1361: J Reuben Clark, Boyd Packer, and The Charted Course of the Church in Education
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As part 3 in my interview with groundbreaking Mormon journalist Lynn Packer (nephew of Boyd K. Packer), I want to share with you a fascinating 30 minute video produced by Lynn, which provides essential background information to understand the following:
- The evolution of the LDS Church away from valuing thought, science, and scholarship (based on the influence of GA B.H. Roberts and others), and towards the prioritization of emotion-based orthodoxy and fundamentalism (based on the influence of J. Rueben Clark, Harold B. Lee, Joseph Fielding Smith, etc.)
- The careers of both LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer and GA Paul H. Dunn, And,
- The eventual backlash against science and scholarship led by Boyd K. Packer from the 1980s through today, which led to the intentional hiding of factual LDS Church history, and the punishment of scholars and thinkers (from the September 6 to modern excommunicants like myself).
This 30 minute video will provide important background for the subsequent 3 episodes with Lynn.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Lynn Packer. This slideshow presentation is a supplement to my book, |
| 0:04.5 | Lying for the Lord the Paul H. Dunn Stories. Dunn began his career as a |
| 0:09.7 | CES instructor that is in the Church Education System at a time in the 1950s when |
| 0:15.3 | that system was torn between whether to educate or indoctrinate. |
| 0:20.8 | The key year was 1954. It was a pivotal time a time when top church leaders were |
| 0:26.6 | finally able to chart a clearly defined course. What was going on in 1954? |
| 0:34.3 | Was a year after the Korean War ended. The French at the same time locked in Vietnam |
| 0:40.0 | and the United States became engaged there. Senator Joe McCarthy, who was looking for |
| 0:45.8 | communists everywhere, including in Congress, was censured. There was the very |
| 0:53.8 | important Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that integrated |
| 0:58.8 | the school system. The 1955 Chevrolet was introduced. It was the first year that |
| 1:04.6 | air conditioning was optional for that car. That V8 engine, the design of that engine, |
| 1:10.0 | persists today in the Corvette. Perry Como and Doris Day topped the music charts, |
| 1:16.4 | the top movies where rear window and white Christmas. There were mass vaccinations for polio |
| 1:23.7 | that began. People might, you can remember having friends and acquaintances who |
| 1:28.8 | spent time in iron lungs. In 1954 with Mormonism, there was no set direction for learning |
| 1:38.3 | and teaching history. The church was vacillating. On one hand and in one direction, it was |
| 1:45.2 | promoting critical thinking in the education system. As opposed to praying, it was a time's |
| 1:54.4 | reason based and other times faith based. The scientific proof by study that was taught |
| 2:03.5 | by some and or testimony by revelation. It was modernism versus fundamentalism and those were |
| 2:12.3 | terms that were used back then. Progressive LDS leaders had been losing the liberal education |
| 2:19.1 | fight. These are some of them. As an example, BH Roberts, who was an apostle, |
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