Grondahl Restored 1

In early 70s, if you’d wanted to buy a Mormon book, you’d have had to walk into a Deseret Book somewhere, or, a local bookstore in the Mormon corridor, where you’d have found serious looking hardback books, books such as Miracle of Forgiveness, Pathways to Perfection, Mormon Doctrine,  Faith Precedes the Miracle, or Faith Promoting Miracles, as well as some books that were Mormon-related, maybe  The First Two Thousand Years  or Fascinating Womanhood.  You might have also found some books of heart-warming anecdotes, or homey recipes, but not much intentional funny. Then just in time for Christmas, 1978, a bright green paperback appeared on the shelves– but the copies didn’t stay put for long. Faith Promoting Rumors, by Calvin Grondahl,  made gentle fun of Mormons, all kinds of Mormons, survivalists, bishops, nursery teachers, East Benchers, apostates, Primary presidents and more. The jokes were instantly hilarious, if you were Mormon, almost inscrutable, if you were not.

Thirty three years latter, the humor still holds up, even if the very idea of Mormon humor is not so original.  With the kind permission of The Sunstone  Foundation, the publisher, and Calvin Grondahl, currently the political cartoonist for the Ogden Standard-Examiner, we’ll be running one of the cartoons weekly here at D&S.