Are We Still Mormons?: Mormonism in the Twentieth Century by James B. Allen and Richard O. Cowan

by Klaus J. Hansen
Originally published in Spring 1969
“Are we still Mormons?” Surely most readers will feel that this question cannot be anything but rhetorical, at worst a cheap journalistic trick to attract an audience, or at best a pretext to affirm proudly what all committed Mormons know, that in spite of all the obstacles placed in the path of the gospel of Jesus Christ in modern days — obstacles perhaps worse than persecution— Mormonism has come through with flying colors. And so Professors Allen and Cowan, who have written this little volume primarily for an audience of B.Y.U. and L.D.S. Institute students, answer this potentially uncomfortable question, which in any case they raise only implicitly, with a predictably positive flourish:
In the twentieth century the Church became, in a real sense, world-wide, as its membership spread beyond the isolation of the Intermountain West, and as other historical forces began to affect its program. Social and economic transitions, developments in transportation, dramatic technological advances, and national and international political activities have each played their role in the development of the modern Church. Through it all, however, it has been suggested [by the authors] that the Church has been able to meet the challenges of the changing world, bringing the benefits of modern developments into its programs and at the same time retaining its basic principles — the great and unifying “constants.”
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