The Best of the 2010s: A Mopologetic Decade in Review

[_Dr Moore]

It does baffle me that straight answers on such honest, simple questions are not to be found in the church — not by leaders and not by scholars.

And yet the same scholars and leaders are so ready and willing to embrace a binary system consisting only of two types of people: those who are “faithful” and those who “despise” the church.

Ironically, whereas most of the defense arguments require a highly nuanced, opportunistic and convoluted spectrum of possibilities, yet there is no space to accommodate such a broad middle ground when it comes to the actors in this grand movie: PEOPLE. I guess since t the conclusion from various church presidents is that it’s a war, therefore all data must force fit individuals into foe and friend buckets. It really is a shame because that system causes significantly more pain and lost relationship intimacy than it will ever know.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... rt-19.html

[_kairos]

Thanx Dr Scratch for a wonderfully amusing and factual trip down memory lane, with me having witnessed with the many others the sum, substance and often hilarious chronicalling of the amazing world of Mopologetics that you have provided the community!

Crackpot ideas and theories analyzed and infused with lying, deception, obfuscation will continue to the modus operandi of the mopologists trying to keep the rich ship Zion from sinking!

My guess is that more leakers will come out of the COB, that following the EP money trail will be critical to church survival if the IRS can get into "discovery"! Another thing to look out for is DCP completing the 2 Books he promised in the past decade, and his retirement before the church tells the Parpwon widow the Book of Mormon is fiction.

Yes there is no way for the church to go but DOWN!

Thanx again and best to all in 2020!
K

[_Jersey Girl]

I wouldn't mind seeing a write up of all who crossed over regardless of time period.

One prominent crossover who went the other direction--from critic to believer--was Don Bradley. I can't think of any others in this decade who did the same, though.

I dunno. I think of Don Bradley as more of a boomerang/prodigal son type crossover. But sure...I guess he qualifies.

I wouldn't expect Dr. Scratch to take on all the writing. It'd be nice to have a kind of testimony thread wherein crossovers shared their stories.

I'm asking too much, I know. Just something I'd be very interested in reading.

[_moksha]

It'd be nice to have a kind of testimony thread wherein crossovers shared their stories.

Pretty sure all who returned brought new perceptions and qualifiers with them.

[_Dr. Shades]

I dunno. I think of Don Bradley as more of a boomerang/prodigal son type crossover. But sure...I guess he qualifies.

OOPS! You did indeed say "regardless of time period;" I was focusing on this past decade only.

[_Physics Guy]

A fascinating high-level view. I was surprised to see the Watson Letter in first place just because it was new to me. The episode does seem to embody the essential weirdness of aggressively theorizing apologetics in a church led by a living prophet.

Either it really doesn't matter where Cumorah is, and so the apologists should shut up, or it does matter, and so the prophet should speak up. If you try to talk about Mormonism in the non-Mormon universe, you're going to say there were all these Nephites in the Americas and immediately get the question, "Um, where?" Everyone knows that the Americas are big, but everyone knows that everywhere in them is a real place that you can probably see now on YouTube, and everyone knows that you can go there and dig. When they hear ancient history they expect archaeology. So pinning down where everything happened really matters a lot. In the Mormon universe, however, the prophet is the best judge of whether the prophet should speak; the prophet hasn't chosen to make an unequivocal churchwide declaration on geography; and so the setting of the Book of Mormon clearly does not really matter.

The Mormon and non-Mormon worlds are just worlds apart. Mormon apologetics tries to connect them. And I think that may be exactly why brief messages from an otherwise unknown secretary were so vital.

It's not just because as secretary to the First Presidency itself Watson was close enough to spit on the burning bush. I think the deeper point is that Watson was as close to the burning bush as any modern apologist could ever come, because if any of the apologists ever got face time with the prophet to argue for limited geography, the prophet would say, "Who are you and what are you talking about?" And everyone knows that. Mormon apologetics is just as absurd within Mormonism as it is outside it. It lives between the two worlds, not in either.

Perhaps this is also part of why para-church institutions like FARMS and the Maxwell Institute and FairMormon and Interpreter are so important to Mormon apologists. Proxy institutions become icons of legitimacy that are precious precisely because of their ambiguous status. Just as it was equally vital that Watson was secretary to the First Presidency and that he was only the secretary, so the Neal A. Maxwell Institute was crucially ambiguous for the apologists. It bears an apostle's name and is part of BYU, yet is not part of the church itself. It wasn't just their home. It was the only home they could have.

Thinking about the Watson Letter episode, and why Doctor Scratch has ranked it as the top event of a decade, has given me more sympathy for the Mormon apologists. I tend to think of apologists as soldiers on the front line staring across a narrow border at the enemy. Probably the apologists think of themselves that way, too. This is a war between worlds, however, and it has gone on too long. The apologetic struggle on behalf of Mormonism does not even make sense to most Mormons. The apologists are no longer citizens of the realm they defend. They live in No Man's Land now.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

PG,

Well. The Midge refers to himself as a Soldier for the Lord quite often. I think the Mopologists would more aptly be described as mercenaries. Unfortunately for the Church, mercs tends to go rogue and often violate rules of engagement which lead to all sorts of headaches for everyone involved. They are a great for plausible deniability by state actors, though....

— Doc

[_moksha]

... if any of the apologists ever got face time with the prophet to argue for limited geography, the prophet would say, "Who are you and what are you talking about?" And everyone knows that. Mormon apologetics is just as absurd within Mormonism as it is outside it.

That is because Mormon Apologetics failed to produce foolproof answers like this one: All Book of Mormon events took place in an alternate universe. God delivered Moroni unto the Palmyra location in our universe to escape from the MesoItalian Lamanites, so that Joseph could dig up the gold-resembling plates made of Mormonium (a totally liftable substance that could convey an ancient story through the medium of a seer stone). Once the story was recorded, the plates were returned to the original universe, but the information from that other universe was fully restored here.

[_Dr Exiled]

Mormonism makes so much sense, especially with all the bitches and hoes I can get in the next life. I'd convert but I gotta do this thing ....

[Guest]

Thank you for that trip down Memory Lane, Doctor Scratch. This is what I would call public history at its finest, and you, sir, are its chief public historian. I am reminded of more personal events intertwined with these significant developments. For example, I will never forget the submission of my Sunstone notes to FAIRMormon for “peer review” without my permission. That was a blast. Ahem. I will also not soon forget the kind notes—sent to my work email— from our recently departed acquaintance Bill Hamblin. Nor will my temporary “popularity” as a topic of conversation of discussion on MDDB fade from my mind any time soon.

We all have stories attached to these larger events. Apologetics have been a large part of my life. It started when I was an LDS missionary, continued in a different form when I started at BYU, and took a huge turn in a new direction when the discussion went online. Hugh Nibley, Jack Welch, Daniel Peterson, John Gee, and Lou Midgley were all fixtures in my story. Soon Brent Metcalfe and Dan Vogel entered my awareness as my understanding of Mormon history and texts started to change.

The internet was a sea change event in it all. It transformed the discussion and opened it up to a new generation of discussants. Discussion boards, blogs, podcasts, online communities—the flowering of countless new approaches and combinations of ideas—took Mormonism out of the hands of the LDS Church to the point that the very name Mormon was sloughed off by the president of that church.

What we are witnessing is the democratization of religion in one of its many iterations. The LDS Church does not own Mormonism, and it no longer really wants to. Why? Because it lost control of it, or, to be more precise, was no longer able to suppress the fact that it never did control it in the first place. But it did control the minds of many people where their religion is concerned. It did so by authorizing and, conversely, delegitimizing various narratives about Mormonism.

Now we see that the LDS narrative is but one of a plethora of Mormon narratives. Communication outside of the Church’s well controlled venues makes it possible for people to see Mormonism in any number of new aspects. Think of the Remnant Movement, which could have never taken root without online resources. Now being LDS is only one circle on a giant Venn diagram of Mormon identity and practice.

I love that. I love the liberation of Mormonism from the LDS Church. I thrill with the irony of President Nelson denigrating the name of his own people, and then seeing many of them fall into line, accepting his rejection of their identity as their new identity. It’s truly remarkable!

So, here’s to the internet, the tool that exploded our religious lives, liberating us all from the grand narrative of a spiritual oligarchy. And here’s to the Good Doctor, who has kept the fires of our memories lit with the history of a significant Mormon narrative involving Mopologetics.