Leonard Arrington Testimony

[_Buffalo]

Scratch has suggested that I'm an anti-Semite.

My Israeli friends would be appalled to know that, I think.

I'm sure you're not an anti-Semite, but that's the weakest defense ever, and more often than not used by people who are bigoted against some minority to justify themselves (not saying you are - I'm sure you're not). You may wish to avoid this line of reasoning in the future.

"Dude, how can I be racist, when I've got a black friend?" "Dude, how can I be a sexist, I'm married to a woman."

[_DaniteMason]

I don't know. I was just told that phone calls have been made.

It must be convenient to have so many informants with the inside scoop on DCP's deleterious "Mopologetic" endeavors.

How many of these people are dead? And Bushman has spoken out against precisely the bellicosity I alluded to above. Furthermore, as I said, I think part of the site's goal is to help fix DCP's bad reputation. If that's true, then maybe Bushman wanted to help out with this "reformation". I would imagine that Bushman wants the Church to be represented in the best possible light, and if the "Kingpin" of the Maxwell Institute is having a negative impact on people's feelings about the Church, it makes sense that Bushman would want to intervene and help out.

So it's a "Mopologetic" battering-ram and a means to salvage DCP's malignant reputation. Bushman didn't contribute because he shares some of the same views Peterson does - he's simply trying to be a sort of shepherding father figure that in the end, will teach Peterson a lesson. It seems odd that Peterson himself would set up such a site, especially if it's real purpose is to quell his 30+ years of maniacal harangues. So it must really be the work of the disapproving echelons in Salt Lake. A figurative last chance for Peterson, so to speak. I wonder why Peterson hasn't been fired from BYU already - doubtless because his absence would immediately trigger some sort of ill-fated "Mopologetic" uproar. I get it now Scratch. They tolerate DCP, but they're phasing him out gradually rather than going Jimmy Hoffa.

I don't think I'm "assuming" anything. Rather, I think it's wrong for Dr. Peterson to "assume" that Arrington would want to ally himself with this project.

And by "project," you don't mean MST per se, but rather "Mopologetics" all together. I wonder if Arrington would ally himself with Greg Prince's forthcoming biography, or rather, whether he would approve of a host of other historians and scholars who have used his quoted statements in context, with attribution.

Perhaps readers need to be reminded that DCP has suggested that he doesn't "feel comfortable" approaching Arrington's family. That speaks volumes, in my opinion. You could maybe even say that he's receiving a prompting from the Holy Ghost on this one.

He doesn't feel comfortable approaching Arrington's family? Why might that be? Is Peterson ashamed of MST - and doesn't want his agenda exposed by those "informed" enough to know the real truth? I seem to remember Arrington acting on promptings of the Holy Ghost - to testify to others that faith and scholarship are compatible.

I'll make sure to contact the Redenbacher family the next time I put a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

[_DaniteMason]

It seems Peterson isn't the only one having the audacity to quote from (or even mention) Leonard Arrington on MST. Look at this collection of stomach-turning screeds:

Kenneth Godfrey: I was not unaware that there were members of the Cornish Ward [the congregation of Godfrey's youth] who not only knew but entertained in their homes Juanita Brooks, Virginia Sorensen, Leonard Arrington, Joel Ricks, George Ellsworth, and Thomas C. Romney, all historians and writers of some repute.

O Thunderer, surveying great Rome's walls from the Tarpeian Rock!

Douglas D. Adler: During my first year as a faculty member at USU, I came to know Leonard Arrington. He reawakened my interest in Mormon history. My master’s thesis dealt with the immigration of German-speaking Latter-day Saints to Utah from 1850 to 1950. It took me to the LDS Church Archives where the documents were available.
...
At Utah State, Professor Arrington and Professor S. George Ellsworth helped me realize that something was changing in Mormon history. Leonard’s book, Great Basin Kingdom, was published by Harvard University Press and Juanita Brooks’ famous book came out through Stanford University Press. I knew enough about university presses to understand that they would not publish “defenders of the faith” kinds of writing nor would they accept diatribe attacks such as I found in Dr. Widtsoe’s collection of nineteenth century books. The presses were secular. They wanted history that was objective, based on factual documents, not dogma. For many decades Mormon history writing had been mainly partisan.

O Phrygian house gods of Iulus, clan and mysteries of Quirinus who was carried off to heaven!

Warner P. Woodworth: I think I read over a hundred books when including old as well as contemporary (1950s-60s) volumes by Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, Leonard Arrington, Hugh Nibley, Lowell Bennion, and other favorites.

O Jupiter of Latium, seated in lofty Alba and hearths of Vesta!

Thomas Rogers: The heady amalgam of unfettered inquiry and artistic exploration of Mormon roots and culture at BYU that accompanied those almost two golden decades of LDS scholarship, spearheaded by Leonard Arrington and his associates, together with the distinctive combination of like-minded loyalty and unfettered openness to inquiry on the part of so many respected colleagues and students, particularly in the BYU Honors Program and Colleges of Humanities and Family and Social Sciences.

O Rome, equal to the highest deity, favor my plans!

David J. Whittaker: It was in a BYU history course taught by Russel B. Swensen on the history of classical Greece that he told the class that we ought not to be allowed to graduate from BYU if we had not read Leonard Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom. I had not heard of this volume and since I respected Swensen, I searched for a copy to purchase. I read it in just a few days. It was, for me, another pivotal experience. Among other things, it suggested that LDS history could be studied as more than just religious history, that the Mormon experience was the story of putting faith in prophetic leadership into action in the real world; that in Mormonism there could be no real separation between the spiritual and the temporal. I learned that prophets could experiment with sugar beets and still be prophets. This opened new ways of looking at my own faith as well as into the history of my Church. It was another kind of spiritual experience.

Here I abandon peace and desecrated law. Fortune, it is you I follow.
Farewell to treaties. From now on war is our judge.

James B. Allen: I can honestly say, as Leonard Arrington so often did when he was Church Historian, that none of the historical documents I ever had access to gave me reason to doubt the authenticity of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, his other recorded visions and revelations, the Book of Mormon, or the divine mission of the Church itself.

Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.

[_Yong Xi]

I don't recall ever having posted anything regarding Simon Wiesenthal's baptism.

http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com/2006/12/anger-over-baptism-of-simon-wiesenthal.html

[_Yong Xi]

Why does a person need to profess faith or lack thereof in association with their scholarship? I really don't understand the concern. Please give me an example. I would think good scholarship would ultimately stand on its own merits. Perhaps it doesn't. I really don't know as I am not a scholar or published.

I don't know that anyone needs to per se, but in a world where it has become increasingly common to mock faith and make claims that it is incompatible with reason, I suppose some might find justification in sharing their faith in light of their scholastic fields.

I think the majority of the participants on MST believe good scholarship should stand on its own merits as well. Unfortunately, we live in a society where someone can be dismissed as a crackpot simply because they profess a certain faith, regardless of their contributions to scholarship.

When it was noted that Islamic scholar Khaleel Mohammed had praised DCP's biography of Muhammad, members of this board immediately attacked Peterson, not because he had written a good book, but because a scholar in Peterson's field had actually written something positive about someone they despise.

If critics profess to admire a person that is found to believe similar - if not the same - things DCP has claimed to believe, that person is either dismissed as a crackpot (like DCP), or in the case of dead persons, made to appear to be in direct opposition to DCP.

In light of these things, I felt warmly welcomed when Scratch, having never spoken with me prior to this, accused me of sock-puppetry.

I guess this happens on both sides. Have you ever seen posts on MADB praising Dawkins, Dennett, or Hitchens? They are dismissed as "Atheists".

I would be more concerned about scholars dismissing other scholars based on faith or lack thereof. Maybe that happens as well.

[_Corpsegrinder]

DCP wrote:

Scratch has suggested that I'm an anti-Semite.

My Israeli friends would be appalled to know that, I think.

In point of fact, I suspect they would be appalled at the fact that BYU’s law school is named after J. Reuben Clark--a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer.

[_Morley]

It seems Peterson isn't the only one having the audacity to quote from (or even mention) Leonard Arrington on MST. Look at this collection of stomach-turning screeds....

Danite, where ever one stands on the issue, most would agree that there's quite a difference between quoting someone and mentioning his name. Personally, I have no problem with Daniel quoting Arrington for MST or anything else. I don't think that anyone has a problem with his name being mentioned.

All of your examples seem to be of people mentioning Leonard Arrington's name. In your own statement above, you are insinuating that the two (mentioning & quoting) are the same.


(That wasn't much of a Rubicon.)

[_DrW]

DCP wrote:

Scratch has suggested that I'm an anti-Semite.

My Israeli friends would be appalled to know that, I think.

In point of fact, I suspect they would be appalled at the fact that BYU’s law school is named after J. Reuben Clark--a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer.

Corpsegrinder,

Checked out your assertion about J. Rubin Clark. Was not aware of this aspect of Clark's character. You learn something every day.

In the current effort to re-mainstream the LDS Church, perhaps it would be a good idea if someone looked into re-naming the Law School at BYU.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Daniel, I honestly do appreciate you taking time to participate on these boards. I would be very interested to know how you would respond to some of the comments made on the Terrestrial board concerning the Book of Abraham. Particularly what I consider to be the substantive challenges to your article on the subject.

I probably will, although, through at least next week, I'm scarcely going to be on-line. And it has to be said that (in something of a rarity for this message board) George Miller has raised substantive research issues, for which I would require time and research to prepare adequate responses. I can't do that at the drop of a hat, and I can't do it at all this week or next.

an apologist with 3 decades' worth of bellicosity, character assassination, smear campaigns, fight-picking, bashing, and etc.

This is Scratchite demonological orthodoxy, the central myth of Scratchism, bearing only the most tenuous relationship to reality.

Taking all this into consideration, how can anyone assume that the appearance of Leonard Arrington's testimony is somehow "disconnected" from Dr. Peterson's extensive apologetic activities?

In a trivial sense, everything I do is connected with my apologetic activities. And, of course, Scratch favors this trivial sense, because it's the most usefully flexible one -- allowing him to condemn everything I do simply by virtue of its being linked with me:

You're going to have to work really hard to demonstrate a tight, intimate link between that and, say, the FARMS Review.

It's not hard at all. *You* are the link. (Gee, that sure was hard.) It doesn't really get more "intimate" than that, I daresay.

There are people whose lives could be destroyed merely on account of the fact that they are in some way associated with you.

After the FAIR conference ended early last evening, my wife and I attended the performance (at Kingsbury Hall on the University of Utah campus) of four plays by a youth theater workshop; one of my nieces acted in the fourth play. And, afterwards, my wife and I ate dinner, outside, at the Market Street Broiler.

If I'm the "intimate link" such that the mere fact that X is my activity proves that X is apologetic in character and intent, then my attendance at that play, and my dining on clam chowder and halibut thereafter, must be categorized as apologetic acts. Or, at least, they could be (and would be), if doing so would further Scratch's bizarre five-year-old crusade against me.

DCP has a very clear agenda here, and it's not a nice one.

Nobody simply looking at Mormon Scholars Testify could reasonably conclude that it's motivated by vindictiveness -- which is one of Scratch's explanations for it. Such nonsense has to be imported from the outside, and it has to be based on Scratch's weird transmogrification of me into a monstrously toxic person who destroys even those who are merely associated with him. This is, I think, mere insanity.

I also suspect that the site was a calculated move on Dan's part to help rescue his ailing reputation.

There is no reason to believe that my reputation is "ailing" in most circles.

I bet that all those scolding phone calls from the Church Administration Building began to weigh on him.

LOL. I've had more alien crop circles in my backyard, and more encounters with Elvis, than I've received "scolding phone calls from the Church Administration Building."

I think there are a lot of reasons why Arrington would object to being associated with a project run by someone like Dan Peterson.

And yet there's actually no evidence for any of them.

Professor Arrington and I were cordial, and I count his former close professional associates (e.g., Drs. Alexander, Allen, Bitton, and Bushman) as good friends.

I would be making the same complaints if DCP had added a permission-less, pastiche testimony from Eugene England.

Which, at some point in the future, I intend to do.

So Scratch needs to keep his ammunition dry!

DCP's attempt (in his own words) to "draft" Arrington to his "team."

I have never described myself as attempting to "draft" Leonard Arrington for my "team."

I was just told that phone calls have been made.

Either by a member of one of his demonstrably unreliable network of creepy anonymous "informants" or (what amounts to the same thing, practically speaking) by his own hyperactive and malignant imagination.

You've mentioned before how much you admire and respect Richard Bushman (a close associate of Arrington's). What do you think of Bushman's appearance on MST? You didn't seem very impassioned about Bushman's entry, or those of other well-regarded "New Mormon Historians" including James Allen, Gene Sessions, and several others that have published through (of all places) Signature Books.

How many of these people are dead?

Professors Bushman, Allen, and Sessions are all very much alive.

And Bushman has spoken out against precisely the bellicosity I alluded to above.

Whatever. In any case, he contributed an entry -- one of the earliest -- to Mormon Scholars Testify.

Furthermore, as I said, I think part of the site's goal is to help fix DCP's bad reputation.

ROTFL!

Pure fantasy.

If that's true,

It's not, of course.

But notice the deft use of a hypothetical supposition as evidence for the next step in Scratch's purported "argument":

then maybe Bushman wanted to help out with this "reformation".

Which, if true, would also explain why he had me come down to Claremont to lecture for him at least three times, why he's had me speak to his summer seminars in Provo, why I've had dinner with him in New York and Princeton and Claremont and Salt Lake and elsewhere, and etc. It's all part of his noble effort, while holding his nose, to rehabilitate my reputation.

I would imagine

Indeed!

that Bushman wants the Church to be represented in the best possible light, and if the "Kingpin" of the Maxwell Institute is having a negative impact on people's feelings about the Church, it makes sense that Bushman would want to intervene and help out.

One might be tempted to remark that it's impossible to make up such things.

But, in fact, it's not: Scratch just did!

Perhaps readers need to be reminded that DCP has suggested that he doesn't "feel comfortable" approaching Arrington's family. That speaks volumes, in my opinion.

Scratch is misrepresenting what I actually said (as it is his habit to do).

I said that I felt very comfortable approaching Davis Bitton's, Hugh Nibley's, and Truman Madsen's widows for suggestions, because I know them well, and have known them for many years. I don't know Leonard Arrington's widow (she may be dead) or children at all.

I don't recall ever having posted anything regarding Simon Wiesenthal's baptism.

http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com/2006/12/anger-over-baptism-of-simon-wiesenthal.html

Ah, thank you. I had forgotten that the issue specifically involved Simon Wiesenthal, rather than just vicarious Jewish baptisms in general.

I hadn't re-read that note of mine since I posted it six years ago. Pretty good, I think. I still agree with it.

BYU’s law school is named after J. Reuben Clark--a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer.

By today's standards, Abraham Lincoln was a racist. And I would be quite surprised if he weren't also, by today's standards, an anti-Semite.

Moreover, it was very common, before the true nature of fascism became fully evident in the Second World War and in the Holocaust, for progressive thinkers in the United States to see much to admire in it. Retrospective finger-pointing is too easy.

This thread is already becoming the stuff of legend, and Scratch's crazy complaint in it is being ranked, among numerous observers (if private messages and oral comments to me are any kind of reliable guide) as one of the craziest, most obviously stretching bits of lunacy in his long, lunatic campaign.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I stand by my main point, Dan, which is that the inclusion of the Arrington "testimony" is problematic. I fail to see how it would be any problem, or how it would really inconvenience you in any way, to go and get permission like you did for Nibley et al. The fact that you don't know Arrington's family as well is an awfully lame excuse, and if anything, I believe it means that you should have made an even greater effort to go and get the permission.