Feedback

In the October issue the beautiful animal photographs were mistakenly credited to Arlene McFarland, They were, in fact, taken by Arlene Van Dyke. We also failed to give credit for the color photo on the inside back cover. It was a prizewinner in our 1972 contest and was taken by Stuart Hinckley.

Procrastination has indeed become the thief of my time, and it was this that delayed my efforts to write and express the appreciation I have for the Church’s outstanding youth magazine, our New Era. What can I say? I would like to mention that I have found living in the mission field to be a definite advantage over being in an area where the Latter-day Saints are in a dominating majority. My family used to reside in Salt Lake City where we tended to take the Church for granted. We really love getting the New Era, and we all love the people who work and strive together to create each new issue. It often serves as a helpful missionary tool and as material for devotionals for seminary. So, y’all keep up the good work, hear!

Laurel Elaine Whitaker
Witchita Falls, Texas

Congratulations on a good, up-to-date magazine for Church youth.

Elder Gary Lipsey
Mexican Mission

Considering the admonition of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:16 [1 Cor. 3:16], we find that our bodies are temples of God and should be treated accordingly. In order to avoid the destruction that God has promised us for defiling that temple, we must consider what we eat as important as what we think. Looking at people today, we see bodies that are ruined by dietary deficiency, alcohol, drugs, and every manner of physical destruction. Surely the destruction promised by God is being fulfilled every day in our own neighborhoods.

Applying this to the article, it is suggested that 30 percent of our calorie intake comes from snack foods. Rather than suggest that the snack foods be replaced by nutritious substitutes (such as sunflower seeds for one example) the article comments that we have merely to exercise care in choosing the remaining 70 percent. I can hear many people reading this to their parents with the comment. “See, Mom, it says here that it’s all right to have a candy bar for lunch as long as I eat dinner.” Wouldn’t it be better to suggest that they skip the junk altogether? I think that it would.

Kenneth C. McGuire
Kingsley, Michigan

Being a convert of Polish ancestry I thought I would write and express my love and heartfelt appreciation for the article “Minorities.” After all, we are all baptized members of the best minority of all. I’ve been serving as a missionary for nearly a year now, and the only real problem I have is that of trying to convince the members of the Church that STANKIEWlCZ is the way you say Smith in Polish. Your magazine is so fantastic that I look at it before I notice the daughters of Zion in members’ homes. Let’s keep it that way!

Elder Andrew M. Stankiewicz
Washington Mission

We would like to express appreciation for the excellent article “Minorities—A Latter-day Saint Definition” by Victor L. Brown, Jr. We feel this is an excellent article and very timely indeed. It expresses how we feel about the emphasis on the minority groups. More articles of this nature will greatly add to the enjoyment of your magazine. Thanking you again.

John and Shirley Buker
Vernal, Utah

Dear Brother King:

I certainly enjoyed your article, “Literature and Testimony,” published in the New Era last month. One part, however, seemed a little confusing to me. That was the part about conformity and the apostate church. Conformity to one’s time can be a positive thing. The classical movement in art emphasized “conformity to established social norms and subordination to the general good” (The Reader’s Companion to World Literature, page 99, published by The New American Library, N.Y. and Toronto). I think of my favorite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, who was one of the great conformists and worked entirely within the system: Again from The Reader’s Companion, “Conformity leads naturally to a certain amount of formality, to the acceptance of predetermined standards and patterns of conduct. In the arts this tendency is reflected in the careful workmanship, the polish, the accepted conventions of classical art, as opposed to the negligence of detail, the fragmentary state, and the constant experimentation of a good deal of romantic work” (pages 99–100).

Milton was a great classicist and conformist in literature, whereas Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley were considered nonconformists and romanticists. Conformity in itself is not bad. It would have made more sense to me if you would have said that we seek kinship with men of righteous principles rather than with nonconformists.

Dean F. Mansfield, Jr.
APO San Francisco

“Conformity to one’s time” can be a positive thing only when the millennium comes. Otherwise conformity to one’s time means to be of the world and not simply to be in it. We have to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. I cannot think of a great genius who conforms to the world in any other than a purely superficial sense. Shakespeare’s profound understanding of the tragedy and evil of his time (or indeed of any time) is clear in his greatest works. Shakespeare’s humility enabled him to live in his time. Even more did Bach’s humility enable him to live in his: but without that profound (the most profound in all art history) testimony of Jesus Christ that is the well-spring of Bach’s happiness and well-being, he could not have endured the empty conventions of his time; and, like all great artistic geniuses, he was a great innovator. So was Milton, who was highly experimental in his use of meter. And Milton’s advanced religious and political opinions, that in some ways bring him nearer to our church, are well known.

Men of righteous principles are always nonconformists as far as the world is concerned. We must not be confused into thinking that conformity in any previous age (except when the gospel reigned) would have been more correct than it has been now.

Arthur H. King