In part 2 of this 4-part series, Elbert Peck (Editor of Sunstone Magazine from 1986 to 2001) discusses many of the central people of Sunstone, including Leonard Arrington, Bonner Ritchie, Eugene England, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Ed Kimball, Orson Scott Card, Peggy Fletcher Stack, Scott Kinney, and many others.
Episode Transcript
Guest: Elbert Peck
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Landmark Issues and Memorable Symposiums
Guest [00:00:15] Well, any other landmark issues that really come to mind as being either controversial or inspirational or groundbreaking. I'm sure you're proud of them all. But any others stand out in your mind?
Elbert Peck [00:00:32] Well, there are articles I wince at and certainly some covers I wince at, but nothing of the magnitude of the Paul Dunn issues. There were topics that were perennial topics throughout the magazine.
Guest [00:00:43] What were some of those?
Elbert Peck [00:00:46] Well, the tension between the intellectual and the institutional church. I mean, that was. It had begun before us with the fight over the church historians in the Camelot years and Sunstone under Peggy. She started and we continued a whole series discussing that,
Elbert Peck [00:01:05] but then it spilled
Elbert Peck [00:01:06] over into general intellectuals and lots of people got involved in that topic. David Bowen, political science professor at byu, wrote numerous articles. He started on the history thing and kind of moved into the intellectual thing. And of course people like Paul Toscano would write and speak about it. Michael Quinn, and it became just a perennial topic. And the emotional pitch of it crescendoed over time as the church disciplines increased too.
Elbert Peck [00:01:37] But there were a lot of faith promoting things. I'm really proud of the Ed Kimball, the law professor at BYU and President Kimball's son and biographer, was on our board of trustees. He. He and Bonaricci are good friends.
Elbert Peck [00:01:54] He was very good. I enjoyed his counsel, which he gave regularly. And he actually recruited articles for us of the more faith promoting nature. He dug up this article on Spencer Kimball and the service station guy, this inactive Mormon who President Kimball would patronize his service station and recruit him to be active again. Quite a little touching story. And then he got us this other article.
Elbert Peck [00:02:22] I don't know if he got us this one, but this guy who wrote about President Benson in his last years I personally thought was a little zany as an article, but a lot of people found it very touching and endearing.
Elbert Peck [00:02:35] Those were fun projects. I don't know if I'm especially more proud of them than anything else, but I have quirky fondness for them in my heart. I liked our Pillars of Our Faith, which is a perennial favorite and some very good ones. I really liked Eloise Bells and Kathleen Flakes.
Guest [00:02:58] Any presentations during the symposiums that stand out as being important or inspirational or controversial, let's say pre1993. Any
Elbert Peck [00:03:12] anything stand out?
Elbert Peck [00:03:16] Every symposium has its memorable moments and there's great stories you have to get me saying them. I guess the one which. I don't know if Scott talked about this. In 1989,
Elbert Peck [00:03:29] Elder Oaks had given his talk on Alternate Voices, which was clearly about Sunstone and maybe not exclusively, but
Elbert Peck [00:03:40] so we had a panel to talk about that.
Elbert Peck [00:03:43] And that was a fiery night. I moderated the panel. And I guess this was 1979, the 10th anniversary of the symposium back in 89. Thank you. Back at the University of Utah. And I remember that night. It's Modernia. And we had Levina Filthy Anderson on it and Marie Cornwall, and then Larry Young. Was Larry Young on it? No, no, someone else. Who else was it? I can't remember.
Elbert Peck [00:04:16] And Orson Scott Card. And Orson Scott Card was one of
Elbert Peck [00:04:19] the people I was so proud of. He'd been an early contributor to Sunstone during the Scott Kenny years. He was prolific. So much so that he had four or five articles in one issue that he ghost wrote under different names because he had so many articles. He even once reviewed his own play under a different name in the magazine.
Elbert Peck [00:04:41] But he dropped off. But I liked Scott and really worked hard in getting him to write, and
Elbert Peck [00:04:47] he agreed to be a columnist for the magazine. He chose the name for his column, A Changed man, meaning he's sort of a born again mainstream Mormon, whereas he'd been a little liberal before.
Elbert Peck [00:04:58] And he wrote very provocative columns that
Elbert Peck [00:05:01] offended a lot of people, but a lot of people were damn glad he was in the magazine.
Elbert Peck [00:05:08] So he was on his alternate Voices
Elbert Peck [00:05:09] panel,
Elbert Peck [00:05:12] trying to get people to speak intelligently about this. And Marie Cornwall spoke and gave this.
Elbert Peck [00:05:17] She's a professor of sociology at byu. She gave this little speech where at
Elbert Peck [00:05:22] the end she says, we're just like kids with our matches in our hand, ready to strike them. It was not clear what the metaphor was, whether we're going to burn down the church or what, but it was an incendiary metaphor. Other BYU faculty member who was that,
Elbert Peck [00:05:37] I can't remember right now.
Elbert Peck [00:05:38] And Marie. Then they realized they may get in trouble for their BYU connection, so they shut up. So I'd have Lavina, who would say more provocative things, and Scott Card, who would say provocative things. And I'd turn to the BYU faculty kind of countering things because the sociologists
Elbert Peck [00:05:55] are really good at putting things in
Elbert Peck [00:05:56] a context, and they would just be mum. So we had these two people. And then it turns out Scott Card and Lavina had this history when they both worked at the Ensign years ago where they hated each other. And so we had this little cat fight between them. Now we're just trying to moderate. And then Scott Card says something about how he'd been so good friends with Scott Kenny in organizing and founding Sunstone, but now he's really Sad about how Scott Kenny, the journey he'd taken. And turns out they hadn't talked in years. And Scott Kenny's in the audience, and when it was time for audience, Scott Kenney comes up and makes this little response to Scott Card. So they're having this thing, and then Scott Card is keeping saying provocative comments,
Elbert Peck [00:06:43] saying, you guys don't understand the Brethren. And he's trying to defend the church.
Elbert Peck [00:06:46] And Ron Priddis started booing, and people around him started booing Scott Card. It was a session that just got out of control. The more moderate voices just shut up
Elbert Peck [00:06:58] because they didn't want to get in trouble with their employer.
Elbert Peck [00:07:02] Later that night, as I was walking Scott Card to his car, he says,
Elbert Peck [00:07:07] these are not my people, Albert. They booed me. They actually booed me.
Elbert Peck [00:07:12] I said, oh, it's just Ron Predis. You have a fight with signature books
Elbert Peck [00:07:15] anyhow over the book you and Cal Grandal did.
Elbert Peck [00:07:18] And he says, I don't know. These are not my people.
Elbert Peck [00:07:20] I'm not ever going to come again. I said, lots of people like you think of the Washington symposium, which you've come to. He really liked that. He says, well, maybe I'll do the regional symposiums. But he never did anything ever after
Elbert Peck [00:07:32] that, which was sad, because one of the things I really wanted to do
Elbert Peck [00:07:37] when I came to Sunstone was increase a discussion about building Zion, which was a passion of mine at the time.
Elbert Peck [00:07:43] And Daniel Rector supported me in that. And so we organized a theme symposium,
Elbert Peck [00:07:49] maybe the only theme symposium Sunstone's ever had on Zion.
Elbert Peck [00:07:54] And we got Scott Carr to come
Elbert Peck [00:07:56] out and speak at it.
Elbert Peck [00:07:57] And he so enjoyed that experience.
Elbert Peck [00:07:59] And there were so many BYU faculty and even church employees who spoke at that, and some of them got in trouble for doing that afterward. And Scott liked it so much, but
Elbert Peck [00:08:09] it was not well attended because it
Elbert Peck [00:08:10] was held in Provo. And so we were losing money on it. And Scott put a couple thousand dollars on his American Express to help pay our hotel bill.
Elbert Peck [00:08:20] So really high moments with him. And then that totally meltdown at that
Elbert Peck [00:08:24] symposium on the alternate voices.
Guest [00:08:28] Any other funny or inspirational or charged symposium presentations worth mentioning that come to mind? No pressure. That was a fun story.
Elbert Peck [00:08:40] Yeah. Doug Mane, you have to get me going. I can just tell them, because all
Elbert Peck [00:08:45] of them have, go for it, Go for it.
Elbert Peck [00:08:48] Well, one of the things I introduced at Sunstone was for the symposiums, I really wanted to position us as faithful
Elbert Peck [00:08:54] people discussing the church rather than as malcontents. And so I introduced, like, prayers at the symposiums opening and closing prayers at the sessions, which it's hard to believe that now, but that was a controversial act. I don't think I've had more people come up to me in the hallways and criticize me for turning Sunstone into sacrament meeting.
Elbert Peck [00:09:18] And at the very first one where Carolyn Pearson spoke while was that a session she was, she was promoting her
Elbert Peck [00:09:26] book that had just come out on the death of her ex husband from aids. What's that book titled?
Guest [00:09:32] No More Goodbye. No, no, no, I'm sorry. Goodbye, I love you.
Elbert Peck [00:09:35] Goodbye, I love you. And she's really quite a self promoter and you have to admire that. And a single woman now. But Dan had scheduled her for the day and Hugh Nibley to speak that night and Carolyn insisted that Hugh Nibley be bumped. And so it was put upon me and I was in Washington at the time to negotiate that so Hugh wouldn't be so miffed that he would cancel.
Elbert Peck [00:09:57] And we were able to do that. So we had this evening session with Carolyn Pearson.
Elbert Peck [00:10:01] This was like 1986 I guess.
Elbert Peck [00:10:05] And it's probably the largest Sunstone symposium
Elbert Peck [00:10:08] ever session ever held. It was the ballroom at then the Sheraton, which is now the Hilton I guess and
Elbert Peck [00:10:19] it packed the room to overflowing And Carolyn speaks and Marty Bradley,
Elbert Peck [00:10:24] who was a member of the board was chairing that session and she was so nervous about introducing the prayers that she, she didn't really have a vocabulary or presiding style to do it naturally she felt like she was making a dramatic statement so she skipped over the prayer. So we didn't have prayers at that time.
Elbert Peck [00:10:44] But Carolyn speaks and she, she is so melodramatic in her speaking style and
Elbert Peck [00:10:51] the room is just packed with huge gay contingent and huge feminist contingent and
Elbert Peck [00:10:56] then just people who are interested in Carolyn. I mean There must be 3,000 people in this room just crammed and she's
Elbert Peck [00:11:06] just so Melanie dramatic and the high pitch was just. I don't know, just remember that. I've never seen a session so high pitched as that.
Guest [00:11:19] In terms of her voice or in terms of just the tension in the room? In terms of the tension, tension in
Elbert Peck [00:11:24] the room and the faithful people wanting to hold on the Carolyn they knew at BYU who wrote all her beautiful poems.
Elbert Peck [00:11:30] The feminists holding on to the feminist
Elbert Peck [00:11:32] Carolyn and the gays holding on to
Elbert Peck [00:11:33] the gay friendly Carolyn and they're not really all getting along and. But there's nothing spoken that was dramatic. But Carolyn's style is so melodramatic.
Elbert Peck [00:11:45] She speaks, she doesn't speak in Complete sentences.
Elbert Peck [00:11:49] SHE SPEAKS IN PHRASE FRAGMENTS and then I said to him and punctuated with these dramatic pauses and sighs and heavy laden words.
Elbert Peck [00:12:04] It was a quite an evening.
Eugene England and His Sunstone Legacy
Guest [00:12:09] Talk about Eugene England and your memories of him, both interacting with him and in whatever interaction he may have had with either writing articles or presenting at Sunstone. Do you have a story or two?
Elbert Peck [00:12:20] I have a lot of Gene England stories.
Elbert Peck [00:12:22] One of my all time favorite people and one of the most frustrating people
Elbert Peck [00:12:25] in the world to work with.
Elbert Peck [00:12:27] Because Gene is naive and idealistic. I mean, he really believes that proving
Elbert Peck [00:12:31] contraries truth will be made manifest. And if you get people together, they will talk. And he's tried that so many times
Elbert Peck [00:12:39] and they will talk. And if they understand each other, something will happen where truth will emerge from
Elbert Peck [00:12:43] the synthesis of them.
Elbert Peck [00:12:45] And that doesn't happen often or maybe
Elbert Peck [00:12:47] even usually often they fully understand the other person. They still disagree and even hate.
Elbert Peck [00:12:53] But Gene's always pushing for that naivete. I would say the worst thing that
Elbert Peck [00:13:01] ever happened to Gene England was the word processor. As he got older and as technology increased, his papers became longer and longer, any thought he had, any quote, anything,
Elbert Peck [00:13:15] he would just throw in.
Elbert Peck [00:13:16] So they'd become these 80, 90, 100 page papers and he'd like to give them.
Elbert Peck [00:13:22] He'd want not only 90 minutes, but
Elbert Peck [00:13:24] two hours to present a paper and then if he couldn't, he'd want to publish the whole thing. And they were just long things. I remember the California symposium where he was giving the evening plenary session, a closing one, and he spoke for more than two hours. And even his die hard faithfuls were just dead. But every word was important to Gene because he loved ideas and words.
Guest [00:13:50] How could you capture Gene for a new generation that has never even thought of Bruce Al McConkey, let alone Eugene England? How could you tell a new generation his personality or importance to our heritage and history within Mormonism? What did he represent? What did he embody to you? What was his legacy?
Elbert Peck [00:14:13] Cheam believed in ideas and he was more of a crossfighter. So he promoted issues that he thought were important. Blacks in the priesthood, which he inherited from his mentor Lowell Bennion, and peace issues, particularly peace issues.
Elbert Peck [00:14:30] And so he had this genius for
Elbert Peck [00:14:32] presenting things that would kind of rile you up to want to care. And he cared so much and he was fantastic. Never was a better person. Titling his papers, which basically the title tells you everything you almost need to know. Why the Church is as important as the Gospel. Why the Church is as true as the Gospel, which was A great call for the importance of community and socializing in the church.
Elbert Peck [00:15:06] But the most important thing about Gene,
Elbert Peck [00:15:08] which really only lives in his generation, is his enormous, generous spirit. I mean, when he called you my friend, you never had a higher honor in the world. And he didn't take things personally if you disagreed with him or yelled at him for doing something. Never would a person repent more fast and more genuine and want to have love cover everything, all the differences. And he was stubborn. He was sure of his ideas and would push them and always challenge these things and believed in them. And. And you liked that about him, even though you disagreed with him. And he liked everyone. He wanted to include them all. He was a true Christian person who was smart and intelligent and his passion and his care for the ideas. He was just terrific.
Key Figures Who Shaped Sunstone's Mission
Guest [00:16:07] If you had to lift up, let's just say, three or four more people as important or representative for what Sunstone was trying to be while you were working, who are some of the other people that a new generation should come to know through their writings or speeches or just their personalities? Do you have even two or three people that you would say that you could describe and maybe tell a story about? Sort of like if there were trading cards, like baseball training cards for your Sunstone years, who would be on those cards and describe each one?
Elbert Peck [00:16:49] Well, I suppose they're big names for their writings. And the personality is Lowell Bennion. I consider it. One of my greatest blessings of Sunstone is to get to know Lowell Bennion. He was very thoughtful in his writings, and he had this sociology training from the 30s, and yet he never spoke like he had that training. But you can see that sociological perspective coming through all his theology writings. And he, like Gene, believed that the outcome was the most important thing, what we did and how he acted. And he would use his theology to push those things a little more honest sometimes in his theology, but not completely. Lowell would say it's more important to promote the kind of God that promotes goodness in us than it is to adhere to the actual teachings of the Bible about God.
Elbert Peck [00:17:49] So
Elbert Peck [00:17:51] he'd be a little more. He's not a pure academic.
Guest [00:17:54] He's pragmatic.
Elbert Peck [00:17:56] He is very pragmatic.
Elbert Peck [00:17:57] And the pragmatic that he wants is
Elbert Peck [00:17:59] a life of full of richness and spirituality and creativity and interconnectedness and service and love and grace. And you live that in a community. And I mean, Lowe, he may not have believed that the Book of Mormon was historical. It's hard to tell, really. But you read his writings on the Book of Mormon and the themes that he's pulling out from it are all those very good works kind of themes. And just a great guy to be around. He liked being around little banion.
Elbert Peck [00:18:29] My heroes, I guess are more of the people who were more who did more for people and building the organization than the writings like Leonard Arrington. He's a first rate booster of people. He believed in the careful, thoughtful study of history and of Sunstone and of Mormonism and he'd encourage people to do that all the time. Every year when we sent out the symposium flyer, the first registration for the symposium that came back was Leonard Arrington's. And he did that so intentionally. It wasn't just that he was a
Elbert Peck [00:19:10] type a person who always had to
Elbert Peck [00:19:11] take care of those things immediately. I think he wanted to make the point that I'm supporting you and I'm there with you. It was such a joy to get Leonard's registration in the mail.
Elbert Peck [00:19:20] And he'd always write letters encouraging people to do things.
Elbert Peck [00:19:24] And you asked him to do something. He was very willing to help. Once I asked him to review a book and he said let me think for a moment. And then he said, I don't think I can review that book, he says, because I think I would have to give it a bad review. And it wouldn't be very helpful for that person to have a bad review from Leonard Ariant because of his position in the society.
Elbert Peck [00:19:49] He says other people could give him
Elbert Peck [00:19:51] a bad review and that'd be fine. But Leonard would really use his position to try to Bolst people up and encourage the growth of other intellectuals. Just a great guy.
Guest [00:20:09] How about a couple women?
Elbert Peck [00:20:11] The next woman I was going to say was Esther Peterson, but she didn't have a lot to do with Sonstone. But so it's probably not the kind
Elbert Peck [00:20:17] of person you want. Lavina Fielding Anderson is just a wonder. She's also just this fomenter and this organizer who is loving and gracious and kind and fun to be with, passionate and she's caring. And that is the biggest tragedy of excommunications is Lavina. She's such a true believer. And despite what the church saw as these criticisms of her that they couldn't see her, her really good hearted motivations behind that is very, very, very sad. She's incredible. Peggy Fletcher of course is just a God to me. I love Peggy with all my heart. And it was her passionate idealism that came through. She had this vision and she wanted to do it and she would push for it and push for it and she'd get all these rich men, people
Elbert Peck [00:21:09] who like to be involved in the
Elbert Peck [00:21:10] cause and stuff and, and to support it. But she really cared about ideas and consequences. She's a little cause fighter from the 60s and Mormon scholarship became her cause. She was terrific.
Guest [00:21:27] How about who represents history? Sort of the historian, the archetypal historian for what you think emerging historians should strive for or one or two. You don't have to say the. But is there anyone you could lift as saying their history was something that you think was exemplary? Their approach or their rigor?
Elbert Peck [00:21:54] Well, I'm a big fan of Jan
Elbert Peck [00:21:56] Ships, who's a great personal friend and who I've gotten to know through Sunstone and other things. I like Jen because she is one of the few people who really take the big picture and most of her I think her greatest work is not yet published. It's her work in progress on the church in the late 20th century, post World War II church. But she really gets Mormonism on the big picture.
Elbert Peck [00:22:22] Whereas most Mormon history is about a
Elbert Peck [00:22:25] person, a biography or about a time period and they get involved in little details. Jan just has a huge scope of and she really can get inside of what is happening. Why are we doing correlation? What is the difference between correlation and just administrative reform? And yet they're all lumped together and she really can sort out what's happening in Mormonism better than anyone I know.
Elbert Peck [00:22:47] She's incredible. I think Mormonism, Mormon history, the writing of Mormon history for the most part has been pretty insular and parochial sometimes. It's very excellent scholarship that is written by and for Mormons. So I respect the people who are trying to write for a non Mormon audience as well as a Mormon audience like Kathleen Flake. I think she came late to Mormon history in her career. I think she really has great promise. And.
Elbert Peck [00:23:22] I lament that Ron Walker was not able to write his multi volume biography of Hubert Grant. He's a great storyteller and those early chapters that he gave at mha at least one was published in Sunstone during Peggy's years were great. What happened to it? Well, the archives were closed and he couldn't read the Grant correspondence or manuscripts or collection anymore. So basically ended the research.
Guest [00:23:52] He had to stop researching.
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One Response
I really like his fond but realistic rememberances of Eugene England. I’ve only ever heard the amazing side of England, and it was refreshing to hear that he could be frustrating too, perhaps overly idealistic, stubborn, taking way too long at symposia, etc. It doesn’t diminish my immense respect for him, but it does make him more real. Thanks!