Leonard Arrington Testimony

[_Daniel Peterson]

Every once in a while, I put together a testimony for an exceptionally prominent deceased LDS scholar and post it on "Mormon Scholars Testify." This one seems particularly relevant to the claim, advanced by some critics, that Mormon history has been systematically falsified, and that the truth can only be had from critics

That a particular entry on the site has potential side-benefit utility as evidence in an apologetic argument doesn't mean that the site as a whole, or even the entry in particular, has an apologetic agenda.

Utah social statistics can be used, and have been used, to attack and to defend the Mormon lifestyle. That is, they can be used for apologetic purposes, both positive and negative. But that in no way entails the conclusion that they were gathered in the first place for apologetic purposes.

Mormon Scholars Testify was established to comply, as I've always said that it was, with the public invitation of Elder M. Russell Ballard and others to use the Internet to share testimonies.

You've also said, repeatedly, that one of the main purposes of the site is to combat the critical assertion that no "educated person" can believe in the more far-fetched claims of Mormonism.

I don't think that's so much a critical assertion as it is an assumption commonly held without much reflection in certain elite and media circles. (It's the kind of assumption that one would undoubtedly encounter in the editorial boardroom of the New York Times and from David Letterman, as one does in fact find it on Broadway and with Bill Maher.) Hence, my main response to it isn't an apologetic argument replying to critics, but a panoply of counterexamples. I see that as a missionary matter, not an apologetic one. It is, in its way, rather analogous to the Church's "I'm a Mormon" campaign.

Missionary work and apologetics shade into one another, of course. Missionaries employ scriptural and historical arguments; apologists hope that some in their audience will accept the claims of the Restoration. But, although they're not hermetically sealed off from one another, they're conceptually distinct.

Anyway, the idea that highly educated academics (and the like) can and do believe in Mormonism is merely a subtheme of Mormon Scholars Testify. It's not the dominant point. I've also happily encouraged the establishment of Websites that represent other demographic sectors.

So, what's the story, Dr. P.? Are you really that forgetful? Or is something else at work here?

Something else is at work here. Something indescribably evil. Something so terrifying that women weep, and grown men tremble with abject, knee-knocking panic. Something dark. Something sinister. Something too horrible to describe on a family-oriented message board such as this one.

I have to wonder what you get out of fighting with people on threads like this.

You began the "fight."

I simply announced an entry.

Compare your language, in your responses, to my language in the opening post.

What do I get? The satisfaction of revealing you for the malevolent, obsessive, irrational loon that you are. Beyond that, nothing. And even that's becoming painfully redundant.

Really, how much do you personally gain from the inclusion of the Arrington entry? What does it add, overall, to MST?

I get, and it adds, pretty much the same thing that I get from, and that is added by, every other entry on Mormon Scholars Testify.

someone with . . . a long-demonstrated, frequently unethical agenda

I don't subscribe to your bizarre demonology about myself.

dubious ends

That's your (very weird and hallucinatory) view of my intentions. I don't share it.

Here's another, perhaps more fitting analogy: it's like shrugging your shoulders over the way that Church teachings are appropriated/employed in The Godmakers.

They're distorted in that film, and caricatured.

I haven't distorted Professor Arrington's views in any way at all.

tell us the name of the individual you "interrogated" so we can get in touch with him and get his side of the story.

It's been many years. I don't remember his name.

(This response, by the way, is for others who may be reading, not for you. I don't expect you to concede anything. You're not a reasonable person.)

[_Kevin Graham]

an apologetic agenda.

"Mormon Scholars Testify" has no particular apologetic agenda.

Come on.

When you first advertised this site you said it was in response to popular anti-Mormon claims that intellectuals cannot believe in the Church. When I told you that sounded like a straw man and asked for examples for this "popular" criticism, you eventually provided a reference to some obscure "critic" no one had ever heard of, who supposedly made this claim in some book no one had ever read.

[_Buffalo]

Come on.

When you first advertised this site you said it was in response to popular anti-Mormon claims that intellectuals cannot believe in the Church. When I told you that sounded like a straw man and asked for examples for this "popular" criticism, you eventually provided a reference to some obscure "critic" no one had ever heard of, who supposedly made this claim in some book no one had ever read.

It's just a good old argument from authority. The church must be true because they scraped together some people with doctorates (living and dead) who believe(d).

[_Daniel Peterson]

"Mormon Scholars Testify" has no particular apologetic agenda.

Come on.

When you first advertised this site you said it was in response to popular anti-Mormon claims that intellectuals cannot believe in the Church. When I told you that sounded like a straw man and asked for examples for this "popular" criticism, you eventually provided a reference to some obscure "critic" no one had ever heard of, who supposedly made this claim in some book no one had ever read.

Professor Peterson has already addressed this issue, above. He is not interested in discussing it, or indeed any other topic, with you. He wishes you a pleasant day.

[_Kevin Graham]

Well I see you've updated the entry. I applaud you for that.

I remember when I first started investigating the Church I came across Arrington's book the Mormon Experience. I remember coming across something that disturbed my friend who baptized me and he said it was an anti-Mormon book, that I shouldn't read that. I think it was about the Word of Wisdom. Arrington said something to the effect that Joseph Smith sometimes drank.

Apparently, Joseph Smith recommended the use of tobacco on the day he died, to help John Taylor with an upset stomach I believe. That's certainly not something you're going to learn from a Church approved curriculum.

In any event, it is still a bit unsettling to use these citations for this purpose, especially when the man is dead and the last statement you provided was given nearly a decade before his death. If people quoted me as of 2003, one might believe I was a die-hard Latter-day Saint as well. But of course, I'm not. Views change. Wasn't it Nibley who said he refused to be held accountable for anything he said more than a few years ago?

Incidentally, during the whole Arrington papers debacle I had been in contact with a woman who went by the moniker SuzieUtah, on one of the more critical e-lists. She struck me as a well educated lady and her big problem was over LDS history and the Book of Abraham. We had conversed off and on for more than a year; sometimes we argued against each other, and sometimes we would both team up and argue against some Evangelical anti-Mormons. The thing that really bothered her was the Church doing what it was doing over the Arrington journal at the time. I probed her for months, trying to figure out why this was such a sore spot for her, and she eventually revealed to us that she was Arrington's daughter. I later found out he had a daughter named Susan. She struck me as someone who was really upset with the Church, and had been for quite some time. She never came right out and said her father had fallen away from the Church intellectually, but she gave subtle hints that he was on that course.

And of course this all made sense. Why else would the Church be acting in such a Defcon 2 manner if there wasn't a suspicion that one of their most prestigious historians had expressed serious concerns over some things the Church had tried to hide from the general public. After all, he explicitly requested that no one from the Church read his journals until 2024. That is an odd request, so it left plenty of room for theorists to suspect what was at the core of his intentions here and what it was he didn't want the Church to read.

[_Buffalo]

[quote="Daniel Peterson"
Professor Peterson has already addressed this issue, above. He is not interested in discussing it, or indeed any other topic, with you. He wishes you a pleasant day.[/quote]

[_malaise]

It's not ludicrous at all, Dan. Get it off of there. How can you feel good about pillaging the man's work for your own dumb crusades? Seriously: who gave you permission to do this? This is sick.

this seems like hyperbole......

[_Daniel Peterson]

the last statement you provided was given nearly a decade before his death.

Leonard Arrington's Adventures of a Church Historian was published on 1 May 1998.

Leonard Arrington died on 11 February 1999.

That's not nearly ten years. That's just over nine months.

Moreover, your insinuation notwithstanding , the entry always included complete bibliographical information, including page numbers, for the book from which Professor Arrington's testimony was excerpted.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Incidentally, during the whole Arrington papers debacle I had been in contact with a woman who went by the moniker SuzieUtah, on one of the more critical e-lists. She struck me as a well educated lady and her big problem was over LDS history and the Book of Abraham. We had conversed off and on for more than a year; sometimes we argued against each other, and sometimes we would both team up and argue against some Evangelical anti-Mormons. The thing that really bothered her was the Church doing what it was doing over the Arrington journal at the time. I probed her for months, trying to figure out why this was such a sore spot for her, and she eventually revealed to us that she was Arrington's daughter. I later found out he had a daughter named Susan. She struck me as someone who was really upset with the Church, and had been for quite some time. She never came right out and said her father had fallen away from the Church intellectually, but she gave subtle hints that he was on that course.

I guess this explains why there is no indication that DCP got permission to use the quotes.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I guess this explains why there is no indication that DCP got permission to use the quotes.

No. I don't need permission to quote published materials.

That explains it.

Fully and sufficiently.

Whereas I know Davis Bitton's widow and Truman Madsen's widow and Hugh Nibley's widow, and, thus, felt entirely comfortable asking them for suggestions (not for permission), I don't know Henry Eyring's widow (she's long dead) and I don't know Leonard Arrington's widow (nor whether she's even still around; she was alive in 2006, but that's been five years).

I don't know Henry Eyring's kids well enough to ask them for suggestions, and I don't really know Leonard Arrington's kids, either. Would I have to get permission from all of them to quote a publication of their father's? From just one of them? From a majority of them? Would that be a simple majority, or a two-thirds majority? (Those are trick questions, silly! To quote from a printed book, I don't need their permission at all.)