President Spencer W. Kimball’s remarks on “The Gospel Vision of the Arts” thrilled many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of my generation.
“For years,” he said in the article published in the Ensign in July 1977, “I have been waiting for someone to do justice in recording in song and story and painting and sculpture the story of the Restoration, the re-establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, the struggles and frustrations; the apostasies and inner revolutions and counter-revolutions of those first decades; of the exodus; of the counter-reactions; of the transitions; of the persecution days; of the miracle-man, Joseph Smith.