"A popular speaker and writer, Brother B., as his students affectionately called him, combined the rigorous insights of a thoughtful, reasoned faith in God with the selfless compassion of a genuine, caring humanitarianism, profoundly touching the lives of tens of thousands of men and women." He was the author of numerous books, LDS church manuals, and articles.

Author, Mary Bradford, writes sympathetically, but evenhandedly, of Bennion and is not hesitant to deal with sensitive issues. She ably tells the poignant story of how Bennion dealt with the circumstances of being forced out of his position as institute director without engaging in public criticism and recriminations toward his detractors. Fellow author and close friend of Lowell Bennion, Emma Lou Thayne, says that "it's time that his life be seen in its entirety. . . . His life is his message and gift. Now it can be a resource in these pages brimming with him."

BYU Magazine, Richard H. Cracroft
Mary Lythgoe Bradford's well-crafted Lowell L. Bennion: Teacher, Counselor, Humanitarian recounts with deserved admiration the life of "Brother B.," a remarkable man of God, beloved LDS institute teacher, and hands-on Christian. At his recent death, "St. Lowell," as some called Bennion, left a legacy of applied Mormon Godspell which touched thousands through his teaching, writings, and fireside addresses (he is credited with establishing the LDS fireside tradition) and, above all, through his countless deeds of personal and organized charity which humanized abstract theology.

Journal of Mormon History, Ted L. Wilson
An iconoclast for his time, Lowell L. Bennion's life of teaching, counseling, and humanitarianism spanned an era of growing societal self-indulgence and self-centeredness. Bennion's remarkable existence found fruit in his ability to prioritize others beyond self. It is a life-story impregnated with major themes not found in most modern lives; the story combines the vigor, discipline, and love of a Mormon boyhood, a rare freedom to be married while serving a Mormon mission while young, the joy of learning as he examined his precious Max Weber's theories and intellect, and enough teaching and administering in his life work to pull it all together into a most magnificent but simple product—service and humility. Observing this potent life demands much of an inquiring biographer who must walk a tightrope perilously perched between adulation for the goodness yet aware of the undercurrents that shape character, some even negative.

Mary Lythgoe Bradford has walked that tightrope well. She investigates a man who is a modern demi-god in the minds of many. It would be easy to burn excess incense to this remarkable person and life. Though she refers to Bennion simply as "Lowell" throughout the book, an easy familiarity that makes the reader initially wonder about her objectivity, she does not fail to discuss the human and even, on occasion, the difficult side of Bennion's life. We learn Bennion was sometimes cool to strangers, could be irascible, preferred action to the sometime-neglect of administration, and lacked good fund-raising skills. Bradford also reveals that Bennion, who could so strongly stand up to Church authority over priesthood ordination for blacks and other weighty issues, was hesitant to testify at a Mormon bishop's court on behalf of a friend. Bradford also deals sensitively with the Bennion family's coming to terms with a gay son at a time when little was known about the dimensions of this difficult challenge. By insisting on Bennion's humanness and even shortcomings, Bradford weaves a background tapestry that allows Lowell to emerge as a remarkable human being.

The book is organized in four parts. "Foundations" describes Bennion's early life, a family life rich in the traditional values of personal morality, education, and service, his marriage to Merle Colton just before leaving to serve a mission in Germany, and the heartbreak of losing their first child. "Sanctuary" explores Bennion's time at the University of Utah Institute of Religion, his intimate and productive sessions with students and his extensive work in organizing Lambda Delta Sigma, the fraternity and sorority system at the institute. This setting revealed much of Bennion's personal philosophy and activism. "Halls of Ivy" deals with Bennion's service at the University of Utah as assistant dean of students, including his efforts to bring academia and the Mormon Church closer. "The 'Real' World" traces his retirement from the university, his work as director of the Community Services Council, the lives of his family, and the founding of the Lowell L. Bennion Community Service Center at the University of Utah. This life trajectory culminates in the humanistic and kindly Bennion known to his friends and community.

An important contribution is Bradford's documentation of the influence of Max Weber on Bennion. Although Bennion did not follow that interest into groundbreaking sociological studies in the United States as he might have done, he blended learning from Weber with his unflinching belief in his Mormon religion in a successful reconciliation of science and religion, no small achievement in the modern temporal world. Bennion resisted the temptation sometimes found among scientists to eliminate the spiritual side of life while seeking truth. His reconciliation of the two forces—science being hard-nosed and logical, religion being inspiration—led him to a deep understanding of the importance of combining the two into a deeply creative force in his life.

Bradford's biography explores the juxtaposition of science and religion in Bennion's life and leads the observant reader to see how deeply the reconciliation of the two affected Bennion's views. It was religion that made Bennion the deeply devoted, greatly loving person, and loyal Mormon he mostly was. But it was the science in his character building that projected him beyond orthodoxy in religious matters and inspired him to tolerance and love of Mormons and non-Mormons alike and constructive criticism even of his beloved faith when he felt it came up short. Bennion deeply believed that Christian love must be extended to all, not just his Mormon cobelievers.

Bennion was often fearless in this reconciliation. His firm stands in favor of blacks holding the priesthood and of teaching strong worldly wisdom to his students at the University of Utah Institute of Religion put him in hot water with some in the Mormon Church but also allowed him a marvelous integrity of soul. Here, in Bradford's book, we find the essential Bennion: a strong and devoted Mormon who was not afraid of his own church if he felt it was not measuring up to this high standard.

Bradford summarizes: "He [Bennion] declared that 'science, political science, anthropology, history, or economics is able to tell us what the world is, where it is heading, where it has been, and where it may go, but not where we ought to go—for what values we ought to live'" (p. 180). Within spiritual Mormonism, outside the realm of science, Bennion achieves an equally important reconciliation of two seemingly opposing ideas. He sees scripture, however radical in its demands and descriptions, as a conservative force within the modern church. It is the written record canonized to represent the truth of God, which is highly resistant to debate. Balancing this concept, Bennion see revelation as a liberal force that guides individuals in their sphere and the modern church in its sphere through inspiration from God.

This concept allows Bennion to struggle for his own definition of goodness while at the same time understanding and tolerating more conservative forces. We understand, then, the forgiving liberal Bennion who was pressured into resigning from his cherished role as institute director, thanks to the influence of the Mormon conservatives Joseph Fielding Smith and Ernest Wilkinson. Bennion himself remarked: "A society without a good conservative element is not a well-balanced society. The color-giving, life-giving element in our society is the liberal element" (pp. 246-47). Bradford amplified: "Reason, experience, revelation, and intuition are ways of knowing, he maintained, that comprise a system of checks and balances. Revelation and intuition should be checked by reason and experience, reason and experience by revelation and intuition" (pp. 246-47). Bradford thus reveals the strength of Bennion, his remarkable ability to find goodness and practical application from almost all sources and to bring them together into a fundamental philosophy of belief and service. Careful to avoid explaining the apparent, Bradford allows the reader the joy of finding the essential Bennion in the totality of the book. Bradford shows her maturity as a writer through such restraint and makes her book on Bennion credible. Even so, the author's high regard for Bennion is apparent from the opening pages.

The firing of Lowell Bennion at the Salt Lake Institute of Religion (University of Utah) in 1962 was a pivotal time in Bennion's life. Bradford documents the event well, searching carefully through memoirs, files, and diaries, and conducting interviews. Although she documents the outrage of several of Bennion's students who wrote letters and comments on the demoralization of institute students, she does not deal with the matter as a university campus event. In fact, the sacking of Bennion received considerable attention on campus; and had Bennion not decided to leave quietly, without controversy, there might have been more vigorous general opposition.

Bradford's sources, well-documented in chapter endnotes, include a sweeping literature search on Bennion and an amazing list of personal interviews conducted over a wide range of time. The pace is lively; Bradford avoids the tedium that often besets even the best of biographies. But the most important achievement is in the re-creation of a man of remarkable character. In the modern fast-paced world of de-sensitizing media, glitz, and hype, Bradford reminds us that heroes still exist—human heroes who spend their lives in the true happiness of service and love. Mary Lythgoe Bradford has made a strong contribution to Utah biography in her work on Lowell L. Bennion, a contribution that was honored when her book was named co-winner of the Evans Prize in 1996. It takes a big book to adequately portray the incredible life of Lowell L. Bennion and Bradford has met the challenge admirably.

Deseret News, Jerry Johnston
I've met Lowell L. Bennion once. I phoned him and said I was tired of hearing people talk about his influence in their lives when I had never even met him. I asked if I could drop by and do that.

He graciously agreed.

We spoke for about 20 minutes. Actually, I spoke for a good 15 minutes while he listened. And as I rattled on I had the uneasy feeling he was picking up on things about me that I'd tried to hide. In fact, he likely was learning things about me that I didn't know myself.

I thanked him warmly and we parted.

I don't bring this up to make the man look larger than life, but to offer an introduction to Mary L. Bradford's new biography, "Lowell L. Bennion: Teacher, Counselor, Humanitarian" (Dialogue Foundation; 389 pages: $24.95). For I think Bradford has put her finger on the essence of the man. Where most people see him as a great teacher, the truth is Lowell L. Bennion was really a great learner. As William Stafford said of a woman that he admired, "She could always out-listen anybody in the room."

Bennion lived to listen and learn. This from an early chapter of the book:

A significant friend (for Bennion) was Angus S Cannon....Angus later described Lowell as "impersonal" in his desire to learn. "You find a lot of guys who try to learn something in order to give themselves airs. Lowell didn't have any of that."

Both young men, "enamored of ideas," sought answers to questions about their faith, reading such books as William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. They began to realize that different approaches to religion can challenge provincial thinking.

Bradford's book traces Bennion's career like a high-minded and literary "This Is Your Life." Old friends and colleagues surface from the shadow to make comments. Photographs are displayed from time to time. Bradford herself plays the emcee, leading readers chronologically down the decades. (Bennion: the missionary years; the LDS institute years; the Boys' Ranch years). And she spices her chapters with headings that might have come from a Victorian novel: "Honeymoon and Heartbreak." "An Adventure All the Way." "Calm Center in the Storm."

The strongest parts of the book are Bennion's own comments. Bradford catches an advantage many other biographers miss because her subject is still living. And she makes the most of it; drawing on what must have been dozens of hours of interviews. When she has trouble stitching things together, Bennion himself can often supply the thread.

Lowell L. Bennion is not a flashy book. Unlike A.N. Wilson in his biography of C.S. Lewis, Bradford doesn't speculate or offer many sweeping interpretations. Sometimes the thread of story could use more context. In its way, her biography is a polar opposite of another LDS historian, Fawn Brodie. Bradford carefully details every source in notes at the end of each chapter. Her writing is clear, precise—never sensational. It's as if she hopes her prose will disappear and reveal Bennion himself perches on the page.

The result is not only a book that will be used as a source by future historians, but a book that uses primary sources to show us a man for our times—a man well-deserving of the effort that went into the telling of his life.

To begin with, Bennion had a running head start on the world. Married at 18 and called way from his wife on a mission to Europe, the boy matured early. The death of the couple's first child gave both Bennion and his wife Merle a certain gravity and resonance that stayed with them throughout their lives. A first-rate education in Europe gave the young man an intellectual edge on others at home. And he put his maturity and intellectual advantages to good use. He was only in his 20s when he became director of the LDS Institute at the University of Utah, but his writing and comments from the era sound like the musing of a man twice his age. When a young female student asks him, "I have two proposals of marriage. Which one should I take?" for instance, Bennion's reply has a touch of Solomon: "What makes you think you should marry either one?"

Still, the peaceful life of a mystic and guru was not his path. It's been said one difference between Christianity and other religions is Christianity's incredible emphasis on activism and forgiveness. Bennion would call on those twin virtues many times in his life. Crossed wires with his superiors eventually forced him to leave the LDS Institute program on principle, a move that sent more shock waves through the LDS community than anyone could have imagined. And—as often happens with great leaders—the struggles and heartache of members of his own family stand in stark contrast to the joy he was able to bring to others through his volunteer efforts and as longtime director of the Salt Lake Community Services Council—an irony that surely gave him pause.

Still, to borrow from Stafford again, Bennion "could always find true north" when he had to; and Mary Bradford's book charts his journey well. It does him justice and does her proud.

As I set the volume aside, I thought of a scene from the movie "A Man for All Seasons." Richard—who would eventually play the scoundrel in the tale—comes to Sir Thomas More for career advice. More tells him to become a teacher, but Richard balks.

"But no one will know of me," he complains.

"Well," said More, "you will know, and your students, and God. Not a bad public, that."

Bennion tells Bradford, "I just want to be remembered in the lives of my students." But it's a futile wish. He'll be remembered in the lives of thousands of others as well.

Teacher, counselor, humanitarian—but, most of all a student, Bennion will be an influence for decades after he's gone; not because of his grandeur, but because of his humility. As I read the literal quote from Benion that introduces Chapter 13, I had the feeling he's summarized his life in one simple line, an epitaph in his own hand:

"I used to teach religion," Bennion writes, "now I practice it."

This book will help many of us make similar transitions.