I missed the FairMormon conference last week but caught the streaming. You can still purchase the streaming option for $30 and watch all the presentations. https://www.fairmormon.org/store/conference-streaming/conference-streaming-2019
Here is a summary of selected presentations.
Don Bradley — Joseph Smith’s First Vision as Endowment and Epitome of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (or Why I Came Back to the Church)
Don Bradley is a genius. I think he may be the best on the planet in terms of familiarity with the source materials of church history and being able to combine data into interesting new insights from a faithful perspective. I’m copying this summary I read elsewhere that covered the interesting points.
- There is an account of the first vision by the brother of Fanny Alger which includes God touching Joseph’s eyes before his is called to look upon Christ. This theme of God touching body parts to endow people with divine traits has scriptural precedent.
- The First Vision included Joseph being transported or elevated up to Heaven – to God’s presence – not simply him staying in the sacred grove.
- The First Vision was a “second sight” experience and marked Joseph’s first experience as a “seer” – something which he would go on to employ in his treasure digging. His eyes, having been touched by God, were given special ability for the purpose of being a “seer”
- The First Vision led to Joseph locating his first White Seer stone – base on a bright light seen far off – becoming brighter till brighter than the mid day sun – Joseph’s description of both the First Vision and locating his White seer stone – both having connections to the eventual Temple Endowment ceremony.
Ben Spackman — A Paradoxical Preservation of Faith: LDS Creation Accounts and the Composite Nature of Revelation
This was fantastic. I plan to do a more thorough treatment on this and dedicate a post to reviewing this great presentation. Ranks among my all time favorites at FairMormon with Grant Hardy and Patrick Mason from a couple years ago.
The gist of his presentation was breaking down fundamentalistic attitudes toward scripture and recognizing that scripture is *always* a cooperative effort between a perfect God and a messy and error-prone human.
Bruce C. and Sister Marie K. Hafen — Faith is Not Blind
I absolutely love their concept of describing the common human experience of going from simplicity to complexity and then back to simplicity. They call it the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
For me, I describe it like this. At first I had a very simple, literal, traditional, fundamentalistic testimony of the restored gospel. The complexity came crashing that down in the form of information I read online that challenged that simplistic view point. It seemed life was chaos during that phase. But as I worked through that over many years, my view of the gospel has returned to a simple form: focusing on the good and the lived experience and being OK with many of the literal truth claims not all tying together perfectly.
Rene Krywult — Fear Leads to the Dark Side: How to Navigate the Shallows of (Mis)Information
This presentation accused Mormon critics of lying, using big lists to overwhelm, emotionally manipulating, etc. I don’t think this approach is very helpful. He’s not wrong. Some critics do that. But that’s not the main problem or why we have a faith crisis problem in the church today. I feel like by focusing on that, we’re missing the opportunity of helping people in faith crisis make sense of the difficult information. The information is difficult. Period. If we spend our time bashing the critics for their methods, I think we just end up looking like we’re scared to take the actual information head on and don’t have the tools to help people process new information that challenges their simplistic assumptions of church history and scripture. Scott Gordon also did this in his presentation. It’s a common theme.
He also spends time creating mistrust in the internet. The Hafens, in the weakest part of their presentation, also did that. Again, I think it’s a bad tactic. Warning millennials to not trust the internet just is not going to work in today’s world. They know how the internet works. They know there are good sources, bad sources, biased sources, sources that attempt to be more neutral, and how to figure that all out.
Here’s a thought experiment I’d like to put back on Rene. If he was given a day to write up a five page paper on the main Apologetic arguments of Jehovah’s Witness and weigh in with his evaluation of their truth claims, what sources would he use? I imagine he would start with Google. He would look at what JW officially said, but that might have the least weight. He would look at what critics say. He would look at what apologists say. He would maybe see if there was anything produced by a scholar or in a journal or publication with any sort of reputation. He would evaluate each source to see how the larger community both for and against JW seemed to trust them. If any source was using particularly emotional or manipulative language, he would drop that and move to the next source and distrust people that backed it. Using this sort of methodology, he could triangulate into the best view.
Repeat this for Scientology, Flat Earth, Catholicism, Evangelicalism. Then LDS. Would the process be any different for LDS truth claims? Of course the Holy Ghost is required to help interpret the spiritual truth of religious claims. But to understand the factual historical details and which are correct and which are not? Research is the proper method. And it’s not impossible to sort through internet sources. Millennials know this. Don’t tell them to mistrust the internet. That’s just going to backfire. Help them process the information.
Also, another thought experiment. After doing the five page paper on LDS truth claims using this process, compare that to the experience most of us get growing up in the church and how we have been taught. Now you see why this is such a huge problem right now.
Sorry for that long tangent.
Brian Hales — Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon
This is a presentation I’ve seen a couple times. He goes through five critical theories for BOM creation. The fifth one being “his intellect”. Then goes into the evidence of how the BOM was dictated with no notes, no manuscript, over a 90 day period of time. And then also the evidence of how complex and consistent the Book of Mormon is. I agree! He then concludes that the only possible theory that’s left is that the BOM was dictated word for word to Joseph Smith by God through the seer stone, with zero contribution by Joseph. I don’t agree.
This is another presentation I want to do a full blog post on, because BOM creation is one of my favorite topics. This is a sloppy paragraph, which I knocked out quickly in a facebook comment and gives a preview of where I’m going with this.
Can you think about it this way? Let’s first imagine a purely humanistic effort with no Spirit or power of God involved. Joseph uses his own intellect, he thinks of a lot of source material, dreams up the plot, thinks about it for many years, then he’s with Oliver that spring-summer and he produces it dictating six pages at a time for 90 days or whatever the math works out. Let’s put a scale up in terms of complexity and consistency and call the Book of Mormon a 100. A 1 would be the worst effort you could think of, making no sense, and full of error and lacking in consistent internal plot. What do you think Joseph Smith could knock out himself, with no help from God whatsoever? Let’s call that an 11. Pretty poor. Maybe with your education and experience with the Bible and religious texts, you could do a 70, but let’s assume you couldn’t do a Book of Mormon level 100. Do you think that God by blessing and consecrating Joseph’s effort and giving him a special power and strength could lift him up to a 100? Not give him the words, so that he’s not even doing anything. But take his 11 level effort and endow him with knowledge and and power and special ability so that he could knock out a 100 level text. Do you think that’s possible? And if so, don’t you think a process like that fits the historical data as well or better than a pure dictation model with no contribution from Joseph?
Tad Callister — A Case for the Book of Mormon
I love a lot of what Callister does. He testifies of the complexity, spiritual power, doctrinal profundity of the Book of Mormon. How could Joseph have done it himself? I agree. He gives examples of how the Book of Mormon has transformed and impacted so many lives, and brought so many people to Christ, including himself. I agree.
What I think he does very poorly is connecting this to historicity. He doesn’t allow for any possibility that the Book of Mormon could be inspired scripture if it’s not historical. And then the apologetics and arguments he uses to support historicity seem very weak to me.
Daniel Peterson — “Idle Tales”? The Witness of Women
I enjoyed the presentation a lot. Informational and well done. He included examples of many women and men who have testified both generally of Jesus Christ and the restoration, specifically the gold plates.
He included this quote from non-LDS scholar Ann Taves.
Taves: I would argue both that he believed what he was saying and that there were no ancient golden plates in the archaeological sense that there were plates that were thousands of years old.
Elder Craig C. Christensen — Foundations of Our Faith
It’s great hearing an actual General Authority speak at FairMormon and weigh in on the issues. I loved Elder Christensen’s talk. It was very interesting how he wouldn’t give full endorsement to FairMormon (however Elder Pearson last year did—so I’m not making too strong of a point on that), because he said it’s good that FairMormon is disconnected from the Church so that it can go into more speculative and non-official answers and theories to help answer historical issues. That made me feel like it’s possible he feels the same way about my approach as an Apologist answering the critics.
Quoting a 1935 statement from the First Presidency:
There are two great truths that must be believed by mankind if they are to be saved:
- That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God
- That God has restored to the earth, through the prophet Joseph Smith, the fulness of His everlasting Gospel
I love the simplicity of that. I believe it. I don’t think it matters that each of us might have a little bit different understanding of what those two bullet point items mean. That’s not essential. The gospel is simple. We need not defend every single point. We just need to focus on those two.
Wheat & Tares 
I’m scratching my head at why you would be so much in praise of a FAIR Conference. FAIR’s leading members are and have long been deeply invested in promoting a narrative that you are in complete disagreement with: namely; a historical BOM.
Anyhow, thanks for the summaries. I find it interesting that they have present General Authorities giving talks. A strong sign that FAIR is not really fair, in the sense of being objective and unbiased and devoted to research that could be published among a wider academic audience, but is committed to doing the bidding of the LDS Church and pushing a strongly favorable image of it, mostly to creative a narrative that causes intellectual believers who are prone to question and doubt to think twice before leaving and to maintain this image that the experts on Mormonism are believers, so who are we non-experts to question the church. Granted, there is a heck of a lot more money behind the believing narrative than the non-believing one, with entire academic departments built around the former.
John W. I view myself as a Mormon Apologist and an extension of FairMormon. We are together in our commitment to the LDS Church and our appreciation for Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the unique doctrines of Mormonism, and we want to defend it intellectually. I’m not in any way against those who view the Book of Mormon as historical. I am disappointed when they use strong rhetoric against people like me who view things like that more metaphorically and humanistically, but that rhetoric has become less loud and less frequent.
churchistrue, identity is a two-way street. You may identify yourself as a Mormon apologist, but do the people whom most Mormons recognize as Mormon apologists recognize you as such (I.e. Dan Peterson, Bill Hamblin, and others)? Moreover, would mainstream Mormons recognize you as such? I strongly doubt that. So, sorry if I don’t take your claim to be an apologist very seriously. Plus your main fans appear to be doubters, skeptics, critics, and ex-Mormons.
Your main claim to fame is this position that you stand strongly behind and have repeated again and again that the BOM is not historical. I would really like to see you give a presentation at a FAIR conference expounding on that position. I doubt that FAIR would give you a platform, and if they did, I think your position would be met with stiff resistance. This is because a good part of Mormon apologetics has been based on defending a historical BOM. People have devoted their entire careers, and even lives, to this question. When members say that the BOM is true, they seem to mean true in big part as in it was authored by ancient American Jews. I can’t imagine them taking too kindly to your position. You seem to legitimize your position because of Ann Taves, the non-LDS scholar who wrote an article that, in spite of expressing open agreement with Dan Vogel that the Gold Plates were probably a fabrication, argues that Joseph Smith was neither delusional nor a fraud. And why do the apologists love Ann Taves? Because she is a non-Mormon scholar with stature in Religious Studies who is not overtly calling Mormonism’s main historicity claims false and is expressing the most sympathetic non-Mormon voice imaginable to Joseph Smith. If Ann Taves were Mormon or had ever been a Mormon, it is highly likely that the apologists would dismiss her as nothing more than another critic with unorthodox views not worthy of serious consideration (and worthy of writing several long-winded articles attacking), much as they have done with Dan Vogel.
John W, not sure why you see that as doing the bidding of FAIR rather than the influence going the other direction.
I do agree Taves position is difficult to reconcile. She sees Joseph as actualizing visionary experiences. But the problem is that’s not how Joseph presents it. So even within Taves’ model, rather than being a middle ground between critics and apologists, still requires fraud.
“ChurchIsTrue” Bradley’s presentation did sound quite interesting, particularly the linking together (if only thematically) Ether 3 and the First Vision. One thing I think Don has done is show that temple elements were present from the earliest days of Mormonism and didn’t arise in Nauvoo.
Clark, if I understand you correctly, you’re asking why I think Taves is doing the bidding of FAIR? I don’t know if she sees herself as doing that per se. But Givens and other apologists see her as a possible window into mainstream academia. Apologists have long been trying to legitimate the view of the Book of Mormon as historical, but such an idea has never passed muster in any academic environment outside Mormonism (and probably never will). If apologists want to publish their ideas in mainstream academic presses, they have to omit any claims to BOM peoples as having actually existed. They can publish about the plausibility of ancients crossing the Pacific by boat and other subtly historicity-friendly ideas all day. But when it comes to ideas that Joseph Smith actually saw the past through revelation, they lose non-Mormon academic allies, who typically steer clear of giving Joseph Smith’s revelatory claims any plausibility or credibility. Taves is the closest thing they have. And, as I pointed out, she still goes out of her way in her publications to express agreement with a known critic of Mormon truth claims: Dan Vogel.
John W. BOM historicity is a common topic for me, because it’s the major roadblock to my larger and more important concept, which is a view of Mormonism similar to Marcus Borg or Pete Enns where scripture is primarily humanistic and its importance is based on how a spiritual community treats it not in its supernatural origin elements. I also have a personal interest in the Book of Mormon and BOM Apologetics. But I don’t consider it my main thing. I consider myself a Mormon Apologist in that I’m defending Mormonism. You could also call Bushman, Mason, Adam Miller, and even Greg Prince as Mormon Apologists. FairMormon, Dan Peterson, BOM Central, these are Apologists who are more traditional in how they defend Mormonism. Heartlanders are also Mormon Apologists who are on the extreme conservative side. We’re all Mormon Apologists, and I see that commonality more important than our differences. I probably don’t have the academic credentials to ever speak at FairMormon conference, but I would love to someday see someone share views that are aligned with mine. I think it will happen eventually. Maybe 10-20 years from now?
As for Taves, I find her materialization theory interesting. I don’t personally subscribe to it. But it’s an interesting theory. She thinks Joseph Smith made plates and asked God to bless them to turn them into actual ancient plates with sacred text written on it for him to translate. That seems a little implausible to me. But I know people who believe it, and I don’t think it’s as crazy anymore as I did when I first heard it.
John I should have been clearer. My apologies. Writing on my phone while at checkout. I meant why do you see FAIR as doing the bidding of the Church leaders whereas it seems to me FAIR’s perspective including open history and inoculation has driven leadership rather than vice versa.
Regarding Taves, I think far more apologists see her as problematic rather than embrace her. Not sure how Peterson sees her but I doubt he agrees with her. I think she’s popular with the Mormon Studies crowd as they were desperate for a middle ground. But I tend to distinguish Mormon Studies styled apologists from traditional or more scientific oriented apologists. One thinks literary meaning with political implications is all we need. I’m really skeptical that’s a successful strategy. (Even bracketing the question of truth)
As to the apologist issue you raise, I think the vast majority of historical or scientific apologists think they can at best make a plausibility argument but not a most likely argument. They’re all forthright about that. Again Taves seems at odds with the beliefs most have.
“A strong sign that FAIR is not really fair, in the sense of being objective and unbiased and devoted to research that could be published among a wider academic audience, but is committed to doing the bidding of the LDS Church and pushing a strongly favorable image of it…”
It’s almost as though they’re engaged in apologetics. Perhaps they should put that in their name.
churchistrue, I’m not convinced that you are actually defending Mormonism. At least, I doubt that mainstream believers would see your overall approach as a defense. Instead you seem to be redefining Mormonism so as to accommodate an extremely metaphorical position on the question of historicity, even to the extent of saying that the BOM is not at all historical. All the other apologists you mention all either openly promote or do not openly question the idea that the Book of Mormon contains the words, ideas, and experiences of ancient Americans about Jesus Christ.
I understand how you could be seen as defending some aspects of Mormonism, but BOM historicity seems to be a pretty key one. I remember Stephen Smoot from Book of Mormon central on here in the comments a few months back expressing deep skepticism that you could defend Mormonism and openly say that the BOM wasn’t historical. We’ll see what happens 10-20 years down the road, but count me as pessimistic that Mormondom will change all that much on historicity.
Clark, you’re right that FAIR informs a lot of the church leaders’ discourse. However, the unwritten, yet very noticeable, boundaries of what you can and can’t say about the church as part of FAIR are defined by none other than church tradition itself. The question is, why does FAIR even exist? Is FAIR contributing to wider scholarship in a range of academic fields? Not really. Are they determining the policy and the positions of the LDS church? No. The appointed leaders clearly decide and determine those. Are they there to draw more people into the church? I guess they could function that way, but it is generally ineffective? Are they just some sort of social club? A very exclusive and credential-demanding one. They are there to create a sort of set of mental webs to guard traditional LDS teachings designed to 1) provide leaders with possible responses to common concerns about different traditional LDS teachings expressed by already active believers, 2) provide the membership with a narrative to deflect concerns expressed by believing friends and family, and 3) give questioning and doubting believers the illusion that in order to justify doubting the church they have to cut through all of these webs and that it is just easier to sit back and believe. And FAIR is effective. Most members don’t have the time, scholarly training, or patience to see through the common fallacies of FAIR’s thinking.
In that sense I’m actually very pleased with the writers on this blog. They point out the fallacies of FAIR’s thinking, but still claim a sort of cultural devotion to Mormonism. This claim is likely to give their narrative more legitimacy within Mormonism than the ex-Mormon narrative, which is completely ignored and dismissed as hyperbolic and vindictive. But I still think it is a hard sell. Every time I go to church and hear about the Book of Mormon, it seems that for the average believer it is as true as their high school history book.
“Again, I think it’s a bad tactic. Warning millennials to not trust the internet just is not going to work in today’s world. They know how the internet works. They know there are good sources, bad sources, biased sources, sources that attempt to be more neutral, and how to figure that all out.”
This is a myth. There are actually studies out there that evaluate how well high school and collage students–including graduate students at top-level universities– critically examine information on online, and by-and-large, they do terribly. What’s more, several books have been written about how the internet is, in fact, having a negative impact on our abilities to critically process information. “Fake news” dupes millennials just as much as it does other generations. The very fact that things like the CES Letter, Zelph on the Shelf, and the Mormon Stories essays are effective–all of which are riddled with historical errors–demonstrates that this all holds true in the Mormon online arena as well.
Warning people that they not just rely on Google searches and their own ability to pars the information is right inline with the best available data.
“BOM historicity is a common topic for me, because it’s the major roadblock to my larger and more important concept, which is a view of Mormonism similar to Marcus Borg or Pete Enns where scripture is primarily humanistic and its importance is based on how a spiritual community treats it not in its supernatural origin elements. I also have a personal interest in the Book of Mormon and BOM Apologetics. But I don’t consider it my main thing. I consider myself a Mormon Apologist in that I’m defending Mormonism.”
It’s stunning to me that you can literally state that a foundational tenant of Mormonism is roadblock to your larger objectives–which are clearly not to defend but to transform Mormonism into something it is not–and claim to a defender of Mormonism at the same time. And there can be no mistaking that the historicity of the Book of Mormon is foundational. Indeed, it’s the very catalyst that leads to the creation of the Church in the first place. If no one believes Joseph Smith’s story about the book’s origins in 1830, there is no Mormonism today, or ever, really. And yet, and unfortunately many others, want to jettison that as if it’s just some tangent added on later; and claim to be defending Mormonism in the process.
Yeah. sorry, but no. That is not what defending looks like.
Warning people about possible misinformation on the Internet seems a bit disingenuous considering the Church’s track record when it comes to providing an honest and accurate account of its history and the evolution of its doctrines. Yes, the Church has improved somewhat in this regard but only—and I mean ONLY—because the inconvenient truths about the Church that people discovered on the Internet forced its hand.
John, not sure what you mean by “what you can and can’t say about the church as part of FAIR are defined by none other than church tradition itself. ” I rather suspect the leadership at FAIR themselves have strong perspectives on what is or isn’t knocking down the Church. Given it’s an explicitly apologetic organization, it seems odd to lay that at the feet of the Church. But maybe I’m just missing what you’re arguing. I’ll confess it’s been a very long time since I worked with FAIR so I’ve zero knowledge about current leadership. It just seems to me you’re putting causality in a way I rather doubt is the case. It seems on part to accusing 2cd amendment organizations as doing the bidding of gun makers or gun prohibition organizations doing the bidding of certain activists when the more likely case is that people joining such groups already have strong views on the matter. I’ll drop it, but I suspect you just have a bunch of agreement of views.
As to common narrative, I disagree there. At least when I was with FAIR there were people with very differing views held very stongly. Again I don’t think there’s necessarily a common narrative or the like. There are good arguments and bad arguments, and as a volunteer organization sometimes the bad arguments get put on the web page. But that seems inevitable for such an organization. You and I would probably disagree over what is or isn’t rational, but hopefully you’d attribute my beliefs to myself and my thinking through the issues as best I can. Attributing them to some organization supposedly pulling strings seems getting into conspiracy thinking.
nquinten5, I fully agree. I think the average person doesn’t realize how bad most internet “facts” are. That’s really easy to demonstrate in scientific fields. I think FAIR does an important job even if I frequently wish they did a better job of it. Of course since I’m not helping I really can’t complain too much. Again it’s a volunteer organization. (I do chime in to some FAIR people I know pages I find problematic)
nquinten5 I understand where you’re coming from. I know I have my work cut out for me. But hopefully people like you will understand me over time. If you look at Evangelical Christianity and Mainline Christianity, it’s a similar break. The question is could Mormonism shift to allow for both Evangelical and Mainline type beliefs within the same church. Or does there have to be a split in the church into two churches or force the Mainline types out? Could those two belief systems exist within Mormonism because both camps acknowledge that we have an important work to do, and we need to do it together for it to work? The conservatives allow the liberals space to exist. The liberals don’t demand too much change, and they can both manage to coexist peacefully?
Clark, suppose a scholar at FAIR made the case that the Book of Abraham was a forgery, completely made up by Joseph Smith (all while claiming that everything else about the church was true). This is not a highly implausible situation either. Brian Hauglid, a former apologist at BYU, in November 2018 lambasted Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee for “abhorrent” scholarship on the BOA and came out in full agreement with Dan Vogel on his recent videos about the BOA. He hasn’t yet called the Book of Abraham a hoax, though. What would happen if someone did call it a hoax? The FAIR organizers and editors would just allow that? What if someone slipped through the initial screening and at a conference came out and claimed it was a hoax and that the church leaders should disavow it? FAIR is just going to let that happen?
Do you think that higher-up church leaders don’t monitor FAIR and make sure that scholars don’t cross certain lines? Of course they do. And it is naive not to believe that they do. If you say something too unorthodox at FAIR, you will get blacklisted by the organizers. If you are an organizer of FAIR and say something that crosses a line, well then, it is highly likely that church leaders will start talking with you and questioning your testimony and your beliefs. If your unorthodox ideas gain too much traction among church members, it is likely that the higher-up leaders will subtly nudge local leaders to excommunicate you and then maintain plausible deniability saying that it was the local leaders’ decisions (just like what happened with John Dehlin, Kate Kelly, Bill Reel, and a whole host of other high-profile members with unorthodox views. Of course the higher-ups were the ones behind the excommunications).
The idea that FAIR is this organization of fully independent scholars with a fully independent ideas about Mormonism is a joke. It is most certainly not. If it is fully independent, then how come it doesn’t look more like MHA and Sunstone where you do have ex-Mormon and non-Mormon scholars making claims about the falseness of the church’s central teachings?
Churchistrue thinks himself to be an apologist and thinks FAIR to be allies, yet believes that the Book of Mormon is not historical. Do you think that FAIR will let him talk about his ideas? If he slipped through the cracks of the initial screening and gave a presentation about how the Book of Mormon is not historical, do you think they would feature that? Give me a break. Of course they wouldn’t. And you call me a conspiracy theorist for suggesting so? OK, I’ll fire back. You’re obtuse and pretending that apologetic scholarship is somehow on par with other scholarship because you are desperate, oh so desperate, to make the case that Mormon truth claims are somehow compatible with modern reason, which they are not, for it is the only thing that calms the pains of a persistent cognitive dissonance which you are in. The September Six is ample evidence that the leaders screen and monitor their scholars and maneuver against them if they step out of line. FAIR is not real scholarship. It is apologetics and does the bidding of the church leaders through and through. Its organizers are in close contact with the higher-up leaders of the church and subtly coordinate regularly with them.
John W., apologists defend something. Traditional LDS apologists who populate FAIR and the Interpreter defend traditional conservative Mormonism. New LDS apologists in the vein of Given and Mason and the retooled Maxwell Institute defend the idea of staying active in the LDS Church without necessarily having to defend or even affirm traditional conservative Mormonism. Churchistrue seems to be defending the idea that one can affirm a non-literal theory of the Book of Mormon (no Nephites) and still be a Latter-day Saint in good standing.
An alternative way to group apologists is to consider how broad or narrow their tolerance for other views is. Traditional LDS apologists are pretty narrow. Exhibit A, how upset they are with the New Maxwell people, good Latter-day Saints all and in the employ of BYU, hardly a haven for apostates. The New Apologists and churchistrue take a much broader view of what constitutes a good Latter-day Saint. Churchistrue doesn’t seem to be preaching his view for all to accept, just trying to carve out space within the Church for that view. It’s a choice between narrow zeal and broader tolerance.
Tolerance gets my vote. The bottom line is you’d be a lot happier with churchistrue as your neighbor than a traditional apologist, who would likely call you an apostate within a few weeks if you hadn’t read the works of Nibley. Let’s hope the leadership buys into the New Maxwell approach rather than doubling down on the Church of McConkie.
Dave B, you’re right. I’m actually a fan of churchistrue and applaud many of his views. He’s right that the BOM isn’t historical and that it can still have metaphorical value. I just think that he is going too far in saying that he is defending Mormonism in so doing.
John W, as you said the other leaders of the organization would almost certainly put a stop to it. But if they didn’t, then people would badmouth FAIR and it’d lose its influence. It’s not as if that hasn’t happened to other organizations. While I don’t think the Maxwell Institute has done that, looking at the bad mouthing between it and The Interpreter shows how things would probably play out. Again, I just don’t see any evidence for what you suggest. It just seems conspiracy minded. It’s quite possible of course that if an organization goes too far astray people might condemn it, including possibly the brethren. After all Oaks went from founding Dialog to criticizing it. That didn’t exactly stop Dialog and it’s still published. As for FAIR allowing things, if they vigorously disagree with them and find things said that go against the pretty explicit aims of the organization wouldn’t we expect them to act? I suspect if one of the heads of Planned Parenthood tried to make it an anti-aboriton organization there’d be conflict too. I don’t think we need postulate some conspiracy. Organizations have aims and typically the leaders of those organizations share the aims. However it’s also clear that organizations change.
As to “ChurchIsTrue” I doubt FAIR would give him a microphone, but mainly because I think FAIR sees one of the things it is defending is historicity. However FAIR clearly seems open to both a catalyst theory of the Book of Abraham as well as those still pushing more traditional FARMS like interpretations. So again I think there’s more variety of views than you seem to assume.
The conspiracy theory isn’t whether FAIR would try and stop such things but the *reason* why they do. You say it’s the Church leadership whereas I said it was just the leadership and aims of the organization that explains everything.
Dave B, I think the conflict between the Interpreter and the Maxwell Institute is overstated and lots of people (myself included) value a lot from both. There’s certainly choices the Maxwell Institute has made that I disagree with. But then that’s true of my views of the Interpreter as well. I think it a mistake to see the Maxwell Institute as embracing non-historicity of key documents. But clearly they see literary meaning as more important than historic meaning. I also think you are unfairly disparaging the tolerance of apologists, but I’ll let that drop.
Clark, clearly FAIR has a certain degree of independence, and no the church leaders aren’t pulling strings (meaning they’re not deeply involved in coordination), although I do know that prominent apologists do meet with leaders from time to time. You’re right that FAIR has the leaders’ ears to some extent and helps to inform their narratives and shape their strategies to some extent.
But the brethren have created the space for FAIR to exist and function. The leading FAIR apologists owe their positions, status, and even paychecks to the church leaders. How so? Tithing funds prop up BYU and other church institutions which have dozens and dozens of positions for believing scholars to fill. For leading apologists, church leaders have actually quasi-appointed particular scholars to provide defense narratives. This was the case for Dan Peterson. Church leaders told his department to relieve him of many academic duties in order to free up time for him to shape scholarly defense narratives against critics. In essence the church has indirectly paid him for this. Other BYU profs are given credit for apologetic publications and can claim those toward their academic advancement (where they are not given credit at other non-church universities). There are non-BYU scholars contributing to FAIR as well. But by and large the church props up the structure for FAIR, and the heads of FAIR know this and devote themselves to defending the general traditional church narrative. If the leaders disavowed the Book of Abraham, FAIR would stop defending it. Three head is the church, the tail is FAIR and the tail doesn’t wag the dog.
And the Planned Parenthood comparison, a gamer equivalence. They’re not a strictly scholarship organization.
“The conspiracy theory isn’t whether FAIR would try and stop such things but the *reason* why they do. You say it’s the Church leadership whereas I said it was just the leadership and aims of the organization that explains everything.”
The president and board of FAIR would stop unorthodox participants. The church leadership would stop unorthodox presidents and high-ranking board members. About all of them have employment at BYU. If they go unorthodox, church leaders would tell (well technically nudge BYU administration with their typical plausible deniability tactics, if you have a position of high authority subtle hints go far) BYU administrators to demote them and if needed terminate their employment altogether. The church leaders have strong influence over a particular apologetic narrative. They don’t tell them what to say, but they build up and sustain an environment for a select few ones who are saying things they want to hear to thrive and stand out. They create a dependency relationship between them and the leading apologists. Church leaders could and would screw Dan Peterson and other prominent apologists of he started saying things they didn’t like. They could also screw Givens and Bushman in other ways of they go too far as well.
I don’t understand the need for apologists, period. Whether they are bad or good. Just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Honestly answer sincerely questions. I also don’t like the word “inoculate” as used by the Church. The youth don’t need inoculation, they need a reason to stay.
Don may be a genius, but I don’t get the point of his wild speculations. Christ’s religion was basically simple. Why do we need to continually complicate things? These speculations are so far removed from my believe structure that they make me question why I’m LDS.
Bruce and Marie appear to be on the right track about a need to return to the simple teaching of Christ. And away from the hubris that has engulfed the Church (think Don here).
Rene, as has already been pointed out, is being disingenuous. The Church has peddled half truths for so long that it is no position to be criticizing others. The missionary lessons I presented in the 1960’s were riddled with historic and doctrinal half truths. I was a salesman with a inaccurate message trying to make a sale (oops, I mean baptism).
As for proving the historicity of the BoM, it’s an increasing difficult and questionable activity. Why not concentrate on the book’s message? For example, King Benjamin’s address.
None of FAIR talks tried to define true religion. Instead they make wild speculations, trash the Internet, defend the legitimacy of the BoM, etc. Let’s give our children a reason to stay.
It’s heartening to read that attendees were unafraid to gently but firmly push back whenever Krywult, Gordon, the Hafens, et. al veered into characterizing critics as liars. The inconvenient truth is that younger members are the demographic driving the exponential growth in readership at places that remain unnamed only among the willfully complacent. That BOM historicity remains a topic remanded to sotto voce private confabs in any quarter of Mormondom is symptomatic of that complacency and an indication of just how behind the curve its defenders find themselves.
To the extent that the ChurchIsTrue project looks to be intent on piercing a baked-in obstinance that’s outlived its shelf life, kudos. To the extent that the institution and its cheerleaders view that project as anything like edgy or avant-garde in 2019 simply signals the difficulty ahead for anyone looking to salvage a Restoration project that would have been better-served if it had dealt with BOM historicity at least one generation earlier.
In any case, OP’s thought experiment is spot on. One of the earliest moves we made at r/exmormon was to put links to r/exJW, r/Scientology, etc. front and center so that our readers could sample the sentiments and experiences on offer from exittors of other traditions. Go figure, commonalities abound. Armed with that knowledge, it should come as no surprise that it’s rightly seen as weak sauce by young Mormons when their elders pretend there’s something uniquely awful about people who question the Mormon narratives on offer.
P.S. Of course nobody pushed back when Krywult, Gordon, the Hafens, et. al veered into characterizing critics as liars. But imagine a FAIRMormon shindig where someone actually did do exactly that, to applause and high-fives, and something like a plausible hypothetical reversal of fortunes could be back on the menu, change the forecast, shuffle the deck chairs in at least mildly convincing fashion for your kids. Until then, they’ll be hanging out with us, and we may be a lot of things, but we’re not liars.
My goodness I get dumber reading some these half baked comments posted by sciolists just blabbering on and on
Wow, Steve J! I had no idea that so many posters have scoliosis. How do you detect that, or any other condition, by reading a few posts?
My bad vajra2. I thought it was the fashionable thing to do to in these posts is to use SAT vocabulary or Latin words to express my sophistication and knowledge that far succeeds
regular church members. I’m unable to detect anybody with scoliosis by just reading a few posts, but I can detect some geocentricism.
Egocentricism* although Autocorrected to geocentricism, which is not too far off
Not what the word means, but I’m sure you know that
Interesting. I subscribe to the Fair Mormon podcast and I couldn’t finish Elder Christianson’s talk… he kept going on about Joseph Smith’s vision being the best way to deal with doubters today and read from the one in the PofGP… not mentioning the other versions. I’m finding myself having a hard time with most of FairMormon.
My conference talk is now up, https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2019/a-paradoxical-preservation-of-faith