Without Contracted Feelings
by Davis Bitton

When purveyors of hate seem to fill the news–people who, if they could, would exterminate Christians just because they are Christians, Jews just because they are Jews, Mormons just because they are Mormons, Americans just because they are Americans, and so on–I find it calming to think about some sterling individuals who have crossed my path.

When pursuing a doctorate, I became well acquainted with a Presbyterian professor named E. Harris Harbison.   Affectionately known as “Jinx,” Harbison was the embodiment of the Christian gentleman, always kind, polite, concerned, helpful.  Even then, it was unusual in academic circles to be an avowed believer.  Harbison was known by some of his colleagues as “the departmental Christian.”  But his fairness and his adherence to the strictest standards of scholarship were such that he was universally respected.  He became chairman of my advisory committee and taught me in individual tutorials.

This Presbyterian showed great interest in the graduate student from Idaho who had served a Mormon mission in France.  By guided reading and kindly discussion he changed my thinking on John Calvin.  On the now unfashionable assumption that students should understand the beliefs of religious people, both Catholic and Protestant, he introduced his Reformation students to Reinhold Neibuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man.  I was being stretched.   I was enlarging my horizons.  But he showed nothing but respect for my own beliefs.  When I experienced some momentary turbulence in my personal life, he said,  “Davis, I know you have spiritual resources you can draw upon.  Stay close to them.”

As a new professor at the University of Texas at Austin, I was assigned a teaching assistant who was an Episcopalian.  Having pictured Episcopalians as reserved, perhaps stodgy, I was surprised to find in Bill a young man full of faith and a desire to live a good life.  For him belief in Christ was nothing if it failed to produce a disciple committed to serving others.  Both individually and through his church organization, he was constantly engaged in doing something.  In our conversations we never argued.  He asked questions and I asked questions.  I hope he learned to appreciate the huge amount of good done by Latter-day Saints.  I know my appreciation for another faith was enlarged.

I have had a series of interactions with Roman Catholics.  I remember a Franciscan priest  who accepted my invitation to be a guest lecturer in a Reformation class at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Kind, intelligent, anxious to help students understand, he openly expressed some of his frustrations with his own church, not in a spirit of disloyalty but with an attitude of “Here are some things we need to work on.”  When a student asked him to explain the doctrine of transubstantiation, he extended his hands and said, “Who understands that?  I don’t.”  But we all recognized a good man who had dedicated his life to accomplishing good.

More recently it was my privilege to be host of a visiting Catholic scholar, a Benedictine, who gave lectures on science and religion.  Having read most of his profound works on this subject, I was honored to become personally acquainted with him.  At the university he acquitted himself well in presenting his ideas and responding to questions.

Then with some time to kill, I asked him if there was anything else in Salt Lake City he would like to see.  “Oh,” he said, “I would just love to see Temple Square.  Do you think that would be possible?”  So off we went, and the two of us strolled the grounds, listened to the sister missionaries, and stood silently before the imposing Christus statue.  It turned out that he was more than a little interested in Mormonism, having read about it and having listened to missionaries at his home in New Jersey.  Committed to his own faith, he also had the capacity to appreciate Mormonism and its fruits.

Just a few days ago I attended a meeting in the historic Salt Lake Tabernacle.  The Ensign and Emigration stakes invited neighboring Catholic, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian churches to participate in a Community Celebration of Faith.  Talks were given by each of the three ministers, and a concluding comment was made by Elder Bruce Porter, of the Seventy.  All four speakers maintained a tone of warm cordiality.

Prior to each talk a choir performed.  I hope the organists of these other congregations enjoyed playing one of the world’s great pipe organs.

Of course, as we all know, there are differences between these faith traditions.  But this was a time to express good will, a time to recognize we can do much in working together as children of the same God, a time to affirm a common devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.  As these neighbors sang “Happy Birthday,” a surprise tribute to the Ensign Stake on its one hundredth anniversary, I felt a warm affection.  Those in the four choirs, whose voices joined in singing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and, at the end, Handel’s “Hallelujah, Amen,” said they felt the same.  These were not enemies but friends.

I think we were responding to the counsel of President Gordon B. Hinckley given at general conference in April 2004.  “We can never compromise the doctrine which has come through revelation,” he said, “but we can live and work with others, respecting their beliefs and admiring their virtues, joining hands in opposition to the sophistries, the quarrels, the hatred–those perils which have been with man from the beginning.  Without surrendering any element of our doctrine we can be neighborly, we can be helpful, we can be kind and generous.”  And again:  “May we reach out to those about us in friendship and respect.”

In 1842 the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “While one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the Great Parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard.  He views them as His offspring, and without any of those contracted feelings that influence the children of men causes ‘His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’” As we recognize, the Prophet was quoting Matthew 5:45.           

Thinking of that beneficent sun, shining down on all, enjoy with me a description by Claude T. Barnes, a Utah naturalist writing three quarters of a century ago and more.  Barnes, you will notice, loved and appreciated colors.

“Just after sundown the eastern sky is painted with clouds of safrano pink interspersed with others of pale green blue gray; and as the moon arises, like a translucent ball of illuminated silver, it is set before a background of vinaceous gray.  Overhead the heavens are campanula blue, clear and incomprehensible; but the western horizon is suffused with primrose yellow and purplish opaline.

“Gradually all of the vinaceous hues fade out of the East; and the West, cloudless though  it be, becomes golden, then orange chrome, then scarlet, which last brilliant coloring lingers until the stars of night shine bright and clear.”