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(eds.), Schools in Transition, 1954.Williams, Robin M., and American Society: A Sociological Interpretation, 1960.Winch, Robert F., McGinnis, Robert, and Barringer, Herbert R. (eds.), Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family, 1962.Winslow, C.E. and Hallock, Grace T., Health Through the Ages, 1929, 64 p.Young, Kimball, Personality and Problems of Adjustment, 1940.Young, Kimball, Social Psychology, 1946.Zito, George V., Methodology and Meanings: Varieties of Sociological Inquirey, 1975.Zollschan, George K. (ed), Explorations in Social Change, 1964. Armand L. Mauss, Washington State University Presented at the SSSR-MSSA Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, 1997 Nov. 11It was in the Bancroft Library at UC-Berkeley in the mid-1950s when, as a beginning graduate student, I first came across the published work on Mormons of Glenn Vernon, and then of Harold Christensen. I can still recall the flush of intellectual excitement. Here was neither the apologetic and polemical literature of Church spokesmen, nor the pejorative and dismissive literature of the non-Mormon intellectual elite, but truly analytical studies with actual data! I doubt that today's young scholars can adequately appreciate how rare were the examples in the professional literature in those days of efforts to analyze things Mormon from a detached, social science perspective. Vernon's published work after the 1950s did not include much more on the Mormons, though he continued active in the sociology of religion and was the founding president of MSSA, under whose auspices we now meet. Harold Christensen, on the other hand, while not identified with the sociology of religion per se published numerous articles on Mormon marriage, family, and sexual attitudes, many of them comparing Mormon with non-Mormon data.In this year of Mormon pioneer commemorations, it is fitting that we honor Harold as a pioneer while he is still with us. He is a pioneer not only in the social scientific study of Mormons, but also in a number of other ways. First of all, in the larger history of our discipline, he is an admirable exemplar of that second generation of American sociology that came of age professionally between the two world wars, when there were very few departments of sociology. With his Ph.D. from Wisconsin, one of the major graduate schools of sociology then and now. Harold, like so many of that generation, perforce was part of the movement to establish this new discipline nationwide. In that capacity, Harold chaired the Sociology Department at BYU throughout most of the 1940s, and then in 1947 went on to Purdue to become the founding chairman of the sociology program there (later the Department of Sociology and Anthropology). He retired from Purdue in 1975 after three decades of service there, during which he achieved national visibility in the sociology of the family. He authored one of the major textbooks in that sub-discipline (Marriage Analysis), which went through three editions.Another important respect in which Harold can be considered a pioneer is, I believe, little remembered except to his family and friends, most of whom he has by now outlived. I refer to his place in the history of Mormon intellectual life. Harold was part of the first generation of Mormon intellectuals of the 20th century, coming of age as Utah Mormonism was torn between the imperative, on the one hand, to join the American mainstream, while, on the other hand, struggling to hold fast to the peculiar and parochial faith of its founders. Mormon scholars and intellectuals of that period probably enjoyed more indulgence and appreciation from Church leaders than they do now (which is not saying a lot); for in those halcyon days leaders and intellectuals alike shared the sanguine assurance that science and scholarship would eventually vindicate Mormonism, that Mormons had nothing to fear from the discovery of truth, from whatever source it might come, or toward whatever destination it might lead. This was the age, after all, when faculty members of the Church Education System were encouraged (sometimes at Church expense) to seek advanced degrees in religion or in the humanities from major universities and when BYU presidents like Franklin S. Harris were trying to bring intellectual respectability and well-credentialed faculty to that university.Yet the quest for intellectual respectability, both at BYU and in the Church generally, was always in tension with the strain toward conformity to orthodoxy. When intellectuals seemed to question the conventional wisdom, orthodox or not, they often ran afoul of the more conservative Church leaders, as in the so-called "purge" of 1911 at BYU. Some were sufficiently alienated by these experiences that they left Utah and the Church, comprising the Mormon version of the "lost generation." Others, like Howard, left Utah but not the Church, and there was certainly nothing "lost" about him. His Mormon heritage was his Liahona, his compass, wherever he went and whatever he did. He simply decided that he could be a better sociologist, as well as a better sociologist of Mormonism, by getting out from under Church auspices. Harold had as full a career in Church service before leaving Utah as some Mormons have in a lifetime. Besides the normal mission which devout men served around the age of 20, then at least 30 months in duration, Harold found himself as acting mission president for the Church in New Zealand for an additional year and a half, starting in early 1932. These were early Depression years, when few Mormon families, including Harold's, could afford to keep sons on missions, and fewer still were being sent to distant places like New Zealand. Yet it never occurred to Harold or his parents to complain about the extension of his mission or to insist on the release to which he was entitled. Instead, he faced the awesome and culturally sensitive responsibility, in remote Maori communities, of identifying and appointing local missionaries and leaders to maintain the waning Mormon presence in New Zealand until reinforcements could be sent. Then, back at BYU, during studies for both the BA and MA degrees, Harold continued in heavy Church service on a stake high council and at the ward level, as well as preparing lesson manuals on family life commissioned by the Church for use in the Relief Society, the MIA, and the Sunday Schools. Meanwhile, in 1935, he married his delightful Alice and they began a family of five wonderful and successful children. When they all departed for Indiana and Purdue University in 1947, they joined a Mormon community there of only half a dozen other families, so that was to be another phase of pioneering.Others will comment on Harold's contributions to Purdue and in the professional literature of family demography and fertility. I would like to make just a few observations about his contributions to the literature on Mormons in particular. Much of what Harold has written about Mormons is not identified by title as dealing with Mormons per se but rather with Utah or with Westerners or with rural samples. Such is the case with the first of his articles published in a mainstream sociology journal, namely a 1938 article in Rural Sociology taken from his MA thesis at BYU (the first MA degree there in Sociology). The subject was rural-urban differences in the time interval between marriage and the birth of the first child in Utah County. From there Harold, sometimes joined by collaborators, went on to publish a dozen or so studies about norms and attitudes related to sexual behavior. These studies were nearly unique for their time, since there was little encouragement, either in the Church or in the country as a whole, for studies of sexual attitudes or behavior. Perhaps even more remarkable in this day and age was that Harold did his work without the benefit of large government grants!What made Harold's studies especially valuable were his samples, which were both large and cross-cultural, making possible comparative generalizations. He was able to compare Mormon student data from the far west with comparable data from Purdue and from sexually permissive Denmark, the latter data gathered during and after a Fulbright year there. His findings emphasized the importance of differential cultural definitions of sexual norms and normative transgression, showing empirically that in cultural settings like that of the Mormons sexual behavior was not only very conservative but transgression was fraught with guilt. From that research, Harold derived and advocated a chastity norm based on rational considerations rather than on doctrine alone. Other studies provided an empirical basis for predicting family size, for identifying factors predicative of divorce, and for vindicating the value of temple marriage. It is somewhat ironic that Church leaders, during Harold's career as even now, have been very wary about sponsoring or even reporting on such studies, despite the obvious support that this work has consistently provided for Church standards and programs.Beyond his special interest in comparative sex, marriage, and family life, Harold has been a thoughtful observer and investigator of Mormon culture more generally. During his student days at BYU in the 1930s, and again while he was a visiting professor there in the 1960s, he collected data from general students samples on various beliefs and attitudes relating to Church teachings and practices. His colleague Ken Cannon added data from the 1970s. The discovery that during four decades or so student beliefs had become much more conservative does not come as a surprise today to anyone who has followed the history of BYU, but it surely was an unexpected finding in the professional literature when it was published in the 1970s, after the arrival of the age of Aquarius on the rest of the nation's campuses! I found also a helpful corroboration for my own "retrenchment" thesis, indeed a partial explanation for that thesis, considering the number of Church leaders and bureaucrats who passed though BYU during those decades after the 1930s. Harold's memoirs, partially published in two Dialogue articles (see Note 3 herewith) also provide highly revealing glimpses into the stresses and strains of Mormon intellectual life during the 1930s through the 1960s.It has been my pleasure to have had a few long visits with Harold and Alice during the past 20 years, and I am truly pleased to be able to join in this fitting tribute to Harold today.You have greatly honored me here today, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. In responding, let me lay down a sort of brief backdrop to my work. My research and publishing began some sixty years ago during the late 1930s. After finishing my undergraduate studies in sociology at Brigham Young University, in 1935, I had been appointed Graduate Assistant, to teach half-time while pursuing my masters degree. University President Franklin S. Harris took a personal interest in me and I came to greatly respect him. So quite naturally I consulted him before firming up the selection of a topic for my thesis research. My first serious proposal was to undertake a content analysis of Latter-day Saint interests and values, over time, using the Improvement Era (now called Ensign) plus published general conference reports as source materials. But President Harris felt that this might be provocative to the Church Brethren, and so I, respectfully, changed plans. The thesis topic eventually settled upon and, in time, completed (and which I am sure can still be found in the University's library) was a pioneering study of the time-interval between a couple's marriage and the birth of their first child.The method, which I , perhaps immodestly, can claim to have helped develop and to name, became know as "Record Linkage."" It consisted of hand-matching (computers came later) selected sets of records and then making the calculations and comparisons needed. In my own case, it was the official marriage and birth records of Utah County, Utah, for selected years, that were tapped. My primary concerns were, first, the interval between marriage and first birth, and second, cases where my calculations had indicated that conception had occurred prior to marriage. Each of these two independent variables were then analyzed with respect to such factors as age at marriage, occupation of father, and the like. Later in my career, after carrying out additional record-linkage studies, for other years and in other places, I also became interested in how the independent variables (i.e., time-interval and premarital pregnancy patterns) might be related to time trends and to the cross-cultural picture.My first publications in professional journals appeared in June 1938, in Rural Sociology and in January 1939, in The American Journal of Sociology. The title of this latter was "The Time-Interval Between Marriage of Parents and the Birth of Their First Child in Utah County, Utah". Since both of these articles attracted favorable attention, even nationally, I felt that I was on my way. Earlier there had been ripples of local suspicion and criticism over the implied sexual content of my research. But I had the open support of my mentor and teacher, Professor John C. Swensen - plus certain others of the faculty - and at least the implicit support of President Harris. And when the publications appeared, that also helped.I should make it clear at this point that I have been focusing here upon Record Linkage essentially as a convenient example; my work included the use of questionnaires and occasional interviews as well. And it became extended across several cultures and involved several points in time, for comparative purposes (Mormon versus non-Mormon, for example). Numerous publications resulted throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, and a few even later.But I was, and am, well aware of my research limitations; which were frequently alluded to in the publications themselves. You see, realizing that my work was exploring new ground and the samples were usually small, I was careful to appear tentative. One might say that I was putting it out there and, at least implicitly, inviting others to come aboard.It is in the very nature of science to have one's work examined critically by others. We get clues from each other. Certainly I hold no grudges against anyone for anything negative that may have been aimed at my work. And, I want you to know also that I hold profound respect for the professional works of the members of this panel.Finally, thank you, thank you, thank you! I greatly appreciate all of you, those attending, those helping out in one way or another, and most especially members of today's panel. I shall not single out individual names, except one, and will close by identifying that exception. My good friend Armand Mauss, more than anyone else, I believe, conceptualized the idea and saw it through to fruition. For this, Armand, and for your definitive comments on today's panel I thank you deeply. |
