Richard Olsen Cowan (born 1934) is a historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a former professor in the Church History Department of Brigham Young University (BYU).[1] He was one of the longest-serving BYU faculty and the longest-serving member of the Church History Department ever.

Biography

Cowan was raised in Los Angeles. He is legally blind, having retinitis pigmentosa since birth, and by 2000, he had lost nearly all vision.

Missionary Service

Halfway through his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Cowan served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Spanish-American mission, among the Mexican immigrants in Texas and New Mexico from 1953 to 1956.[2][3] Cowan tells of one instance when he was able to use his braille scriptures to prove his gospel knowledge to another minister.[3] On his mission, he met Dawn Houghton, which he later married, and decided to teach religion at Brigham Young University.[3]

Education

Cowan received his Bachelor of Arts in political science at Occidental College in 1958. He received an M.A. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1961 in American History, both from Stanford University. In 1959, he received an award from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, selected as one of four visually handicapped students in the United States.[2]

Career

Beginning in 1961, Cowan was a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. Cowan received BYU’s professor of the year award in 1965. He has taught at the BYU Jerusalem Center and in the spring of 2007 was a visiting professor at BYU-Hawaii. He retired from BYU in 2015.[4]

Temples

Cowan has focused a good portion of his scholarship on temples and has been sought out by the media and academics for his expertise.[5][6][7]

Cowan followed the construction of the Provo Utah Temple closely.[8] He attended the dedication in 1972 and was moved by the proceedings.[8][9] He wrote some of his memories of the time and compiled other people's memories into his 2015 book Provo's Two Temples.[8]

Church positions

Among other positions in the Church, Cowan has served as a stake patriarch.[10]

Writings

Cowan helped write the Sunday School manual for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1978 to 1980, on the Doctrine and Covenants and LDS history.[2]

In 1972, the Church planned a new sixteen-volume sesquicentennial history to be published in 1980, and Cowan was commissioned to write about the 20th century.[2][11] These contracts were all canceled in 1981,[12] but Cowan still completed and published his volume as The Church in the Twentieth Century in 1985.[13]

From 1981 to 1993, Cowan served as the chair of the committee in charge of preparing Gospel Doctrine lessons for the Church. Among his books are Temples to Dot the Earth (1997), California Saints, A 150-year Legacy in the Golden State; The Church in the Twentieth Century (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1985); The Latter-day Saint Century, which covered about the same topic but was written 15 years later. He also co-wrote a book with Donald Q. Cannon about the international church. Cowan, along with Cannon and Arnold K. Garr, was one of the editors of the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History.[14] He wrote the article on the history of the Church from 1945 until 1990 (or basically as recent as he could at the time) for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He also wrote the articles for History of Temples, Missionary Training Centers, Branch, and Branch President.

He was a co-editor with John P. Livingstone and Craig J. Ostler of The Mormons: An Illustrated History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, published in 2013.

In 2015, BYU’s Religious Studies Center published his Provo's Two Temples book.

Notes

  1. ^ Middle name from Boone, David F. (August 1981). "The Worldwide Evacuation of Latter-day Saint Missionaries at the Beginning of World War II". Theses and Dissertations. [master's thesis]. Department of History, Brigham Young University. Retrieved 2016-02-09.
  2. ^ a b c d Cowan, Richard O. (1978). "About the Author". Doctrine & Covenants: Our Modern Scripture (Revised ed.). Provo, Utah: Young House, Brigham Young University Press. pp. 225–26. ISBN 0-8425-1316-7.
  3. ^ a b c Gardner, Cynthia M. (Jan 1988). "Richard Cowan: Man of Uncommon Vision". www.churchofjesuschrist.org. Retrieved 2022-05-28.((cite web)): CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  4. ^ Deseret News article about a book published in honor of Cowan’s work
  5. ^ Williams, Carter; Sept. 30, KSL com | Posted-; P.m, 2020 at 12:15. "Salt Lake Temple renovation reaches 'hardest stage' with work on foundation underway". www.ksl.com. Retrieved 2022-05-28.((cite web)): CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ "Scholars, senior missionaries and community members gather for the Mormon Pacific Historical Society Conference". BYUH Ke Alaka'i. 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  7. ^ Cain, Eleanor (2018-03-27). "Kirtland temple ownership not 'us versus them' for LDS Church, Community of Christ". The Daily Universe. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  8. ^ a b c "LDS Church celebrates 50 years of Provo Utah Temple, remodel coming". heraldextra.com. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  9. ^ Richael, Allie (2022-02-18). "Provo temple reaches 50-year anniversary with plans for reconstruction". The Daily Universe. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
  10. ^ Canadian Mormons, p. 127
  11. ^ Arrington, Leonard J. (1998). Adventures of a Church Historian. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 165, 173. ISBN 0-252-02381-1. Retrieved 2010-01-17.
  12. ^ Foster, Lawrence (Summer 1984). "Career Apostates: Reflections on the Works of Jerald and Sandra Tanner". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 17 (2): 45. doi:10.2307/45225254. JSTOR 45225254. S2CID 254403678. Retrieved 2009-12-30.
  13. ^ "Sesquicentennial History - Volumes and Current Status". LDS-Bookshelf. May 1997. Archived from the original on January 4, 2001.
  14. ^ Garr, Arnold K.; Cannon, Donald Q.; Cowan, Richard O., eds. (2000). Encyclopedia of Latter-Day Saint History. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book. ISBN 1-57345-822-8. OCLC 44634356.

References

External links

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