Lowell Bennion, Sterling McMurrin, and Obert Tanner were colleagues whose lives often intertwined. All professors at the University of Utah, these three scholars addressed issues and events of their time; each influenced the thought and culture of Mormonism, helping to institute a period of intellectual life and social activism. In Conscience and Community multiple scholars, family members, and others look at the private and public aspects of three lives and examine the roles they played in shaping their communities inside and out of their university and church.
 
Lowell Bennion was founding director of the LDS Institute of Religion and professor of sociology at the University of Utah. He established multiple community service entities. Sterling McMurrin was distinguished professor of philosophy and history, dean of the graduate school, and former commissioner of education under JFK. He dismissed dogma and doctrine as barriers to a search for moral and spiritual understanding. Obert Tanner, also of the university’s Philosophy Department, excelled in teaching and business and became especially well known for philanthropy. The lives and work of these three men reveal the tensions between faith and reason, conscience and obedience. Their stories speak to us today because their concerns remain our concerns: racial justice, women’s equality, gay rights, and the meaning of integrity and conscience. 

A Philosopher, Sterling M. McMurrin (1914-96) appreciated the similarities between Mormonism and Hellenistic Christianity. For instance, Church Fathers of the fifth century admired Plato, who taught that there is one God, coexistent with such eternal entities as Justice and Loveâ€"to which Joseph Smith added Priesthood and Church. Where Augustine modified Plato, Mormonism would tend to side with his critic, the Stoic-leaning Pelagius. In this broad context, what is Mormonism's contribution to the overall pursuit of life's fundamental, ontological questions? Herein lies McMurrin's intentâ€"an invitation to join him on a wide-ranging search for purpose. He finds his church's synthesis of heresy and orthodoxy to be refreshing and impressive in this light, in its treatment of evil, sin, and free will. Belief in a personal God may run counter to traditional faith, but it is nonetheless emotionally satisfying and accessible to the human imagination.