Something happened around the 1500s that initiated what most call the Modern Age. Personally, I date the beginning of the modern project to Gutenberg's press in 1439. Sometime after that, by the mid-17th century, the Enlightenment began. By the early 19th century, we see the rise of modernity characterized by an increasingly secular and relativistic outlook.

There is vast literature on these topics. If it is of any help to you, I have included a bibliography (click the graphics tab on right-hand side of this page) of works I believe are relevant.

Some of have thought these columns too pessimistic, especially the last one. Of course, the opposite is true. I am deeply optimistic. I am optimistic because I reject the material explanation of existence. God did create the universe and he watches over it. As Tennyson wrote during, and in response to, the Darwinian revolution, "God is not dead nor doth he sleep."

As a Latter-day Saint I see God's hand intimately involved in, and guiding, the events of history that have led to the Restoration of his Gospel and ultimately his Second Coming.

The Restoration would not have been possible without the Enlightenment which laid the foundation of political and religious freedom. The Enlightenment was an indispensable element of the American Revolution, also a necessary precondition of the Restoration. Though the Enlightenment created and carried within it the corrosive seeds of materialism and secularism, the Gospel is the antidote.

I, and numerous others, have noted the crucial importance of the secular changes that began in the 1820s and 1830s. God, who knows the end from the beginning, knew, and was prepared for, the disastrous consequences of secularization. In 1831 Joseph Smith received the following revelation. "Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments; and also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world [that] the weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones."

As I stated, this is my perspective as a Latter-day Saint, but I believe this is a much more preferable and supportable view than to think, as many do, we are descending into a post-modern new dark age.

Joseph A. Cannon is editor of the Deseret News. E-mail: cannon@desnews.com