I think this is an area where SWK’s influence indelibly changed the Church — a focus on doing, not knowing. And yes, we even have “I am a Child of God” as a cultural emblem of that mindset.

We’ve become a doing Church, more than a knowing Church. Not that we don’t “know”, but that we’re more focused on “doing”, and and that’s OK.

(That said … I want to find a copy of the book…)

And remember, this is all prior to SWK’s edict to simplify the Church publications when he was the president of the Church — so that remote stakes and wards could avail themselves of the needed information.

Are we worse for it? Only if you believe that we need more doctrinal meat and less inspirational content. I think the Church has matured to the point that we need more inspirational content and less of the “facts”. (As a mission prez of mine once put it — knowing all of this stuff is really cool, but it won’t save us or help our families.)

The Church has evolved. The membership has evolved. Our leaders have evolved. It’s really cool to know these materials are out there, but I don’t subscribe to the idea that we’re any worse off for the current approach.

Of course Nibley was an academic and he least of all would want his work to be taken dogmatically. It’s unfortunate that people sometimes take it as anything but a first step that needs refined rather than some text that should survive the test of time unmodified. Nibley was about progression not stasis.

As to the manuals I’m mixed. Certainly they engaged in meatier topics but they also neglected the practical. And ultimately the gospel is practical. Further these analysis, especially of other faiths, usually are just embarassingly bad or one sided. I’ve not read this one in particular. But I’m not sure it’s wise to grapple with a subject purportedly in a critical fashion when really one’s just aping dogma in a naive fashion. It may come off like your engaging the gospel in a more rigorous fashion whereas really you’re doing the opposite.

While I have some issues with the way the current manuals are done after reading quite a few manuals from the 40′s through the 60′s I’m actually pretty glad they got rid of them. One thing to keep in mind when looking at these manuals is to ask who is going to be the teacher and who is going to be the students and what is the class really going to learn.

I found some copies of the ‘Millennial Star’ from the 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s whilst clearing up recently. (when a branch closed down, no-one seemed to know what to do with these, so they ended up in my home. Sadly I couldn’t keep them all, so just kept a representative sample). One of the 1950′s editions contains the full financial breakdown of Church accounts for the previous year- unheard of now. There are monthly lessons for ‘Ward Teaching’ and ‘Home Sunday School’, along with a featured Apostle and a talk by him. Engagements, marriages, births and baptisms for the whole country are listed too! Also pictures of every single missionary as they arrived or departed.

By the end of the 60′s and just pre Church Magazines, adverts have crept in. A cassette player for £23!!!

Adverts notwithstanding, the content of the lessons is certainly more challenging than we would expect today.

There’s also a beautiful photo of the Bradford Ward RS in 1895, with sisters named, in one of the magazines.

What I meant to say is that I believe even Hugh’s FARM publications came about in much the same manner. He refused to write things down, other than his lecture notes. The books are redactions and transcriptions from some of his classic lecture series at BYU.

Uncle Hugh had a problem because most of what is purportedly his is sketchy lecture notes or second-hand quoted matériel. I am grown very sick and don’t remember good, I’m so sorry, but that is what I have been told about Uncle Hugh. Most of the archived information is taken from lecture notes that his family and friend frantically gathered as they realized that he was slipping away and everything would be gone from that brilliant but haphazard mind.

You say the Barker manual should not be assumed to be very intellectual. However, Hugh Nibley’s priesthood manual from the same basic time period, “An Approach to the Book of Mormon,” was extremely intellectual.

Also impressive, but from a few decades earlier, was B.H. Roberts’ “The Seventies Course in Theology” (vols. 1 and 2).

Although modern manuals concentrate on basic gospel themes, they have their intellectual qualities and are full of citations. However, the manuals cited above are much harder hitting.

I suspect that the need to translate manuals into dozens of different languages has had an impact on content and variability.