I’ve been devoting the vast majority of my time to the dissertation, and haven’t posted much. But here’s a fun little tidbit.
Oftentimes in the archive, something grabs your attention. And as you acquire more and more of these things that have grabbed, you start making connections between them.
Edwin S. Hinckley was a BYU science professor at the turn of the 19th century, back when BYU was very small. He was also the favorite uncle of a young boy named Gordon B. Hinckley.
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By Brigham Young University – https://archive.org/stream/banyan1911brig#page/n0/mode/1up, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49435096
Edwin used to bring him interesting rocks, and triggered an interest in geology. (Gordon would later fondly recall his two college courses in geology under Frederick Pack, who was influential on the First Presidency’s approach to scientific questions.) After receiving a degree in geology at the University of Michigan, Hinckley began teaching at BYU. In 1903, one of his courses was “Geological Biology,” which focused on “a study of fossil forms, their life-history, and the evolution of our earth and its organisms.” He assigned a pro-evolution theistic textbook.
When Edwin died in 1929, BH Roberts spoke at his funeral. Elder Stephen L. Richards sent a telegram.
What first caught my eye when I saw this below was not Edwin Hinckley; I had no idea who he was yet or the role he played in President Hinckley’s life and intellectual formation.
Rather, it was the crosses decorating the “Expression of Condolence from the Presidency and High Council of the Utah Stake of Zion to Sister Addie Hinckley and Family”!
As I recall— I did not take pictures of this in the archive, shame on me— this was accompanied by a plaque, and all wrapped in a small purple velvet bag with a large white cross sewn on it.
Those who are familiar with their LDS history know that LDS usage of the cross was not uncommon, until the 1950s. President McKay thought it too Catholic in some ways. This has been documented first by Michael Reed, Banishing the Cross: the Emergence of a Mormon Taboo (his MA thesis, iirc), but more recently by John Hilton III, a BYU professor.
Here, in a devotional.
Here in a podcast interview.
And in his book, Considering the Cross: How Calvary Connects us with Christ.
Fun connections out of the archives.
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March 5, 2023 at 6:23 pm
In the 1940s our family attended the old LDS church in Montreal which had a white cross in the front. The building had been purchased from another religion. The cross could not be removed as it was in stone embedded in the brickwork. I believe Pres Grant personally approved the purchase.
March 7, 2023 at 6:18 pm
I wish we would stop going out of our way to minimize and avoid the cross. Without it there’s no resurrection, no nothing. If it’s making one uncomfortable, that’s kind of the point.