25 years ago today - Oct 6, 1995

[Paul Dunn]

Here I am a you buck coming into the system and the circulation is "lets excommunicacte the Sterling McMurrins of the church and weed out the liberals" that got throuwn around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn't been for President McKay, we'd have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There's one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn't a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn't a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open.

The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. i watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was the element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn't teach what they taught. I've found in the Church and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that "if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you'd better take action on me, too."

[Paul Dunn Interview in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, by Greg Prince, p. 44-45, footnote 15]

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please Enter your Comment: