My own culture seems to have forgotten the historical importance of Mormon beards. Whiskers sifted the hardtack and bean soup of Missouri jails. Fuzzy faces marched through spring rains and summer sun on that famous pioneer trek. Early Mormon missionaries, though they traveled without purse or scrip, usually took a beard along. Who can imagine an unbearded Brigham Young, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, or Heber J. Grant? Who but a heretic could envision prayers ascending to a shaven God?