This week in Church history
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50 years ago
Elder Ezra Taft Benson, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, told students at a prominent Midwestern university that they must "look beyond the materialism of this world for our security," according to an article in the Feb. 2, 1957, Church News.
The article reported that Elder Benson, at the time serving as Secretary of Agriculture in U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Cabinet, "in an appearance at a Religion in Life Week convocation at Ohio State University this week warned that 'our blessings could prove to be our undoing."'
The article continued reporting on the address by Elder Benson, who would later become the 13th president of the Church, stating that he "declared that the things we accept as blessings could turn to our destruction '... unless our perspective is right and our idealism more concerned with standards and values than with material gain and worldly honors.
"'In country after country, faith in moral principle has been ruthlessly ridiculed and stripped of its dignity.
"'The belief that man has certain inalienable rights, so endowed by his Creator, is rudely shaken. Godless men and women have seized power over one-third of the world's people. But man, under God, does not abandon his search for freedom."'
