By Seth Lewis
You could say Dean Hughes owns Deseret Book”s bestsellers list: Three volumes of his “Children of the Promise” series are in the Top 10.
Hard to imagine, then, what happened 25 years ago when Hughes first approached Deseret Book representatives with an idea for a novel.
They scoffed.
LDS literature? Didn”t exist.
Now, Hughes” popular series is a microcosm of a rapidly expanding LDS genre.
“I think we”re growing up as a culture,” said the BYU English professor. “I think we”re getting to be more able to look at ourselves and laugh at ourselves.”
Eugene England, an LDS culture expert at UVSC, goes one step further in championing today”s LDS literature.
“It”s a dawning of a brighter day – a kind of Mormon renaissance,” he said.
The book boom has at least one thing in common with the Renaissance of 450 years ago: sheer quantity.
“The quantity diminishes the quality to some extent,” said Robert Millet, former dean of religious education at BYU and author of several books.
With the proliferation of LDS literature has come the contention that commentaries get in the way of commandments, that gospel soliloquies circumvent scripture.
“Of course, the danger is obvious,” Hughes said.
Still, Hughes doubts his historical fiction works – or Gerald Lund”s wildly popular “The Work and the Glory” series, for that matter – has done much to detract from the doctrine.
“I”ve never had anyone say my stuff is a wedge between scripture,” Hughes said.
The same question of doctrinal dependability arises with LDS music, which has blossomed with the recent popularity of such artists as Michael McLean and Kenneth Cope – as well as the pop phenomenon generated through Especially for Youth albums.
“In some Mormon pop songs, the lyrics are not doctrinally based,” said Douglas Bush, a BYU music professor. “They produce warm, fuzzy feelings, but there”s actually no basis for them in the scriptures themselves.”
Even more, it bothers Bush that, as he sees it, LDS pop is an oxymoron since it channels something sacred through an unholy medium.
“It”s designed to sell,” he said. “I find that incongruous with the gospel message.”
