A letter by BYU professor HESS and 19 others, printed in the June 8, 2000 edition of Salt Lake Tribune, reads as follows:

We should like to respond to the comments by Robert Baczuk (Forum, May 22), in which he asserts that Mormons are creationists and then faults Brigham Young University for teaching evolution.

Mormonism emphatically does not fit into the theological mold of modern creationism. The creationists' concept of a single triune and sovereign deity who spoke all time, energy, matter and space into existence from nothing (i.e. ex nihilo) is flatly rejected in LDS doctrine. While some LDS writers have indeed opted for a relatively short age for the Earth, none has ever accepted creationism's insistence that the creation periods were six literal 24-hour days. Other prominent Mormons have interpreted the creation periods as embodying millions of years of life and death. Creationism and Mormonism are vastly different philosophies.

Mormon literature has long taught that God works through natural laws, and that the study of those laws is the study of divine handiwork. To clarify the church's views on evolution, the First Presidency and a number of apostles formally approved in 1992 a packet of materials for use at BYU. The packet includes First Presidency statements of 1909, 1910, 1925, and the Evolution entry in the 1992 Encyclopedia of Mormonism. This latter statement, formally approved by the current First Presidency, includes data from the presidency's private files. The upshot of these statements is that "The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how ..." Of interest to this latter question is an editorial to priesthood leaders in the April 1910 Improvement Era expanding on the earlier 1909 First Presidency statement. It lists three possibilities for the creation of the original humans' bodies. Though evolution "in natural processes ... through the direction and power of God ..." is given as one of the apparently acceptable options, the so-called literal reading of Genesis (breath of life into a body molded form dust) is significantly not included. Rejection of this latter scriptural interpretation offers yet another significant difference from creationism, which insists adamantly on the literal interpretation.

Mormonism further teaches that humans are responsible for divinely mandated stewardship of the Earth and its organisms. Evolution beautifully synthesizes the masses of demonstrable scientific data as no other concept ever has. But more important, it is the only concept that provides management principles for effective stewardship. Clearly it is a science critical to Latter-day Saints.

WILFORD M. HESS
Professor of Botany, BYU
and 19 others
Provo