in ignoring it.

 

In early 2010 I felt challenged to make another attempt to have an impact on the scholarly world in relation to the subject of transoceanic voyaging to America. It had become clear that the book I had produced with Johannessen, while very good in itself, would not get reviewed in professional journals in order to claim the influence it might have had. Carl was struggling to write a more popular version of our material, and I questioned whether he would get the job done, so I decided I would try a parallel thing. By November I had written a 150-page work, Transoceanic Voyaging: How Ancient America Became Civilized. I consider the prospect so slim that I would find a conventional publisher that I have not attempted to do so. I intend to have my son Curtis make it available as an ebook on Amazon when he get around to it.

Johannessen continues to give papers in professional venues to try to change the paradigm. I am tired of the impasse.