Ben Park Scrubbed From MI

[drumdude]

Well yeah, but, come on. I thought they had a reason kicking out Dr Peterson and friends--something about they ain't gonna do things the same

Holland played an Uno Reverse Card. A lot of those going around church HQ lately...

[IHAQ]

I think we all hoped the “strange period” of blocklisting at BYU would indeed be of short duration and would “resolve itself soon.” But given recent news about historian Benjamin Park’s erasure from BYU’s Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, it seems the strangeness is alive and well.

In 2018, Park was a summer fellow at the institute, researching and writing his excellent book “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier.” The institute gave him funding and a home for the summer, interviewed him for its podcast and trumpeted his involvement on its homepage. The participation of a Cambridge-educated, nationally recognized historian of early America was a feather in the institute’s cap.

Until last week, when the news broke that all record of Park’s fellowship and involvement with the Maxwell Institute had been systematically erased from its website. On Twitter, @TheGrandScoobah shared screenshots of what the site had looked like in 2018, when Park was a fellow, and what it looks like now.

Desaparecido. But why?

Was this because Park objected to a speech two weeks ago by Latter-day Saint apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, taking to Twitter to point out the ways the talk was harmful to the LGBTQ community (and to academic freedom)?

Or was it his recent piece in The Washington Post, in which he noted the deep fissures that now exist between leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have actively endorsed mask-wearing and vaccination against the COVID-19 pandemic and some U.S. members who have followed the anti-mask trajectory of right-wing politicians and pundits rather than the counsel of their prophet?

Or was it something else? We don’t know, because no one from the church or the university has yet seen fit to explain to Park what he did that triggered his erasure.

“They’re not very transparent when they make those decisions,” Park said in a Zoom interview. “And so I have as much information about why or who ordered the removal as anyone else who saw that Twitter thread.”

The action feels vaguely Orwellian, leaning into the “1984” idea that “the past (is) alterable.” In the novel, when the government suddenly changes tack and declares its enemy is Eastasia, the citizens fall all over themselves not only to change their allegiances in the present but to manipulate history so it looks like Eastasia has always been their enemy instead of the ally it had been formerly. To accomplish this, the ironically named “Ministry of Truth” has to alter several years’ worth of newspapers, films, books and propaganda so they all parrot the current party line. No explanation is ever given for this sudden shift. It simply is.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09 ... y-did-byu/

Why won't BYU/The Church publicly own this action?

[Kishkumen]

There is a reason I am not LDS anymore. In fact, I have uncovered an entire history of Mormonism that helps me understand why I don’t fit. It is nice not to have much to do with the LDS powers that be. Nice not to take them too seriously anymore. They make it difficult to take them very seriously. If Dr. Park was supposed to take them seriously, they just made it much harder for him to do so. The whole affair makes them look like toddlers throwing a tantrum, not men of God.