General Humanities Quotes

Booth, Wayne C.

"Religion versus Art: Can the Ancient Conflict Be Resolved?" In Arts and Inspiration, edited by Steven P. Sondrup. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), pp. 26-34.

I said earlier that human beings can "survive" without art. But it is not at all clear that a church can survive as a great church without an art that expresses its members' highest aspirations. (p. 33)

"Art and the Church: Question and Answer Sessions with Wayne C. Booth." Literature and Belief, Vol. 1 (1981), pp. 19-36.

There is no inherent reason in Mormon theology why there couldn't be a Mormon art. But it will be different from other arts; there will be differences of doctrinal shape, not just content, but shape. It wouldn't be a matter of some character simply saying, "I am a Mormon" or "I am not a Mormon." It would be something you would detect in the very shape of the thing and the kind of experience expressed. (p. 27)

Green, Jon D.

"Can a Humanist Get to Heaven?" Issues of the Sacred and the Secular in the Humanities. Proceedings of the Laying the Foundations Symposium (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1991), pp. 55-62.

The great blessing to be living at the end of time (in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times) is the opportunity to discover the common threads that bind us to our religious and cultural roots. As "sacred humanists" on the Lord's last errand before He reappears in all His glory, we have an obligation to exhume, preserve, and pass on the rich legacy we have inherited from our cultural ancestors and to integrate it into the canon of revealed truth so that both can be mutually illuminated. Even more so, we must build bridges between our theology and philosophy, between our sophic and mantic traditions, and even between our divided selves, by resisting the temptation to be one-sided. (p. 61)

King, Arthur Henry.

"Some Notes on Art and Morality." BYU Studies 11(1), Autumn 1970, pp. 37-49.

In this Church we can tackle the interrelation of art and morality more clearly and with more certainty than anyone outside can. Let me remind you of what I have said in my essay on Conversion about faith. Faith is a total act: it is a complete and willing surrender to our Lord Jesus Christ. It means that we lay all we have and all we have gained at his feet, and then in the light of his countenance we find we may take up again what we have laid down to use it for him. Religion is the fundamental tiring. There is no successful morality without religion. Morality springs from religion. When moral standards become detached from religion, they are not maintained.

Through most of human history, art serves the religion of the artist, the religion of his community, the religion that the artist shares with his community. This is the characteristic historical situation. It is not the situation of our time. Art and morality both spring traditionally from a religious origin. Art therefore does not spring from, or fundamentally reflect morality--it springs from religion. And since morality springs from religion, it is indirectly through religion that art and morality are associated. There can be no satisfactory bringing together of art and morality except in terms of religion, and that is why the world has been going increasingly astray in art and morality, and about the relationship between them, during the last three hundred years. (p. 38)

. . .

Art in the Church must depend on the relationship between the members of the Church and the artist with his technique and his desire for self-expression. That relationship can be encouraged into harmony by education in the Church. We are in a difficult position in the Church because we are out of touch with the modern world, and we are in a magnificent position in the Church for exactly the same reason. We have a message to the world. That message springs from our faith. In order to give that message, we need to select from the world the instruments which will help us to convey our faith; and at the same time, we need to study the world to understand with what we have to deal. But we need to study the world, not from the point of view of the world, because that is wrong; but from the point of view of the center which we have in the Church and in ourselves that enables us to judge clearly and firmly. One of the major tasks of our education surely is to apply the Church's standards to the great artistic works of all time in order that we may judge them in their approaches to the relationship of God and man. (p. 48)

. . .

If the artist lives the life of the Church, the right kind of art will be forthcoming. Art in the Church is a bridge to the world, a bridge to help us convert as we produce in art the testimonies of our spirit so the outside world will come to recognize us as being the one true source of Christian faith. Eliot once spoke of the life of the saint--and in our Church we are all saints--as "a lifetime burning in every moment." That is what we may come, after development, to experience in the Celestial Kingdom. Does anybody seriously believe that in the Celestial Kingdom there will be light music in cafes, or light reading in bed, or kitsch pictures like those on chocolate boxes? If we are struggling towards the Celestial Kingdom, must we not try to experience and find the best of all time all the time? Not just a good time. The world of cafe music and light reading and the chocolate box is not the vision of Revelations. (p. 49)