Yesterday morning, after I had stopped at her desk to show her an interesting bit of history I was working on, one of the senior missionaries at the Church History Library wanted to have a show-and-tell of her own. She picked up an older book she had recently bought at DI and pulled out a piece of paper she had found folded in the pages of the book. It was a typed, then mimeographed page with the following text. (Some of you are going to recognize it almost immediately; I did not.)
Honolulu, February 8, 1944 (by United Press)
Some folks say that the day of miracles has passed. Some people say that things such as this just don’t happen, yet here’s a story which will leave you breathless and wondering – for it concerns two inconspicuous boys of the United States Marine Corps and the battle for the Marshall Islands.
The time was just before dawn when the great gray hulks which were battleships lay against the cool horizon of the blue Pacific. Aboard those ships the boys were anxiously awaiting the first signal which would announce the start of the drive to take one of the greatest of Japanese bases, Kwajulane atol. Nearer inshore, yet other boats lay in the silence of the dawn — smaller boats containing the United States Marines. Where the duties of the man aboard the big ships would require the rather remote but strenuous work of bombardment, it was the men on the smaller boats inshore who must wade through the final stretch of water and brave the withering fire of murderous Japanese machine guns. Slowly the minutes ticked by into what seemed hours. Actually the time was twenty minutes to six, when the final word came. From over the horizon tons of shells began pouring into the Jap positions from the big ships off shore. It seemed that all hell broke loose, for the Kwajulane began to heave and surge with a convulsive shock of death. A star-flare lit the sky and the smaller boats began pouring out the men who were destined to take the island. From far above, barely audible at first, then building into a roaring crescendo, allied dive bombers dove toward that small patch of earth, its bombs tearing great holes in the ground and blowing adjacent buildings to bits. And slowly toward shore, then men of the United States Marines edged closer and closer. In a moment, they would be sighted by the Japanese. In a moment bullets would begin splattering around them, from pill-boxes skillfully hidden on the beach but on they came — and soon the battle was joined by the men whose glory is destined to be written in the annals of history. The splatter of machine guns soon lay a death pattern on the men wading toward shore. Here and there they went down, some wounded, some dead – and it is about two of those wounded that we speak at the moment. The battle went on, and the men of the Marine Corps, despite the wounds and death of their comrades, went in.
Being a war correspondent, my boat was going in behind the first line of men, and we came upon these two wounded Marines in the water. One, from the stain of red around him we could tell, was wounded badly; the other, wounded too, was holding the other’s head above water. We picked them up, midst a hail of shots from shore, then pulled back toward safer retreat to render first aid. The one seemed too far gone to need much help, but the other refused aid until his wounded buddy was attended. But our help seemed insufficient, as we soon realized, and we announced our decision to his comrade. Then it happened.
This young man, the better of the two, bronzed by the tropical sun, clean as a shark’s tooth in the South Seas, slowly got to his knees. His one arm was nearly gone, but with the other he lifted the head of his unconscious pal into his lap, placed his good hand on the other’s pale brow and uttered what to us seemed to be incredible words – words which to this moment are emblazoned in unforgettable letters across the doorway of my memory: “In the Name of Jesus Christ, and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood which I hold, I command you to remain alive until the necessary help can be obtained to secure the preservation of your life.”
Today, the three of us are here in Honolulu and he is still alive. In fact we walked down the beach together, as we convalesce. He is the wonder of the medical unit, for – they say – he should be dead. Why he isn’t, they don’t know – but we do, for we were there, off the shores of Kwajulane.
Interesting story, I immediately thought, as I quickly skimmed it. Might make a good Keepa post (I’m always on the lookout for Keepa posts).
The sister missionary had been moved by it, too, and wanted to know more about the story. With its Honolulu dateline and “(United Press)” attribution, I told her that I would check an enormous newspaper database I have access to, with tens of millions of images. “UP stories were syndicated and widely distributed, so I should be able to find this in many newspapers,” I told her. “I won’t be able to tell which one your copy was typed from, but if there is anything more to be found, that’s the place to start.”
Honestly, I expected to be able very quickly to identify the two young Mormon Marines, even though they were not named in the newspaper. Either or both of the young men must have spoken or written about their experiences, or someone in their extended family had – I should be able to find their names in whatever Church News or Improvement Era article had been written about it from the Mormon point of view.
It didn’t take more than five minutes to become seriously concerned about this story. I could find no trace of it in the newspaper database, no matter what distinctive phrase I used as a search term. Using keywords instead of exact phrases didn’t help – not even when I realized that (duh) “Kwajulane” should be “Kwajalein.”
Next, I turned to plain old Google – never mind the newspapers; some blogger or Sunday School teacher will have used this story in a post.
Some blogger had. I jumped when Keepapitchinin showed up early in the search results! Clicking on that link took me to a post from several years ago when I was matching up current Sunday School lessons with lessons from old manuals showing how we had taught the same general lesson in the past. A 1966 priesthood lesson manual had included part of this article – although I still didn’t remember the story even after having typed it.
Back to the Google search results. I found a handful of hits that were obviously some version of this story, and every last one of them – from a 1962 Instructor article to President Monson’s April 2012 Conference address — was a Mormon source. I could find no use of it in other sources – no compilation of wartime stories, no use by a general Christian source that didn’t recognize the Mormon elements, nothing.
No syndicated story in the entire newspaper database. No use of the story outside Mormon circles. No identification of the Marines involved in any easily searched Mormon source. Check, check, and check. There is a serious problem with this story; it is not what it seems to be. Time to figure out what is going on.
It didn’t take long to assemble photocopies of all the versions found in Google; some of those versions had citations to still others. If I count them correctly, I have nine versions, typed in full and posted here if you care to go through them later.
I noticed an odd detail: Several of these published sources, even one published as recently as 2013 and so presumably created with the benefit of spell check, carried the same misspelling: “Kwajulane” instead of “Kwajalein.” Some people were retelling this story, it seemed, without making even the tiniest effort to authenticate it, even to the point of doing a copy edit.
Several of the published versions did cite an earlier use of the story as a source. President Monson’s 2012 use, for example, cited a 1971 talk by Ernest Eberhard, Jr. (a man whose name I don’t recognize; I haven’t had time yet to identify him – a contribution for a commenter to make, perhaps?). The 1974 Friend did not; footnotes are hardly common in a children’s magazine. The most recent example, a 2013 compilation of heroic stories, cites an earlier publication for the words of the priesthood blessing only. That example had been so lightly rewritten, still carrying whole sentences and dozens of phrases lifted directly from an earlier publication, that it should have cited that publication for the entire story; if one of my posts had been so lightly rewritten and reused, I would consider it plagiarism. But, to balance out that fault, I suppose, the source plagiarized was itself an unattributed word-for-word copying of an earlier appearance of the story. We Mormons do seem to believe in “The United Order of Ideas,” don’t we? (That phrase is stolen from a friend, M.A.; I haven’t asked his permission to use his name here, so I won’t, for the time being.)
I next arranged my collection of stories into the order in which they appear to have been produced. Only my original source, the mimeographed sheet provided by the missionary, was undated. But after looking at some internal clues – some slight alterations of the story (mostly punctuation variations, and one very key point) made it obvious where in the chain of stories this one belonged: The missionary’s version contained slight differences from the earliest publication, which were reproduced with additional differences in later versions.
The battle of Kwajalein took place in late January/early February of 1944. The earliest publication of this story found so far was in September 1944. It was published in Cumorah’s Southern Messenger, the monthly newsletter of the South African Mission. Its publication there carries a note that is absent from subsequent printings:
Contributed by Ray L. Jones
Principal, Midway L.D.S. SeminaryEditor’s Note – In forwarding this copy Elder Jones writes:
“I have attempted to check on the source and authenticity of this story, but so far have been unable to do so. The story came to me indirectly from Mrs. F.W. Olyma, an L.D.S. civilian employee at the Ft. Douglas, Utah, Station Hospital.
“I am confident that this story will make every L.D.S. boy who may be in the service now or who may expect to go in the future, think more seriously about his religion and the power he can hold through the Priesthood.”
That’s key information, obviously.
What jumped out at me was that both Brother Jones and the editor of Cumorah’s Southern Messenger were willing to pass the story along even though the story’s authenticity had not been established. Perhaps later tellers of the story who cite earlier publications relied on the story’s having been authenticated, but neither Brother Jones nor the editor have that shield.
Next, “The story came to me indirectly from …” Indirectly? As in a friend of my brother-in-law’s hometeacher?
But at least the name of Mrs. F.W. Olyma is attached. I’ll identify her, I thought; although a female civilian worker in a Utah hospital would seem to have the slightest imaginable possibility of having any direct connection with the story, it’s possible that she worked at the hospital in Honolulu before coming to Utah. But, alas, I could find no one with the surname of Olyma in Utah at any time, and no one named Olyma anywhere in the United States with those initials. It’s possible she really existed and wasn’t a figment of the imagination of the “indirect” transmission of the story, but at this point she is a dead end for me.
Then I started comparing the versions more closely, looking at them chronologically. The key point:
The first article, the one published in South Africa, does not mention “United Press” at all! Not only was the “UP” brand added later, so was a line claiming it was published on February 8, 1944, in Honolulu. Later uses of the story either reproduce that line exactly (sometimes moving it from the top of the article to the bottom) or else refer to it indirectly (President Monson’s version, for instance, includes the note that the correspondent worked for a newspaper in Hawaii).
Although I quickly came to the conclusion that this story was not authentic history, I cannot guess the motivation of the original writer, the one whose version came into the possession of Brother Jones. But whoever added that false attribution to United Press, even faking the dateline that usually accompanies syndicated news reports, could only have added that with intent to deceive. The intention may have had an ostensibly good motive – to inspire – but doctoring the record to bolster its credibility is deceit.
Another notable discovery was that – aside from the fake dateline/attribution – most later uses are fairly faithful reproductions of the earliest copy. There are differences in punctuation and paragraphing, and one editor moved two words in one sentence to improve its grammar. The exceptions to fidelity to the original written version are the two spoken talks. Both are retellings rather than memorized recitations. Spoken speech has a different rhythm from written speech, and both speakers have applied their own style to the retelling of the story.
There is a great difference between the two speakers, though. President Monson, while using different words and rearranging the bits of the story for better dramatic effect, stays true to the facts (or supposed facts) of the original. The other speaker, however, embroiders the original – adding facts not in evidence, inserting emotions, making assertions that are wholly unsupported by the original. That’s something that often happens when a writer or speaker doesn’t have the courage to let a story of faith stand on its own merits, but instead hammers the reader over the head to make his point: You see this? Really, do you SEE it? It’s important, right? Take another look. This PROVES the gospel is true. The 2013 publication, the lightly rewritten version, inserts emotions and details that are not in the original, too. Maybe that’s a mark of sliding standards of historical reportage, or maybe it’s simply a trait of the author.
Take a look again at the version posted at the opening of this article. It is understandable why a story such as this, whatever its origins, appeals to us as Latter-day Saints. First, it reaffirms something that all believing Saints likely endorse: We believe in the power of the priesthood to heal, or, in this variation, to preserve life until medical care can be obtained. We want to believe that this story can play out on the battlefield, that our young men in the service keep themselves worthy to exercise the priesthood. We want to believe that they – and we – will put the needs of others ahead of their own.
There is, in short, nothing in this story (unlike the folk tale claims of Three Nephite interventions, or Moroni’s wanderings through western America, or Cleon Skousen’s claims that the Smithsonian Institution uses the Book of Mormon to guide its archaeological explorations) that obviously contradicts Mormon teaching or common sense. These two young men – had they been participants in an authentic experience – serve as ideal examples to other bearers of the priesthood.
I understand why the story has remained part of our cultural lore – I did immediately consider it a potential Keepa post, after all. Without any obvious red flags as to the story’s origins, and relying on earlier uses as citations, the story would likely persist with little harm. But this chance circumstance of my having been asked to find out more about these two young Marines caused me to take a closer look, apparently, than has been made before. ((I freely admit that I may NOT be the first, that some earlier historian has reached the same conclusion and even published that conclusion in a venue that doesn’t lead to its discovery through Google; if so, I yield cheerfully to that potential earlier researcher.))
Unless someone can provide an adequate explanation for the problems I have outlined here, ((There are additional problems with the language of the piece, which I have omitted for lack of space; in short, this is not how a journalist arranges an article, and much of the language reads more like a Victorian novelist than a war correspondent.)) this is one story that should either be retired from Mormon retelling, or clearly labeled as an imaginative account of the kind of incident that believing Mormons accept – even expect. This tale is not, of course, of any great significance – certainly it does not have the importance to Mormon history that the cherished-but-flawed history of the “three young men who gave their lives to rescue the handcart pioneers” so ably and gently corrected by Chad Orton in a 2006 BYU Studies article. ((The article was freely available in the past, but apparently BYU has fallen on hard times and needs your 99c contribution to download a copy today.))
And I love a detective story. The missionary’s mimeographed sheet ended up as a Keepa post after all.
Great detective work, Ardis. And a really important cautionary tale. Thanks.
1) I have memories of hearing this story as a teenager in the 1960s/70s, though I can’t say that I’ve heard it since then.
2) Ernest Eberhard, Jr is a name that rang a few bells — here’s some information about him by him: http://cdm15999.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/BYUIOralHist/id/505
3) faith-promoting story — Any story that makes you feel glad you’re a Mormon, even if you can’t bring yourself to believe it.(OSC, Saintspeak)
Add some more red flags, Ardis:
The style of writing. (I know you mentioned it in your footnote, but I’m going to hammer it here.) No reporters were writing like this in 1944. I’ve got two collections of stories on my shelf, shorter newspaper articles from people like Ernie Pyle, and longer essays that were published in the New Yorker. The styles vary substantially, but nobody was writing purple prose like your alleged AP dispatch.
The spelling. I’m not sure how the last syllable of that name was pronounced in 1944–it could have been “lane” but more likely was “line.” But the Navy would have released reports and briefing papers with the name spelled correctly. (Which, by the way, is Kwajalein, not Kwajulein.) (An aside–my niece is completing her mission to the Marshall Islands this month, and she served for a while at a place called Ebeye, on Kwajalein.)
The timing. The “dispatch” is dated February 8, but the battle of Kwajalein began on January 31. The Navy developed effective evacuation procedures for wounded men during the war–medical corpsmen treated wounded men on the beach, and then put them on landing craft (empty after delivering their load of men to the beach) and evacuated them back to hospital ships as promptly as possible. But this story has the three men walking the beach in Hawaii eight days later! Impossible. It’s over 2000 nautical miles from Kwajalein to Honolulu, and even at 15 knots it would have taken six days to make the trip back.
And we’re supposed to believe that one man who appeared to be too far gone to bother trying to save, and another whose arm was nearly shot away, had made the trip from the beach to a hospital ship to Honolulu to surgery to recovery and walking on the beach in eight days?! The only thing missing is the lovely Wahine with a marriage license in hand and a cab hired to take them to the temple in Laie.
One more thing: “Fort Douglas Utah Station Hospital”??
Station? I’ve heard of “Ice Station Zebra” but that wasn’t an army base–it must have been navy or airforce or something. And I’ve never heard “station” used to describe an army base.
And I’ve found no evidence of a Fort Douglas Hospital in 1944. Salt Lake City had a VA Hospital beginning in 1932–four miles from Ft. Douglas at E Street and 12th Avenue, and a hospital was built at Fort Douglas in 1952. Maybe he garbled the words, and thought he was hearing from a nurse “stationed” at a hospital “near Fort Douglas.” Or maybe someone was just making the whole thing up.
Or maybe someone was just making the whole thing up.
*Ardis coughs delicately* You think? 🙂
As long as we’re going to talk about the language after all, here are my two favorite points: “words which to this moment are emblazoned in unforgettable letters across the doorway of my memory.” Setting aside the fact that the image makes no sense at all, can anyone imagine anything remotely like that coming from the pencil of Ernie Pyle? And this: “clean as a shark’s tooth in the South Seas.” What is that supposed to mean? It can’t mean physical cleanliness, if these boys have just been pulled from the bloody sea, their uniforms ragged and bloody where they have been injured, and probably with more than a few hours stubble on their chins. And it is not likely that a non-Mormon correspondent would pick up on and value any moral cleanliness that these boys might have exhibited — but that’s certainly another point that would appeal to a Mormon audience who counts moral cleanliness as a necessary prelude to worthy priesthood use.
And, naturally, thanks for all the other red flags you spotted and the research behind some of them.
bfw, thanks especially for that link — I’ll read it more closely when I have a little more time.
Gary, first on the spot with your approval. Thank you!
I think we’re all safe if we keep our coughing delicate. 🙂
Here’s my best guess as to what happened. (This is a truly a guess; I really have no knowledge about the circumstances.)
Ray L. Jones heard the story about the priesthood blessing from someone who heard it from this misidentified woman at Fort Douglas who heard it from someone in Hawaii, who heard it from someone involved in the incident, or who had heard of the incident.
Jones fictionalized the story using details he remembered from the newspaper or from a newsreel.
Not long after he would have written the story, in June 1944, to be exact, a biography notes that he left the United States for Japan, where he served as a chaplain. (His family is actually claiming that he was stationed in Japan in 1944? Seriously?)
Entirely separate from the family’s sloppy writing about his military assignment, here is a poem and memorial he wrote about his experience in Okinawa:
Easter on Okinawa
Do you think the writing style matches?
He later helped start the Early Morning Seminary program in California, and got a doctoral degree and worked in deaf education for several decades.
So, my best guess is the author was Ray L. Jones, and he based the story on a third- or fourth- hand account and had no idea how to track down the authenticity, but he was writing it for his seminary students.
The structural differences between prose and poetry make it too hard for me to sense whether or not there is a common author. The images of the poetry actually seem more concrete and less bizarre than the prose, but I dunno.
Your guess assumes that there is some actual historical incident at the base of this. I am reluctant to adjust to that idea, because we still would have to wonder why these men remain unidentified. It seems inconceivable that one or two men could have survived this experience and then for them, or their families, not to have claimed it as their history, especially when it began showing up in general Church sources like the Instructor. Countering my reluctance is the likelihood that this story has appeared many places beyond where I found it in my mere 20 minutes of searching, and that the men are identified in other tellings which are not accessible by Google.
I remember hearing this story back in the 1970s as well. For a moment I thought there was going to be a *coughs delicately* baseball connection *coughs again,* but no.
As to your comment in # 6 that if this was a real experience, you raise the question of why didn’t the families talk more about it?
My wartime history research is limited to WWI and its aftermath in Siberian, but I can tell you that many of the descendants of those Siberian LDS soldiers often didn’t know much about their father’s or great uncle’s or grandfather’s experiences, because they didn’t hear the men talking about it. War involves fear, loss, and desperation in greater doses than heroism, it would seem, and men of those days (WWI, WWII) were not often comfortable talking about their experiences, even as many of our more contemporary veterans often are not comfortable talking about their experiences in Afghanistan or Iraq. I will grant that this is the kind of story that does hold attraction for us as a people, but we will likely never know the truth of this one way or another.
But as you always point out, provenance counts. And with no provenance, this particular story does have to be relegated to the category of inspired fiction. The retelling of the research around this, though, is as always, fascinating.
Have you burst the bubble of the senior missionary yet? Or is she a Keepa reader?
Sorry, I was referring to your comment in #8, Ardis, not Mark’s in #6.
We lived in upstate NY when the Toronto Temple was dedicated. We had previously been in the DC temple district (an 8 hour drive) so everyone was excited to have a temple only 4 hours away. Ward and stake leaders attempted to prepare everyone for the dedication. In a Sacrament Meeting, someone in the ward told the story of a woman attending the dedication of the Kirtland temple who had no one to watch her small baby. She was about to be denied entrance when Joseph Smith promised her that the baby would sleep quietly the whole time, which the child did, in spite of the length of the meeting. (I just Googled this and found the story in a Primary 5 manual, but with JS Sr. as the speaker.)
A week later, in Sunday School, the story was told with the change that the child was now three, and slept through the whole 8 hour meeting (truly incredible) except to awaken and join in the Hosanna shout.
A week after that, a stake visitor told the same story in Sacrament Meeting, only this time, the tiny infant, awoke and joined in the Hosanna shout. (Google found this one too, in the outline for a Sunday School lesson, but with no hint where it came from.) My husband was up on the organ bench, and I didn’t dare look at him, or one of us would have started laughing.
Were there actually three mothers who couldn’t get babysitters that day? If not, which story were we supposed to believe? (And what what the point, since the stake arranged for babysitting at a chapel near the temple, because no children under 8 were admitted to the dedication anyway?)
I have now started taking notes on all really good personal experiences that I hear in sacrament meeting with the name of the person, the date, and the ward, so that I have at least a ghost of a chance of tracking the person down if I ever want to to.
I see some consistency between the prose and the poetry:
Both are overwrought, even when the language makes no sense:
“hills groaned and wreathed/In death throes of great battles.”
Really? Just what does “wreathed” mean? “Writhed” perhaps? But how do hill do that?
And the dates. I remember hearing students complain that history is all about remembering dates (do they still?), but the poem could not have been written in April 1945, since the battle of Okinawa began April 1, 1945, and ended about three months later. Maybe his family edited the dates to match them to his 1944 arrival in Japan.
This kind of eagerness is why so many LDS church members are horrible at genealogy. While stories such as this are inspired fiction there are many trees on FamilySearch that are built on foundations even more tenuous. Either that or the five-year-olds siring or bearing children are very precocious.
The dead or unborn having children, while quite common on line, thin the veil just a tad too much to be feasible.
But, then again, these stories and that ancestor are just too good to check. (squeal)
STW–one need only spend an hour or so in a law school class discussing the Rule Against Perpetuities* to know that the fate of million dollar estates turn on the possible existence of “fecund nonagenarian widows” and other supposed impossibilities. With man (or boys) these things might be impossible, but with God and lawyers wielding the Rule Against Perpetuities, all things are possible.
*In a nutshell [sic], “all interests must vest, if at all, during lives in being plus nine months.” I’m not going to entertain any of you non-lawyers with any further explanation. 🙂
Nice work. Perhaps eventually we’ll learn.
@LauraN – Re: Babysitterless Mom in Kirtland:
The old Truman Madsen tapes on Joseph Smith and people not checking sources themselves are partially to blame for the multiple versions of that story. The source that Madsen cited put the baby at 2 months old, but in his recorded talk Madsen just says that the baby was “only 2” so people that I have heard quote the tape without looking into the story at all make the baby into a 2 year old. I have not heard the other versions.
If you want another faith promoting rumor to play with, I have a good one.
I served as a missionary on Temple Square for 2 months, and while I was there I discovered a touchscreen display next to the Angel Moroni statue. On that display, it tells a story of how there was a vacant shaft built into the Salt Lake Temple because Brigham Young(?) told them to build it. But it wasn’t until later on that they realized that it was a “revelation” once elevators were invented.
I remember hearing on a Mormon Channel podcast about stories like these that the temple blueprints mark the shaft as an elevator shaft. I told my companion about it and she told me I must be midtaken because all of the displays were approved by the First Presidency.
Have fun with that 🙂
You’re right, Paradox — elevators were well known decades before the temple interior was designed (the walls were up before the floors and rooms were mapped out). Otis Elevator Co. was founded in 1853. So there is no reason in the world, even absent surviving blueprints, to suppose there was anything the slightest bit providential about spaces being planned for elevator shafts.
If I could find a way to ask it without sounding snarky (I’ve never found that way), I would ask people like your companion and many others just how many hours the First Presidency can squeeze into one day for them to have the time to review and approve the wording on every museum card, the illustrations in every Friend, the wording of every paragraph in every lesson manual, the fiber content of every carpet in every temple, the invoice for every nail and paperclip? And why does the Church employ experts in all these fields if every decision they make must be reviewed personally by the First Presidency? When does the First Presidency have time to do any ministry?
Then I’d ask why, even if the First Presidency did review the wording on museum displays, how they can be expected to know every jot and tittle in Church history? Or do people think they seek and receive a specific divine revelation on every detail?
The naivete of such assertions blows me away and makes me wonder whether I can trust such people to have a reasoned opinion or to have made the effort to gain a genuine testimony about anything.
So, as you can see, I’m still working on how to say that without snark. 🙂
^^ Love.
I was accused of steadying the ark, counseling the Brethren, and other things on Facebook (the Daniel/Esther post), for implicit criticism of the Gospel Doctrine manual, by someone I otherwise respect but don’t know well personally. The manuals are “approved” and any other kind of style or info is therefore inappropriate.
The elevators thing has circulated for a long time. I never heard the rumor, but did read a correction.
http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/salt-lake-city/4-design-construction-and-role-salt-lake-temple
I have a serious question here, but am not quite sure how to frame it, so please bear with me.
I just read the December Ensign the other day and an article about angels included the quote:
It seems like we’ve developed a culture in the Church of, on one hand, telling mythical and sometimes easily disproved stories like the Salt Lake Temple elevator shafts.
But on the other hand, a culture of secrecy has arisen around experiences such as the ministering of angels and visions and the gift of tongues, and if shared, the person may be treated with suspicion. I’ve seen it stated in the Bloggernacle that when people share spiritual experiences in Church settings, they are being manipulative and making sure everyone knows they’re Mormon elite.
Yet another factor: I recall my grandmother mentioning a time when she shared an experience with someone who she thought she could trust, but who proceeded to mock her. And there are undoubtedly those who would class any religious experience as something that should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
So I agree that caution and discernment is necessary, and we should make sure the stories we tell are true (thinking of a certain Three Nephites story) but on the other hand if we as members of the Church never talk about spiritual gifts and their manifestation, an outside observer would not know that we believe in miracles and all the markers of the restored gospel, and are attended by those gifts, and even life-long members might miss that fact.
So, what’s my question? I suppose I’m wondering how we find the balance between the Ensign’s “loose lips,” and being a people known as being attended by spiritual gifts.
Looking at Mr. Eberhard, there are several articles in the ensign by him in the 70’s. It looks like his favorite subject was missionary work. From the biographies included at the end of two of them, he was a “retired seminary and Church youth curriculum director, was … president of the Utah Salt Lake City Mission,” and “director of proselyting with the Church Missionary Department, … a member of the Centerville Sixth Ward, Centerville Utah Stake.”
As mentioned, the description of “clean” seems very out of place. The only thing that came to mind was clean-shaven, which would only make sense in the context of a Mormon story, not a news article.
I read Amy’s question to my husband. He brought up the talk given by Dallin Oaks in the April 2010 general conference on priesthood blessings. Elder Oaks used as his example of miraculous healings a story from a Dallas newspaper rather than a personal experience. In some situations, we may feel prompted to speak about spiritual gifts without necessarily sharing personal experience. And I definitely feel that it is wrong to repeat stories that make us feel validated in our faith, or even better than someone else, without making sure that the stories are true. It’s challenging, isn’t it?