Monday, March 25, 2013

The New Era

The New Era is an lds magazine that has church articles geared towards the youth.  When I used to read it I felt like a lot of the stories were superficial, they were all about how blessed you'd be if you didn't play sports on sunday or if you dressed modestly. Yesterday I decided to see what the focus and tone was in the 70s when the magazine started, assuming  the worst.  

The first article I pulled up was called What about pop music? from the 1971 January edition.  I expected the author to say that it was bad and why.  But he actually started with an interesting and surprisingly insightful history of how music had been innocent in the 50's and become politically charged in the 60's.  He calls it the "age of the 'message lyric.'"  Then he just talks about how to discern for yourself what music uplifts you.  He ends by saying that music you listen helps define you.  For some reason, the whole thing lacks judgement--It's not even cautionary.  It seems to be informative, like the author just wants people to know that music has messages and you should think about them and if they uplift you.

It was pointed out to me that I am reading out of the context of the time, but more of that later.

I next read an article called A Testimony of My Conversion from the 1971 February edition.  It was about a 60 year old guy who had been a convert for four years.  He talks about how he grew up a Quaker, what made him happy and what ultimately dissatisfied him.  Arthur talks about how Quakerism lacked vigor.  He talks about William Butler Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot and how their writings and opinions on religion affected him.  He has such an intellectual perspective on religion, it's fascinating.  He looked at so many religions and somehow settled on Mormonism.  He ends with a beautiful testimony.  It kind of made me feel proud of being Mormon.  Something I need more now living outside of Utah than I ever did before.

For perspective, I wanted to read a new article in a recent article.  First I downloaded the April 2013 edition and didn't find any title that really spoke to me.  So I pulled up the March 2013 magazine.  I read The (CM)2 Project because I didn't know what (CM)2 could possibly mean.  It was kind of what I remember--short and sweet about how the author wanted a clean mouth and mind.

So I wanted something more, so I pulled up I have a Testimony of the Family written by the second counselor in the Young Women General Presidency.  Instead of a cool article like the 1971, it was a 10 step plan to getting your own testimony.   Step 1: pray.  Step 2: read The Proclamation to the World. Step 3: Read the words of the prophets. etc.  The 1971 article was so rich in words like 'dogma' and philosophy and literature.  Why did it change?  I pulled up almost every article from the March 2013 issue.  There are many more articles, but all are a lot shorter.  So, while I had intentionally avoided the main General Authority article that is associated with each edition of The New Era, I resorted to it.  This month Elder Quentin L. Cook talked about being yourself, essentially not giving in to peer pressure and becoming someone others want you to be.  I was a little more impressed with this article.  Elder Cook talks about church history and how specifically his words apply to modern day.  My biggest complaint was that he felt the need to talk about pornography, which is a relatively minor issue to me (I'm just a little tired of hearing it is all).  It still lacked the depth and intellectualism of the earlier articles, but it was interesting to read.

My quest into the history of Mormonism through the magazines has just begun, but so far I'm feeling like the older format of fewer, longer articles invited more stimulating articles. 

Now, to address the most major issue: I do not live in the 70's and I never did.  From what I know, the whole world was politically charged and everyone was changing.  Maybe the church was writing to their audience: kids then wanted the intellectual part of the church and now people are apathetic.  Ultimately, I am not offended by the particularities of what was being said because I have no emotional attachment to the advice.  I can't control for that in any way, sorry.

I'm feeling like if such intellectual articles have been published in the past, maybe someday in the future they will be too.