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Obert C. Tanner’s 1955 Sunday School manual is absolutely amazing, written back when the Church contracted trusted intellectuals to pull together Church materials. And while these manuals spoke for the Church they retained their author’s signature. It is the gospel
applied. 45 chapters, each describing a virtue (like sincerity, steadfastness, honesty, love, etc), and each virtue is magnified through four lenses: Christ’s life, the scriptures, literature, and the words of modern prophets. This is what the gospel is for. This is why we go to church, get baptized and keep going. Scripture, modern prophecy, literature all exist as tools to make us better. We get so lost sometimes on whether or not something is true, we can forget its purpose. This book nails it. Smart, brilliant, pragmatic, faithful but nuanced – we should all own this. Hi Jordon Yup, I agree with you. I was converted to the Church in 1969 and somehow ended up with a copy of that manual (maybe I stole it from my wife’s Dad since they have been members forever) but I sometimes pull it out and long for “the good old days”. Lowell Benion is supposed to have written a number of manuals, I have never seen any of them but expect they would be in the same league. I will be ranting about the current Gospel Doctrine manual in a new post I am going to start this afternoon (after I calm down enough to actually write sensibly) but the essence is that you simply can’t get that creative if a committee writes the book.
Thanks for the memory.
Sounds brilliant! Maybe you could share a teensy weensy excerpt. *bats eyelashes* Thanks for the book suggestion! I will need to go check it out! Sounds like something that would be “virtuous, uplifting, and of good report”. Started a thread in Spiritual Stuff with the same quote at http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=744 Comes from his chapter titled ‘Sincerity.’
“The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would offer this suggestion: Start where you are. What do you believe? Start with that and take it as far as you can down life’s highway. Another truth will meet you at nearly every bend in the road. God has never intended that an honest mind should be humiliated or made unwelcome in the Church by any other member because of honest inquiry. Above all, keep the virtues of integrity, sincerity, and genuineness. Nothing else can be right in a man’s life if he is not sincere.”
The whole book glows with awesomeness.
Seriously…..
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