Part XI of the Sunstone Classics series. 

Eugene Elbert Peck was a longtime editor of Sunstone. This is excerpted from an article published in 1986. It starts on page 4 of issue 56. 

The car wasn’t out of the Salt Lake airport when Peggy Fletcher turned to me and announced, “Elbert, I’m getting married and moving to Africa. I think you should come back to Sunstone and be the next editor.” Unexpectedly, my simple symposium excursion inaugurated a career decision which would take nine months of petitions and refusals before I saw the sunlight. But at that time, speeding along North Temple Street, my mind excited at the possibilities, my spirit feared burnout, and my body felt exhaustion. And, since I blissfully enjoyed my Washington, D.C. life and service as an elders quorum president, attempted and flattered, but confident, “no” was my quick and easy reply. After all, I had already done the Mormon publications scene and, for all its glories, had little desire to dive into the exhilarating yet treacherous river of deadlines, personalities, and notoriety. Joseph Smith may have wanted to tread deep waters; but, with these rapids, once capsized, twice cautious.

As co-founder and first editor of the late BYU independent student newspaper the Seventh East Press, in my inaugural editorial I appropriated the simplistic reason Orson Welles gave Charles Foster Kane for starting a newspaper: “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” Like Kane’s, my impulsive endeavor has a mixed legacy. On one hand, it was a shining moment of student intellectual activism confronting issues and events. On the other, some of its naive and unprofessional boldness gave painful offense, alienated initial well-wishers and added to the increasing polarization at BYU and in the larger LDS community. Decreasing the one thing I wanted to increase: bridge building dialogue. Regretfully, perhaps as much heat was added to the Grand Conversation as light.

So, this time, with much less bravado, I cautiously begin the editorship of another intellectual and “controversial” periodical by borrowing a Robert Frost quote that integrates fun with purpose to describe my reasons:

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal sakes,

Is the deed ever really done,

Far heaven and the future’s sakes.

Because of the impact Sunstone may have on its readers’ mortal work, for heaven’s sake they deserve to know how the editor views the Church and what his agenda is for the magazine. (This may also reduce the inevitable reading of omens into each item printed, even for issues in which I had little or no input, like this one.)

Like most Sunstone readers, I am acquainted with the disillusionment that comes from discovering that things are not as I was taught and believed; with the despair from realizing that nothing in heaven functions as it ought; and with the cynicism from concluding that things may never change. I have responded with outrage and indifference, apologetics and avoidance, love and hate. I have screamed “a plague on both your houses” upon finding that the “liberal” reformers are polluted by the very vices they decry—malicious gossip, presumptuous judging, blinding pride, arrogant intolerance, and unforgiving memories. I’ve agonized when the schisms between groups and individuals demanded me to take sides, dividing loves and thoughts when my heart and mind yearned to be one. Lastly, of course, I have frightened in introspective moments upon seeing a spiritual darkness growing in my own soul and wept, remembering my lighthearted days when scriptures were revelations; prayers answered; truths simple and sure; prophets omniscient; and sins forgiven.

In one such moment I returned home. Home to what I still knew was true: To a mortal yet divine church; to a believing community essential for spiritual growth; and to communion with a loving God. Still, I was not the same person I was before I left the Garden.

I now believe fewer things than I did before, but in what I believe, I am more certain. Because I feel and see God work through this church I don’t ask, “Does this mean the Church isn’t true?” but rather, “What does this tell me about how God deals with men and his church?” The answers, however ambiguous, help me understand and constructively act within the Church with charity and without impatient outrage. Although my religious thinking is primarily utilitarian—how to build the kingdom—it is complemented by a compulsive mystical quest for holiness, unity, and knowledge of God, which demands an intellectual speculation that produces rough and tentative conclusions that are less important than the ponderings themselves.

If I’m tentative about dogma, I’m passionate about establishing Zion: which cause combines all my diverse attributes into one; which cause draws me to Sunstone in search of intellectual and spiritual understanding and also for community; which cause saddens me when I see the wranglings, posturings, rages, and schisms of many in the LDS intellectual community.

In summary, using Elder Packer’s model, I am a “therefore” Mormon intellectual instead of a “however” one: I celebrate the Restoration, therefore I seek, search, ponder, and probe to discover its implications; and I serve, teach, discuss, bridge, and cultivate charity to effect its implementations. I want my life to supply bonding light and not contentious heat.