Mormon-studies professorship is California's first - The program at Claremont Graduate University will be led by church elder Richard Lyman Bushman.

Non-Mormon academics and Mormon church leaders described Claremont's appointment of Richard Lyman Bushman, professor emeritus of early American history at Columbia University, as a significant advance in serious scholarship about the religion, which is growing quickly worldwide but also raising puzzlement and even hostility.

Bushman is a devout Mormon whose 2005 biography of the faith's prophet, "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling," garnered many positive reviews, although some critics said it uncomfortably straddled reverence and logic. In the last year, he gained national attention as a media commentator about Mormonism's role in American life and the presidential candidacy of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is Mormon too.

Bushman's post at Claremont is to begin next fall and last at least three years. The new professorship shows that "Mormons believe that their religion is worthy of study at the highest academic level and, secondly, that it can bear up under that kind of scrutiny," Bushman said.

The professor, who is 76 and earned his bachelor's and graduate degrees at Harvard University, likened the Claremont professorship to the start of Armenian studies at Harvard in the 1960s.

"It's the same thing: groups that are marginal to American society who want to have a foothold in major American institutions," he said.

Claremont has raised about $1 million, mainly in donations from Mormons, to establish the Howard W. Hunter visiting professorship in Mormon studies, named after the late president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was a lawyer in California. The goal is $2.5 million for a permanently endowed chair, which supporters hope to garner by next year, and another $2.5 million for scholarships, conferences and library books.

Claremont had hoped to be the first secular institution to offer a formal Mormon-studies program but was beaten to the punch by Utah State University, which started classes on the topic this fall. But being the first school outside Utah -- the center of Mormonism -- is itself an achievement, said Karen Torjesen, dean of Claremont's School of Religion.