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sheer nonsense. It’s hard for them to believe that I can have good will toward the church, but I do. My ancestors chose the church. I was born in it and reared in it. It’s just part of my make-up.”
“I don’t think of churches as being true or false. Churches are good or bad or better or worse, but not true or false. Being a Mormon is simply being part of a family, and even the stray sheep in the family can love it and defend it … While I readily confess to being a heretic–one who doesn’t believe–I frankly resent being called an apostate–one who turns against the church. I am critical of the church, but I’m for it, not against it.”
Jacket flap
For more than fifty years, Sterling M. McMurrin faithfully served country, university, and church as one of the preeminent intellectual voices of the twentieth century. From his beginnings as a Mormon educator in Arizona to his position as U.S. Commissioner of Education in the Kennedy administration, and from Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah to U.S. Envoy in Iran, he believed that any institution that shapes the values and informs the minds of young men and women bears a special duty to teach high ideals and to live by them.
McMurrin’s life and work, recorded in a series of candid, far-reaching discussions with close friend L. Jackson Newell, reveal an ability to reconcile competing demands of freedom, loyalty, and conscience. In an era of escalating cynicism and alienation, McMurrin believed in a more wholesome way. Despite the despair that still haunts modern society, McMurrin, who lived with uncommon hope for eighty-two years, is an example of what commitment to truth, justice, and integrity means.
“This book is neither biography nor autobiography, though it has characteristics of both,” writes educator Boyer Jarvis. “In a spirit of repartee and friendship, Newell probes, challenges, and constantly draws McMurrin out as he tells the story of his life and reflects upon his wide-ranging ideas and experiences. Rich in insight and humor, this remarkable dialogue captures the sweep and depth of McMurrin’s thought as Newell engages him in discussing his approaches to philosophy, education, and religion.”
“Among the qualities that characterize Sterling McMurrin’s life and mind,” explains L. Jackson Newell, “perhaps the most notable is the freedom with which he has spoken his views on both the sacred and the profane. His intellectual integrity–coupled as it almost always is with his humane instincts and innate fairness–has simultaneously confounded and earned the respect of his critics in established institutions. Thus this former religion instructor and lay leader in the Mormon church, U.S. Commissioner, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy has been admired and vilified–and frequently envied–by others who have led or served in these institutions.”
L. Jackson Newell, Professor of Higher Education and former dean of Liberal Education at the University of Utah, is currently president of Deep Springs College in California. He is a celebrated teacher and widely published author on the philosophy and history of higher education. His honors include the Joseph Katz Award for distinguished leadership in American higher education and selection as the State of Utah’s first CASE Professor of the Year. He is a Presidential Teaching Scholar at the University of Utah. With his wife, Linda, he served as editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought from 1982-1987.
Dust jacket design: J. Scott Knudsen
Cover photograph: Richard Howe
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