Leonard Arrington Testimony

[Guest]

What on earth are you talking about?

Dr. Peterson,

I am talking about what exactly what you are talking about:

Every once in a while, I put together a testimony for an exceptionally prominent deceased LDS scholar and post it on "Mormon Scholars Testify."

Emphasis mine.

Again, sort of creepy.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I don't see any indication on the testimony that this was quoted from another source. Further, I can think of several reasons why Arrington would object to being included in a project of yours, Dr. Peterson. At the very least, I think, you should put the entire thing in quotation marks and provide a citation, so that readers know that you lifted it from another text. Or, better yet, either delete the entry or go and get proper permission from the man's relatives.

[_Aristotle Smith]

I'm going to have to agree with Scratch on this one. A testimony should be that, a testimony that a person wrote for this purpose and/or gave their permission to be used for this purpose.

So what people write and publish may not be quoted elsewhere?

Quote it all you want. Tatoo it on all of your nether regions for all I care. But you are running a site which claims it

gives LDS scholars the opportunity to express their views and feelings about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

How was Leonard Arrington given the opportunity to express his views for this site?

A remarkable principle.

It is. My perception of your honesty (not that I expect you give a rat's backside about such things) is going down the toilet.

Don't quote me on that.

Never have, probably never will.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I don't see any indication on the testimony that this was quoted from another source.

The ellipses in the text, the reference in the text to "this memoir," and the citation in the biography ["and Adventures of a Church Historian (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), which won a special citation from the Mormon History Association. (The entry above was extracted from pages 236-237 of Adventures of a Church Historian")] didn't provide enough clues for you?

Further, I can think of several reasons why Arrington would object to being included in a project of yours, Dr. Peterson.

I can't.

We weren't really close, but we got along well, and he was very complimentary of my work on several occasions.

And I've also been quite close over the past two decades or so, for what it's worth, to several of his long-time associates (e.g., his two former assistants in the Church Historian's Office [Davis Bitton and Jim Allen] and his first two successors in the Redd Professorship [Jim Allen, again, and Tom Alexander]. I'm quite confident that he would have been fine with being represented on the "Mormon Scholars Testify" site. He was a believer. As he says.

At the very least, I think, you should put the entire thing in quotation marks and provide a citation, so that readers know that you lifted it from another text.

How embarrassing this must be for you!

Or, better yet, either delete the entry or go and get proper permission from the man's relatives.

Don't ever quote me again, Scratch, without my express written permission.

[_Buffalo]

As long as we're soliciting testimonies from the dead, why not get them from people who died as non-members, but were later baptized by proxy? Imagine the credibility you could add to your site (and, since this is an argument from authority, Mormonism itself) by including a testimony from Dr. Albert Einstein! You could also include Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

However, if I were you, Herr Döktor, I would exclude famous Mormon Adolf Hitler from this project. Not only is he not a scholar by even mopologist standards, but I hear he had questionable taste in art.

[Guest]

As long as we're soliciting testimonies from the dead, why not get them from people who died as non-members, but were later baptized by proxy? Imagine the credibility you could add to your site (and, since this is an argument from authority, Mormonism itself) by including a testimony from Dr. Albert Einstein! You could also include Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

However, if I were you, Herr Döktor, I would exclude famous Mormon Adolf Hitler from this project. Not only is he not a scholar by even mopologist standards, but I hear he had questionable taste in art.

This would make only slightly less sense (and probably be more effective) than what the good Dr. is doing now.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I don't see any indication on the testimony that this was quoted from another source.

The ellipses in the text, the reference in the text to "this memoir," and the citation in the biography ["and Adventures of a Church Historian (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), which won a special citation from the Mormon History Association. (The entry above was extracted from pages 236-237 of Adventures of a Church Historian")] didn't provide enough clues for you?

The ellipses merely show that something has been deleted. The reference to "this memoir" does indeed seem bizarre sans any further editorial clarification. And yes: you do have that "clarification" buried down in the biography. Do you really feel that's enough? I think that the testimony itself should be put in quotation marks, and that you should very clearly annotate the testimony itself so as to indicate that you've lifted this wholesale from one of Arrington's books. Like what you did with the Hugh Nibley "testimony":

This collection of quotations from Hugh Nibley was supervised and approved by his widow, Phyllis Nibley. We are pleased to post it in commemoration of the centennial of his birth.

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/778/hugh-nibley

I wonder why you bypassed the approval process for Arrington? You went and got permission for the other deceased testimony bearers' families. Why not Arrington's?

Further, I can think of several reasons why Arrington would object to being included in a project of yours, Dr. Peterson.

I can't.

Oh, no? The thing is: Arrington's was crucial to the "Camelot" period of LDS history and historiography, and much of this got shut down in the 1980s after several of the GAs got paranoid. In your OP on this thread, you're basically claiming that Arrington's testimony is somehow a response to critics' argument that the Church has tried to whitewash or hide embarrassing history. If anything, we have better LDS histories today (including from Arrington's protege, D. Michael Quinn) in spite of the Church and because of Arrington. Both your OP and your inclusion of him on MST omit all of this. By glossing over the facts of his role, you're essentially committing a lie of omission.

We weren't really close, but we got along well, and he was very complimentary of my work on several occasions.

Everything I've ever heard about Arrington suggests that he would have treated you nicely, that he would have been encouraging, courteous, etc. That said, I would imagine that he would object pretty strenuously (i.e., he would be "disappointed in you") over your stuff on SHIELDS, much of the mockery and attack in the Review, etc. The fact that you've been so deeply involved in Mopologetics might very well have been a major red flag for him. Further, he passed away fairly deep into the publication history of the FROB. I kind of suspect that if he was as big of a supporter of yours as you claim, he would have contributed.

[_Simon Belmont]

I liked it, Dr. P. Very uplifting. I also like the Nibley and Madsen entries.

I don't understand Scratch's overreaction to it, and you can bet that if an LDS apologist overreacted in such a way to something Scratch did he or she would be lambasted by Scratch.

So, DrW et. al.: can you explain what is wrong with this so that I can better understand your vehement opposition to it?

Edit: I understand now why Scratch reacted the way he did -- any connection to Dr. Quinn and all bets are off, it seems.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I liked it, Dr. P. Very uplifting. I also like the Nibley and Madsen entries.

I don't understand Scratch's overreaction to it, and you can bet that if an LDS apologist overreacted in such a way to something Scratch did he or she would be lambasted by Scratch.

So, DrW et. al.: can you explain what is wrong with this so that I can better understand your vehement opposition to it?

It's simple: there are a number of reasons why Arrington would have personally objected to being involved in a project headed up by Daniel C. Peterson. Further, DCP went and got permission to post material from the other deceased testimony-bearers, and he didn't do that for Arrington.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Simon, why did you "unfriend" MST on Facebook?