Richard O. Cowan

Richard Olsen Cowan^[1] (born 1934) is a historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a professor in the Church History Department of Brigham Young University (BYU). He is one of the longest-serving BYU faculty and the longest-serving member of the Church History Department ever.

Biography

Cowan was raised in Los Angeles. He is legally blind and has had retinitis pigmentosa since birth, and by 2000 he had lost nearly all vision.

Between his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Cowan served a mission for the LDS Church in the Spanish-American mission, among the Mexican immigrants in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona from 1953 to 1956.^[2] On his mission he met Dawn Houghton, and they later married and had six children.

Education

Cowan received his bachelor of arts in political science at Occidental College in 1958. He received an M.A. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1961 in American History, both from Stanford University. In 1959 he received an award from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, selected as one of four visually handicapped students in the United States.^[2]

Career

Since 1961 Cowan has been a professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU. Cowan received BYU's professor of the year award in 1965. He has taught at the BYU Jerusalem Center and in the spring of 2007 was a visiting professor at BYU-Hawaii.

Writings

Cowan helped write the LDS Church's Sunday School manual for 1978–80, on the Doctrine and Covenants and LDS history.^[2]

In 1972 the LDS Church planned a new sixteen-volume sesquicentennial history to be published in 1980, and Cowan was commissioned to write about the 20th century.^[2][3] These contracts were all canceled in 1981^[4] but Cowan still completed and published his volume, as The Church in the Twentieth Century in 1985.^[5]

From 1981-1993 Cowan served as the chair of the committee in charge of preparing gospel doctrine lessons for the LDS Church. Among his books are Temples 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 about the international church with Donald Q. Cannon. Cowan, along with Cannon and Arnold K. Garr was one of the editors of the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History.^[6] 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 The Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He also wrote the articles for History of Temples, Missionary Training Centers, Branch, and Branch President.

Notes

References

• Zawrotny, B. Robert (Summer 1994). "Following Beacons of Light". BYU Magazine (BYU) 

External links

• Faculty page at the BYU College of Religion
• Works by or about Richard O. Cowan in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Richard O. Cowan at Goodreads
• Author's page at Deseret Book