Richard Olsen Cowan (born 1934) is a historian ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a former professor in the Church History Department ofBrigham Young University (BYU).[1] He was one of the longest-serving BYU faculty and the longest-serving member of the Church History Department ever.
Cowan was raised inLos Angeles. He is legally blind, havingretinitis pigmentosa since birth, and by 2000, he had lost nearly all vision.
Halfway through his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Cowan served amission forthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Spanish-Americanmission, among the Mexican immigrants inTexas andNew Mexico from 1953 to 1956.[2][3] Cowan tells of one instance when he was able to use his braille scriptures to prove his gospel knowledge to another minister.[3] On his mission, he met Dawn Houghton, which he later married, and decided to teach religion atBrigham Young University.[3]
Cowan received hisBachelor of Arts in political science atOccidental College in 1958. He received anM.A. in 1959 and aPh.D. in 1961 in American History, both fromStanford University. In 1959, he received an award fromPresidentDwight D. Eisenhower, selected as one of four visually handicapped students in the United States.[2]
Beginning in 1961, Cowan was a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. Cowan received BYU’s professor of the year award in 1965. He has taught at theBYU Jerusalem Center and in the spring of 2007 was a visiting professor atBYU-Hawaii. He retired from BYU in 2015.[4]
Cowan has focused a good portion of his scholarship on temples and has been sought out by the media and academics for his expertise.[5][6][7]
Cowan followed the construction of theProvo Utah Temple closely.[8] He attended the dedication in 1972 and was moved by the proceedings.[8][9] He wrote some of his memories of the time and compiled other people's memories into his 2015 bookProvo's Two Temples.[8]
Among other positions in the Church, Cowan has served as a stake patriarch.[10]
Cowan helped write theSunday School manual forthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1978 to 1980, on theDoctrine and Covenants andLDS history.[2]
In 1972, the Church planned a new sixteen-volume sesquicentennial history to be published in 1980, and Cowan was commissioned to write about the 20th century.[2][11] These contracts were all canceled in 1981,[12] but Cowan still completed and published his volume asThe Church in the Twentieth Century in 1985.[13]
From 1981 to 1993, Cowan served as the chair of the committee in charge of preparing Gospel Doctrine lessons for the Church. Among his books areTemples to Dot the Earth (1997),California Saints, A 150-year Legacy in the Golden State;The Church in the Twentieth Century (Salt Lake City:Bookcraft, 1985);The Latter-day Saint Century, which covered about the same topic but was written 15 years later. He also co-wrote a book withDonald Q. Cannon about the international church. Cowan, along with Cannon andArnold K. Garr, was one of the editors of theEncyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History.[14] He wrote the article on the history of the Church from 1945 until 1990 (or basically as recent as he could at the time) for theEncyclopedia of Mormonism. He also wrote the articles for History of Temples, Missionary Training Centers, Branch, and Branch President.
He was a co-editor with John P. Livingstone andCraig J. Ostler ofThe Mormons: An Illustrated History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, published in 2013.
In 2015, BYU’s Religious Studies Center published hisProvo's Two Temples book.
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