Daniel Peterson wrote:Well, I've thought of calling you some names, but, unfortunately, my copy of the official
FARMS Thesaurus of Insulting Personal Epithets, 3rd ed., is in another room.
In the meantime, some hasty notes on the other issue raised here, and then I have to run. Among other things, I have a midterm exam to write.
simon belmont wrote:I, for one, would very much like to hear your answer, even if people like KG and Scratch lambaste you for it.
And, of course, we know with certainty that they will. And it's highly unlikely that I'll respond to them.
Okay, here's the question, as rongo summarized it over at MDDB:
rongo wrote:I’m LDS, but have pretty much lost my testimony over contradictions between the Church’s “tightly-correlated data points” and history. I continue to go to church because of a bishopric member I can talk to about these issues. In the past, my bishop was a nice guy, but completely ill-equipped to discuss or deal with these things. I’ve tried FAIR, MADB, etc., but nothing really helps much. My question is: what is the Church doing to improve this state of things, and are things getting better in this regard?
I think the Church is doing several things that could conceivably improve “this state of things.” The publication of the Joseph Smith Papers (to say nothing of the associated television series, etc.) is a marvelous step; as is the on-going Mountain Meadows Massacre project led by Richard Turley, Glen Leonard, and Ronald Walker; as is Royal Skousen’s work on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project; as was
BYU Studies electronic publication of massive quantities of material from the Church Archives.
There are lots and lots of good new publications in Mormon studies and Mormon history. The trouble is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. On the whole, people—and especially Americans, perhaps—just aren’t all that interested in history.
In my view, far and away the best method of preventing apostasies on the basis of historical problems is for members to learn more history. Richard Bushman and I have spoken often about “inoculations” by means of good, solid, historical teaching, publishing, and reading. But even the very best selling Mormon historical books and periodicals reach only a few thousand people.
To put it perhaps another way: Many years ago, I heard the late Professor Stanley Kimball (a professor of history at Southern Illinois University and a former president of the Mormon History Association) give a talk to the Miller-Eccles Study Group in southern California in which he spoke of three levels of Mormon history—A, B, and C. (Given my particular background, I would have favored “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.”)
Level A would be something like a Junior Sunday School version of Mormon history—probably what the questioner had in mind when he spoke of “the Church’s ‘tightly-correlated data points’”—in which all is simple and clear, the Mormons always wear white hats, there are no ambiguities, etc. (Thesis.) Most believing Latter-day Saints live on this level. They are fine people, very possibly better than most of us here and absolutely better than I am. They lead good lives of service and devotion to family, but they don’t really get into Mormon history very deeply, or read serious theological tomes.
Level B would be the direct opposite of Level A. (Antithesis.) The Mormons, or at least their leaders/founders, wear black hats, and its pretty clear and unambiguous that every significant claim of Mormonism is false. This is the realm of the Tanners and Ed Decker, but also of more than a few secular critics of the Church. (The situation isn’t really quite so simplistic, but we’re going for a schematic presentation here. It’s a heuristic method.)
Level C (synthesis) represents a view of Mormon history that takes into account whatever valid evidence and arguments exist on Level B. It recognizes that Mormons and their leaders sometimes made mistakes, that enemies of the Church weren’t always simply purely evil, that there are ambiguities, etc. But Dr. Kimball’s conviction was that Level C is, on the whole, very like Level A. It’s simply more nuanced, more realistic, less simplistic. (I agree with him. Properly understood, in my judgment, history not only doesn’t “refute” Mormon claims, it
supports them. Another way of putting this would be to say that I disagree with the questioner’s perception of “contradictions between the Church’s ‘tightly-correlated data points’” and history.” I do not see substantial contradictions, let alone lethal ones.)
Professor Kimball went on to say that, as a historian, he wished that everybody were on Level C. (I couldn’t agree more strongly.) However, he recognized why the Church tends to teach Level A: People are sometimes lost when they come into contact with any form of Level B history. Once exposed to it, though, they can’t simply return to Level A. They have to work their way through to Level C. But that takes effort, intellectual and/or spiritual, and some won’t make it. They will deny that it even exists, at least in the form that Professor Kimball and I believe it to exist.
One good way to arm people against historical and other challenges to their faith is to fortify their confidence in certain basic claims. (I’ve written several recent
Mormon Times articles that cluster around this theme.) If I’m confident that Joseph Smith received real plates from Moroni, the question of whether he was correct on, say, the
Elias/Elijah question appears in a very different light than if I think he didn’t. If I’m convinced that he was a fundamentally good man, my approach to the murky origins of Mormon polygamy will be different than if I believe him to be a basically bad man or even am agnostic on that score.
Sometimes, issues will arise for which, at least at this point, I have no good answer. If I have reason to expect that a good and satisfying answer is possible, it makes sense to bracket such issues for a time, to put them on the shelf. (I’ve seen more than a few of these issues find answers with the passage of an interval, or even flatly dissolve as “pseudo-problems.”) If I come to believe that no such good and satisfying answers are forthcoming or even genuinely possible, then it will seem to make less sense, or no sense at all, to bracket such issues or put them on the shelf.
I concur that most bishops are unequipped to deal with historical issues to any serious degree. This is scarcely surprising. Most bishops, most members of the Church, most Americans, most people generally, are not historians. Our critics have combed through our history for many decades now, seeking problems, or things that they can portray as problems. It’s not at all unexpected to find that most bishops, who are farmers and accountants and PE coaches and high school math teachers and businessmen, are at a loss when somebody confronts them with a seemingly odd quote from Journal of Discourses 23:258 or an allegation from Doctor Philastus Hurlbut. (Bishops have different strengths. I was good at historical and theological issues, but needed a great deal of help when offering financial advice and often resorted to professional counseling services when I encountered cases involving mental and emotional problems.)
Moreover, this isn’t geometry. In geometry, if a proof is sound, there is no room for “opinions” once it has been demonstrated. By contrast, the publicly available facts on matters of worldview leave the conclusions underdetermined. A position or argument that convinces one person will leave another unconvinced—on issues of politics and philosophy just as much as in religion. I don’t know what the questioner looked at on FAIR—I don’t see MDDB (a.k.a. MADB) as an “apologetic” site nor as, on the whole, a good place to look for answers—but I fully expect that some arguments there that one person finds unpersuasive would seem utterly convincing to
me. We all come to these topics with different personalities, assumptions, presuppositions, educational backgrounds, psychological quirks, personal histories, and the like, and those will affect our reactions very strongly. Maybe he gave the FAIR material a serious hearing, maybe he didn’t. In either case, he might come away unconvinced. But we’re doing pretty well, I think.
There’s still much to be done. And we’re trying to do some of it. People will still gain and lose testimonies, just as they always have.
Finally, I don’t see “having a testimony” as simply or even largely affirming certain propositions. It’s more like having a relationship (e.g., in a marriage). Trust is everything. And you have to want it. That may not be sufficient, but it's necessary.