Like all believers, I have occasionally had doubts, about the existence of God, or the teachings of my own religion. But they’ve never been too difficult to overcome, and I’ve never spent much time wallowing in them. Truth be told, I’ve never had a really serious intellectual or spiritual crisis of faith. I don’t share this to brag or out of pride, but out of gratitude. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and the weaknesses I have been given to make this mortal sojourn a time of learning and growth are more than sufficient for the task, thank you very much. Nor do I believe that easy faith is a strength, let alone a virtue. But I do believe that it is a gift, a manifestation of grace. The gift of faith is a wonderful thing, for many reasons.
For one thing, the most fascinating questions, leading to the most satisfying insights, are the questions that you get to ask as a believer. When you know that certain precepts are true, and then seek to understand their application, or when you wrestle with reconciling the paradoxes of seemingly contradictory scriptural directives (let your light so shine, but do not your alms to be seen of men) and try to determine how and to what extent each may apply and clarify the other, you can, I believe, be presented with opportunities for growth that are denied those who live their lives on the periphery, forever investigating the much less interesting “is this true?” question, rather than eventually moving past all that to cut to the chase and get to the good stuff. Why spend an excessive amount of time trying to determine the plausibility of any particular geographical setting for the Book of Mormon over another, or trying to precisely ascertain the nature of the divine process involved in Joseph Smith’s deriving the text of the Book of Abraham, when the Holy Spirit has told me what I need to know: the scriptures are true, such that I get to involve myself in far more intriguing areas of inquiry. I can instead enjoy spending time in 2 Nephi Chapter 2, trying to understand its deep and significant theological statements, or pondering on and trying to comprehend Alma 5, or Alma 7, or Alma 34, or Moroni 10, or being refocused on the paradigms offered by the Pearl of Great Price, the Sermon on the Mount and Christ’s final statements on the cross. Critics and murmurers and antis and political advocates and narcissistic podcast hosts? Whose got the time?
Inoculations
And so, when I remark upon the ease with which I have come to accept the truths of the restored gospel (despite my persistent difficulties in trying to consistently live it), I do so not from pride, but out of gratitude, including a deeply felt gratitude for God’s little interventions and tender mercies. As I look back on my life, I find that I have often been sheltered from doubt and struggles of faith, by virtue of what I would call prior inoculations, which have kept me from being tripped up by some of the stumbling blocks and sophistries to which I’ve sometimes seen others fall prey. These inoculations have prevented me from becoming overly concerned with some of the common criticisms of faith in general, or my Church in particular. These typically come in the form of a forewarning, or prediction, of some danger on the road ahead, which, when the danger arises, keeps me safe, because of the faith generated from the very fact of having been forewarned.
By way of illustration, when I was in my late teens, I read C.S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters. At the time, many of the issues addressed in the book were beyond the scope of my experience, and it did not initially become, as it later would, one of the most important world-view-defining texts of my life. Nevertheless, there were a few things that stood out to me and which I later remembered. One of them, for whatever reason, was Lewis’s description and prediction (in Chapter 23) of how Satan would rely on skeptic-scholars to give each future generation a new iteration of “the historical Jesus.” These would be forthcoming, Lewis’s senior devil, Screwtape, explained, on a regular and recurring basis, on into the future, with each new version to be based on suppressing certain scriptures and historical evidence, and over-exaggerating other data, to arrive at the precise “historical Jesus” custom designed to do the most harm to each particular generation’s faith, based on the vogues and concerns of their own time.
At some point later in my life, I found myself reading a magazine article, I believe in the Atlantic, or perhaps Harpers or somewhere else, about the latest views on the subject of the historical Jesus. I remember I had a hard time taking the theories set forth in the article very seriously, given that so many of them, in premise and effect, conformed so perfectly to C.S. Lewis’s predictions. If I recall correctly, I was especially bemused at how the adjectives used in the article to describe a particular scholar’s theories were updated synonymous variations on Screwtape’s recommended term for the WWII generation: “brilliant.” But then, Screwtape had mentioned that the adjective would change. The article was unable to move me from my faith in the basic narrative of the Gospels because I had been inoculated.[Endnote 1] Lewis’s wisdom in being able to predict a phenomenon I later saw occurring, many years after his death, made me trust his wisdom more than that of those who seemed to be following the script he had so aptly described and predicted beforehand.
Of course, the best source of inoculation is to be steeped in the scriptures. I came across a Salt Lake Tribune article recently about the history of societal and religious attitudes towards marriage. The central expert quoted in the piece argued that, while Jesus did not necessarily condone adultery and divorce, he wasn’t overly concerned about them. This argument could only be made by someone completely unfamiliar with any of the many statements Christ makes on these subjects in the Gospels (including in Christianity’s most basic text, the Sermon on the Mount), such as Christ’s call for the restoration of an ancient prohibition against no-fault unilateral divorce, which prohibition Moses had “suffered” to be set aside, due to the hardness of the Israelites’ hearts, as well as passages which broaden the definition of what is prohibited as a form of adultery, to encompass the thoughts of our hearts. This so-called expert’s willingness to state an opinion on a subject which he clearly had never studied, made me realize that I didn’t need to take anything he said with the slightest degree of seriousness.
But the most important inoculations we receive from the scriptures work at a spiritual, not an intellectual, level. If, at some point in your youth, you had the experience of reading about Lehi’s dream and having the spirit work within you such that you just knew exactly what the great and spacious building and the mocking people therein were all about, and you just understood in ways that can never be articulated, the truth of that symbol, then you will know quite clearly what I am talking about. You were inoculated, and you can probably remember specific moments in your life when the strength and power of your understanding of that symbol protected you from veering onto a particular path.
President Cracroft
The most important series of inoculations against the arguments and sophistries of skeptics and critics which I ever received came during my mission, and were provided by one of my most important spiritual mentors, my Mission President, Richard H. Cracroft. The Prez, as we called him[2] was a truly remarkable man. The major inoculation Prez gave me was in teaching me an important truth, not by telling me this truth, but by living it: It is possible to be a Mormon liberal intellectual, and remain true to the faith.
I did not become an intellectual. I also did not become a liberal. But I needed to know this truth nonetheless, and I am glad President Cracroft taught it to me. It inoculated me against the claim I’ve sometimes heard from murmuring Latter-day Saints that if you are just too smart, or just too socially aware, in comparison to your fellow Mormons, your exit from the Church must be excused. Sorry, not buying it. Especially from self-described intellectuals who aren’t nearly as bright as der Prez was, but think that, unlike him, they’re too smart for the Church. It is pride, not brains, not politics, not social views, that puts one on the high road to apostasy. Always has been. Always will be. Now that I think of it, I got this inoculation from Prez as well, who talked to me once about what he called “the people of the higher plane” those who say, “I’m sorry dear Priesthood leader, you are a good (read simple) man, but you have to understand, I’m just on a higher plane.” Whether that supposed higher plane is intellectual, spiritual, political, or social, and whether it stems from overzealous and overly dogmatic right wing orthodox conservative views, or from a secular liberal humanist point of view, it always turns out to be a high road to thinking we know better than the current leaders of the Church, which, in turn, is the high road to apostasy.
(For those who did not have the privilege of knowing Prez, but who would like to learn this same truth about the ability to be true to the Mormon faith even as a liberal intellectual, I would suggest reading Boyd Jay Petersen’s excellent biography, Hugh Nibley, A Consecrated Life, about beloved Mormon Scholar and ardent liberal Hugh Nibley. Added bonus: Petersen’s book is just fun reading.)[3]
Prez Cracroft had the credentials that allow one to be called a scholar and an intellectual: the Ph.D., the publications in scholarly journals, the jobs as a university professor and dean, etc. But most people who came to understand his keen mental gifts did so in the privileged context of being exposed to his amazing sense of humor, always used to edify and bring joy into the room, never to skewer (unless in self-deprecation). You can get a small sense of what I’m talking about in this tribute I found to him:
http://bycommonconsent.com/2012/09/25/richard-cracroft-go-gentle/
Prez was also one of the best writers I’ve ever read, with a truly distinctive voice. Here’s a little gem that gives a small taste of this:
http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2841 . [4]
President Cracroft believed in intellectual integrity. During a mission tour in which he and his AP’s listened to missionaries role-playing teaching the discussions, he learned that some of the missionaries were using a bit of inaccurate folk-apologetics to explain the reasons for polygamy, if they were asked about the subject by investigators. He would have none of it. He taught the missionaries the correct historical information about the reasons given and understood at the time for the revelations on polygamy, and how it was seen in the Church while it was practiced, and explained better and more accurate ways of discussing the issue and resolving concerns.
I had the opportunity, during the first year of my mission, to be assigned as an office Elder, working with President Cracroft’s older sister, Helen, who came to the mission with her husband to handle administrative matters, and with whom I felt a special kinship, because she found the same people vexing or annoying, for the same reasons, as I did.[5] During this time, I recall driving Prez around to various errands or conferences, and listening to him discuss Joseph Smith and the history of the Church with his wife, sister Helen, and her husband, in a dispassionate, objective, and scholarly manner that was a bit startling for someone like me, who wasn’t used to hearing people talk like this. He would, for example, elaborate on the different accounts Joseph Smith provided of the First Vision, and the obvious influences that affected these different write-ups of the experience, explaining on one occasion that the Prophet Joseph had not quite gotten past Presbyterian influences when he wrote his first account, which was written in a very Presbyterian voice, and addressed very Presbyterian concerns. President’s take was that the Prophet had not himself understood the full import and significance of the experience, until he, like all of us, grew in his own understanding, line upon line. When Prez would then stand up in a Zone Conference and give the most powerful testimony of Joseph Smith I’d ever heard, I came to realize that his deep and sophisticated, scholarly and objective, understanding of the Prophet Joseph’s life and the history of the Church was not a stumbling block to his testimony, but was, quite to the contrary, its source. (Indeed, he loved to tell the story of a bet he had made with a colleague that Hoffman’s so-called Salamander letter would someday be found to be a forgery, since Prez couldn’t put its implications into his mental file of the Prophet Joseph’s life and thinking. His colleague smiled condescendingly at Prez’s supposed naivete at the time, but Prez won the bet.)
I did not speak much to Prez about his politics, or overhear him say much about it, but when I did it was clear that, like most college professors, including Nibley, he did not share most Mormons’ (including my own) conservative political leanings. However, unlike some of today’s more strident LDS dissenters, who believe themselves “compelled” by their intellectual skepticism and political liberalism to attack the Church and its leaders, Prez was true blue and dyed in the wool. If there was an academic controversy that involved Church principles, Prez defended the Church’s principles, as in this piece, in which testimony is borne to worldly scholars:
http://mldb.byu.edu/attune.htm
Likewise, if a Cracroft piece appeared in a publication that good Mormons, for good reason, ought not to read without a helping heaping of grains of salt nearby, such as Sunstone, Prez’s contribution would be refreshingly faith affirming, notwithstanding that magazine’s usual fare, like a rose springing up from the fetid manure surrounding it:
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/084-23-27.pdf
“From those who will claim to be our friends”
I’ve been thinking a lot about President Cracroft lately, as events in the news have reminded me of the final inoculation I received from him, in the form of counsel he gave my flight group, on our last night in Switzerland.[6] Der Prez, among other issues, discussed with us a concern that had been on his mind, from his perch in the world of academia, about the changing nature of those who would criticize the Church. The anti-Mormonism we’d been exposed to as missionaries was generally of a right-wing evangelical variety. It was annoying, but its strident tone, disreputable methodology[7], and its often easily refuted falsehoods often kept it from being particularly effective.
President Cracroft indicated that he saw a shift coming. We would be increasingly exposed to attacks on our faith “from those who will claim to be our friends.” Active members of the Church, acting from prominent positions within society and academia would not leave the Church, but would undermine it from within, all the while claiming to be “trying to help us.”
It was a thought that has stuck with me. And it is a forewarning that I have recently seen come to pass. The old-fashioned anti-mormons were, for all their faults, and all their falsehoods, at least open and honest about this: that they were our enemies, and they wanted to undermine our faith and lead people away from it. This is an important point. I have no particular beef with those who decide they do not believe in the truth claims of Mormonism. Many of those truth claims are truly remarkable, and most of the world has been skeptical from the outset. If the demographics of the Church as described by Nephi (who saw the members of the Church on every continent, but everywhere in smaller numbers than the nonbelievers) hold true, that will always be the case. I don’t even have any particular concern about those, be they fundamentalist evangelicals or fundamentalist secular materialists, who decide it is their mission in life to help poor straying Latter-day Saints escape from the so-called falsehoods of our faith and be brought into the light of truth and knowledge. I think it’s a silly way to spend one’s life and energies, but hey, whatever gets you motivated to wake up in the morning. Under God’s plan, it’s a free universe, and we can take sides on whatever issue we want to, be it historical, political, scientific, or theological, without any bolts of thunder coming down from the skies to blot us from the earth. If you are sincere in your belief that you are doing God’s, or the universe’s, work, your heart is not mine to judge (though, in many cases, I reserve the right to question that sincerity). My beef is with those modern dissidents from the Church who aren’t honest with themselves or others concerning what they are about.
Many in the new generation of Mormon critics fall into this far more deceptive and disingenuous category than old school fundamentalist Christians with their anti-Mormon, anti-Catholic, anti-JW, anti-Seventh Day Adventist, tracts. “We’re here to help” claims an anti-Mormon web site deceptively designed to appear like a place where prospective LDS missionaries can go for counsel. “I’m here to help the church” by making it toe my own particular political lines, proclaim so many in the dissident bloggernacle. “I’m here to help” says one of the more prominent anti-Mormon podcast hosts who has recently made himself the center of a media frenzy by rushing letters from his priesthood leaders to national news organizations. “He’s here to help and the church should embrace him” parrot his followers, as they post their trolling comments on pro-LDS blogs, not bothering to mention that they themselves have become adversarial to the Church, as you will find if you click on their profiles and follow them to their own sites. An acquaintance of mine recently shared a blog post from one of these currently trendy apostates, which my acquaintance was apparently much moved by. I found the experience of reading it somewhat akin to dissecting a frog: “OK, I see the bit of emotional sophistry being deployed here, but I’m not sure why anyone would find it effective. I’m surprised he didn’t work harder to avoid that logical fallacy in the second paragraph, and that logical leap in the third. Huh, that’s an interesting double-standard there.” Etc. The whole process left me bewildered that anyone I know could have fallen for this stuff. Maybe he watches too much cable television and his brain has turned to mush. I dunno. If someone is ever going to push me out of the Church, and make me forsake the thousands of manifestations of the Spirit which have crafted my testimony, please, please, please, for the sake of my own pride, at least let him be someone who is bright and has something original or compelling to offer me, not this cheap reheated pottage.
Nevertheless, this stuff is out there, and some people apparently find it convincing, so in the hopes of offering some of my own inoculations to anyone who might be interested, here’s a list of a few of the disingenuous sophistries of the new anti-Mormon advocates that I find particularly annoying, and my own responses to the same. This is not a list of specific critical claims about Church history or doctrine. There are plenty of Mormon defenders of the faith doing fine work on the internet and elsewhere with respect to those specific issues, and I would defer to them, because I don’t have their credentials, nor their patience in dealing with subjects that I often find boring and tedious. This is, rather, a list of rhetorical devices and methods utilized by the new Mormon dissidents for presenting the context of their claims, which I find to be disingenuous and full of sophistry.
The List. Some Currently Prevalent Disingenuous Sophistries and Why They Annoy Me and Should Be Challenged.
1. The “We’re here to help the Church” sophistry (See also the “I’m just asking questions” meme).
Is it possible that fair consideration of difficult subjects in Mormon history or doctrine will “help” the Church and its members? That critical questions can lead to more accurate information from the Church, about the Church? Sure it is. Some of the best historical research on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to take just one of many possible examples, has been done by faithful Latter-day Saints. The earliest of that research was not always initially welcome, but it was necessary, and the Church ultimately embraced it and has published straightforward accounts of the matter in its own publications. Addressing that painful chapter in our Church’s history can be an important step against such an episode ever being repeated, just as the study of U.S. history needs to include frank evaluations of slavery, dealings with Native-Americans, WWII Japanese internment camps, and other subjects that we don’t necessarily bring up on the 4th of July, but still need to know.
So, how can I personally tell when someone is truly trying to “help” and when someone is engaged in an attack on my faith? In part, to paraphrase a famous remark by a Supreme Court Justice on another topic: I know it when I see it. When I read Juanita Brooks’ account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for example, I could tell she was writing as a fair and objective historian, seeking to discover and lay out the facts and let the chips fall where they may. She did not unnecessarily sensationalize the facts. But she also did not downplay them. She was not putting these facts on the table in order to embarrass or discomfit but simply to tell the story of what occurred. She had no agenda but telling the truth. She did not write in order to convince anyone that a particular political or doctrinal policy change was necessary. Nor did she act the part of Shakespeare’s lady who doth protest too much, by loudly and stridently and zealously proclaiming that she had “no agenda but truth” or, no agenda but “just asking questions.” She didn’t need to do that because her writing spoke for itself and made that clear. She simply told the story, as best she could with the tools available to her.
There is, by contrast, a tone in much of the “we’re here to help” sophistries of today’s Mormon dissident bloggernacle that gives their game away. They insist, frequently and loudly, that they are merely doing what other truer scholars have actually done, just helping, just asking questions. But in their frequent repetition of this claim, and in the stridency with which they make it, they doth protest too much. A wise man once told me I should always be cautious about doing business with any company that had the word “honest” in its name. Do you want your car repaired by “Honest Joe’s Honest Repair Shop”? Probably not. If objective scholarship were what the new Mormon dissidents were truly about, they could just go about their work, and their writings and publications would speak that truth for themselves. But they don’t. Their writings convey a different spirit altogether. Their tone is gleeful when making any point that might embarrass, sneering and pedantic when posting memes showing some quote from a prior era which conflicts with some new emphasis, narcissistic when comparing the humble writer to the leaders of the Church, strident and agenda-driven in presenting arguments based upon cherry-picked historical anecdotes, rather than merely presenting all of the relevant history for its own sake, the good and the bad, the divine and the mortal, that which inspires and that which reminds us of human error and folly, all presented in context.
Political writing offers a handy analogy. You want to help a political party? Then don’t parrot the other political party’s talking points under the guise of “trying to help you understand why so many Americans disagree with your agenda.” You want to write objective political journalism and political history which helps neither side and without an editorial agenda beyond asking questions and getting at the answers? Then quote from both sides and get sources in both camps to help you tell your tale, and present both sides’ fairly. But don’t tell me, loudly and insistently and stridently, that all you’re doing here is objective journalism, when it’s clear from the tone of what you produce that you’re really doing partisan editorial commentary under the guise of journalism. Follow these same rules whether you’re writing about politics or faith or science or any other subject and you won’t insult my intelligence or demean your own integrity. There is a perfectly legitimate place for editorial commentary and partisan attacks in this world, so if that’s what you are selling just be up-front about it. Don't lie about your intent or your product and you can do so with integrity. The same is true of modern Mormon dissidents. If you are interested in doing objective scholarly research, by all means, do so, and then let what you have written speak for itself. If you are interested in attacking the Church, have at it, it's your right to do so, but be honest about it from the get-go, without hiding who you are and what you intend.
The same is true of the “we’re just asking questions” meme. There are, to take one currently trending example, perfectly legitimate questions to be asked about why women are not ordained to the priesthood on this earth. I have heard many explanations, some of them more convincing than others, but none of them has ever, to my knowledge, been adopted as official Church doctrine. Based thereon, I would not find anything particularly offensive about some group who honestly wanted the Church to clarify the reasons for this practice, if the Church is able to do so. But a group which claims to be “just asking questions” while marching under a name which belies the possibility that there may be any legitimate answers to the inquiry, and while issuing statements demanding not answers to questions but policy changes dictated under various “or else” threats, is not just asking questions, and when they claim to be doing so, they are making a false statement, plain and simple. If you want to demand changes to church policies and doctrines, despite the fact that such demands deny one of the core doctrines of the Church, that we are led by revelation and prophets, seers and revelators, fine, have at it, do your worst. And if you want to make your demands through political showmanship, all to the delight of a secular news media which holds a deep antipathy towards people of faith and will be delighted by the fodder you are feeding them, then good for you, enjoy your 15 minutes. But do your soul a favor and be honest about what you are doing, and don’t claim to be engaged in a task which is directly contrary to everything you say and everything you do.
2. The sophistry that if you disagree with the new Mormon dissidents, it is because you are “anti-intellectual.”
There is an underlying assumption among many of the modern critics of Faith in general and of Mormonism in particular, that if only the members of the Church knew this or that uncomfortable fact about history, or heard some cherry-picked politically incorrect quotation from an old-time church leader, then we would take off our blinders and be lead to the salvation of secular humanism. The reason you are not on my path, they will tell you, is because you just aren’t as smart as me. The reason you dislike my scholarship, they say, is because you are against scholars. You are an anti-intellectual, unwilling to study the truths and come to the same understandings and conclusions as your betters. Here's a recent version of this particular sophistry:
“Sadly, the Mormon faith has become a place that incentivizes the survival of the least fit. Since strict obedience is demanded and harshly enforced, only the least talented, least articulate, least nuanced thinkers, least likely to take a stand against abuse, and the least courageous people thrive in the Church today.” Kate Kelly, founder of “Ordain Women,” in The Guardian (6 February 2015).
So there you have it folks. Don't agree with the new Mormon dissidents? There's only one possible explanation, you are not as "nuanced" a thinker as you need to be. Cause if there's one thing we all know about Ms. Kelly, it's that she is nuanced. Also, you are not as "fit" nor as "talented" nor as "articulate" as your betters who have taken up the cause of left-wing assimilationist Mormon dissidentry. (See how I had to make up a non-existent word to make my point in that last sentence? It's because I'm insufficiently articulate to use real English.) Finally, you are simply not as "courageous" as you should be. How does such a person manage to stay alive without suffocating on her own narcisissm? Oh, that's right, it's because she's so "fit" for survival.
These tired claims of anti-intellectualism apparently sound sufficiently compelling to some that they have followed the pied pipering of Ms. Kelly, Mr. Dehlin, and their ilk, in search of a far off promised land, where they, too, may be admitted into the club of the "fit" and the "articulate" and the "courageous".
Meanwhile, in the real world, intellectualism doesn’t really work the way the dissidents claim, especially for people who keep on studying.
Let me discuss U.S. history as an imperfect but handy analogy to scholarship on the Church. Broadly speaking, there are three types of U.S. historians: First, there are what we might call “patriotic historians” those who write inspiring history which instills patriotism, but who may sometimes be accused of engaging in advocacy or hagiography more than objective scholarship. (These might run the gamut from people like Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough, one of my favorite writers, with his incredibly engaging and uplifting books, like John Adams and Truman, to more specifically partisan, typically conservative, authors producing more in-your-face works, favoring titles such as “The Real Thomas Jefferson” or “The politically incorrect guide to the Constitution" or "A Patriots History of the United States."). Secondly, there are those who are genuinely interested in objectively studying and writing about U.S. history without any particularly political motivation with respect to scouring the past for ammunition in some modern political controversy, who seek to understand the motives of those who occupied any particular time period on the terms which those people themselves understood, and who are willing to give us the good, the bad, and the ugly, let the chips fall where they may, of our past. We might call this group the “objective academic historians.” (Pulitzer Prize Winner Gordon S. Wood, one of America’s most well-respected academic scholars on early American history, would be my favorite author in this camp. I consider his books Revolutionary Characters and The Idea of America to be essential reading. They have introduced me to ideas and worldviews and preoccupations held by the founders which are completely alien to us today, because they arose from a society which no longer exists, which has helped me to understand that the founders' viewpoints cannot always be marshalled for some modern ideological purpose as easily as we think.) Finally, there are those who dislike America, see her as her enemies see her, and believe that the “truth” of American history is essentially ugly, and write to persuade us to see ourselves in the way that the Soviet Union's citizens saw us, as an enemy of progressive forces trying to create a better and more benevolent world. We might term this group the “negative narrators”. Scholars in this camp regard the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as only dead white male slaveholders who couldn’t possibly have advanced any principle or value worth remembering or fighting to maintain and transmit to the next generation. (Howard Zinn would be one obvious example, but much of modern scholarship on U.S. History falls under this same hostile, hostilely revisionist, and deconstructionist agenda. That the student leaders of the California State University system recently voted to require that system to remove all U.S. investments, because of the evils of America, demonstrates the hold the negative narrators currently enjoy in higher education.)
I have a great love for certain patriotic historians and for some objective academic historians. Patriotic history is perfectly legitimate and fulfills an important need. A nation, to remain sufficiently homogenous to be and remain a nation, instead of several balkanized factions, needs to have some shared sense of gratitude for what makes their country great, for what ideals it stands upon, and why those ideals matter. Our feelings for our nation ought to be capable of being expressed in poetry, not only in prose. Our nation’s citizens ought to get teary eyed when we hear our national anthem or see our flag flying at half-mast. It makes our country stronger. Sometimes, I want to be inspired by heroes. I want to be moved by the story of our nation’s earliest citizens’ and their stand for freedom and liberty. I want to be grateful for those who wrote, fought, and politically finangled to end slavery. I want to be thrilled at our nation’s successful 20th Century stands against totalitarianism abroad, in WWII and the Cold War. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, the gratitude I feel for my nation from reading such history makes life better.
There’s also, of course, a place for more objective history. We ought to know the dark side of American history. We ought to know about slavery, the displacement of Native Americans from their ancestral lands, Jim Crow, and the exploitation of labor in the sweatshops of the industrial revolution. We ought to be exposed to objective history from the past in order to learn about values and worldviews held by earlier generations which have been lost to us. The work of objective academic scholars can provide us with a nuanced view of history that can prevent our patriotism from turning into parochial jingoism, help us avoid jumping onto simple-minded political bandwagons, and help us to understand and learn to deal with the inherent ambiguities in life. Sometimes, however, the nuanced view can also remind us that patriotism is legitimate. An open-minded and objective study of U.S. history will not always lead us to negative conclusions, despite the contentions of those in the third camp. The more we know, the more we might come to see that the founders, for all their faults and fights and bickering, and for all the ways in which they were beholden to and creatures of their own times and the value systems of those times, were nevertheless, still truly remarkable men. We may just find, when we reach a higher level of knowledge and understanding, that some of the founders, in certain of their best moments, really were the great and noble men our elementary school teachers taught us about (or at least did when I was that age), despite the warts and weaknesses our more cynical High School and college teachers so loved to share. For example, scholarly historian Gordon S. Wood, who has forgotten more about the founding era than most of us will ever know, and writes without blinders about the strengths and the weaknesses of our first leading citizens, has a chapter in his book, Revolutionary Characters which is entitled, simply and without irony: The Greatness of George Washington.
Even the work of the negative narrators has potential value, in exposing historical events which don’t always make the textbooks, and describing the viewpoints of those who stood on the fringes of history. But much of the negative narrators’ work is ultimately just . . . negative. Many negative narrators revile patriotic history, refusing to concede its point or purpose, not because their own viewpoints are any more true, but because their cynicism blinds them to light and virtue, and their arrogance makes them despise any viewpoint but their own. You can see this from how often they also revile academic historians, if their work fails to reach the same partisan political opinions which motivates the negative narrators. But, more relevant to the point here, this is the group which sound most like certain modern Mormon dissidents in their insistence that if you do not see the world the way they see it, you are an anti-intellectual and stupid person (suffering from a lack of "nuance" "courage" or intelligence): "You don’t hate my scholarship because it’s unpatriotic. You hate my scholarship because you hate scholarship; because you are not as bright or enlightened or as sophisticated I am. You reject my writings because you are simple-minded, blinded by naivete and jingoism, part of the bourgeois problem" etc. But this is bogus. There are plenty of smart and scholarly and academically serious people who don’t buy the premises of Howard Zinn.
Indeed, members of camp three are often far more simpleminded and blind to any evidence that undercuts their assumptions than are members of camp one. An approach to history premised on an attitude of “always assume the worst” is no less simpleminded than “always assume the best.” The most zealous proponents of the negative narrative (and this is where you will find zealousness if you are looking for it) are often far less willing to recognize the ambiguity and nuance in history than are those who want their history patriotic and inspiring. The believers in an inspiring and patriotic view of American history are, typically, willing to concede that the Country’s past has included dark episodes and undercurrents that we should study and know about. The negative narrators, by contrast, are often unwilling to concede that there is anything meritorious or virtuous about America’s past, or its present, and take every patriotic story as an affront and opportunity for pedantic critique.
A similar dynamic plays itself out among those who write about Church history and doctrine. Many fine and faithful writers have approached the Church’s history in a manner designed to inspire, show its beauty and poetry, and engage, uplift, edify, and inspire. And despite the critiques of the new Mormon dissidents, that is just as it should be. Such works can help us stay true to the path and cling to the rod through difficult times in our mortal journey. They can uplift us, call us to be something more, inspire us to repent, help us see the history of the Church and the paradigms offered by its doctrines in all their grandeur. The study of such works of history, doctrine, literature, music, etc., are important places for us to spend our time and nourish our testimonies. We ought to go there frequently, and help ourselves to blow our personal trumps of testimony without an uncertain sound.
Is there a time and a place for more straightforward and objective history? Absolutely, and in the works of people like Richard Bushman, and others, we can find the Latter-day Saint equivalents to Gordon Wood. Some people will read these more frank histories and be troubled by them. They will let the humanity in the church obscure the divinity of the Church. Others will read such works and not only still be able to see the grandeur of the truth of Mormonism, but will perhaps have an even keener appreciation for the miracle of this Church having sprung forth from truly obscure beginnings, and a deeper appreciation for how God works his mighty plans through small and simple things, using very mortal tools, with feet of clay, for the building of both the tool and the Kingdom.
Then there are the new Mormon dissidents: claiming the mantle of objective scholarship when in truth and fact they are just as one-sided in their approaches as they claim the uplifting narratives to be. If there is an inspiring story to be found in the annals of Mormonism, they ignore it, doubt it without any evidence for doing so, and then move on to preaching to their own choirs in a voice and with a purpose that will not allow for even the possibility of any dissent from their own conclusions. They are free to advocate for their conclusions, but as they do so they should be open with themselves and their audience about who they are and who we are: they are to the LDS Church what communist deconstructionist American historians are to America, cranky advocates for their own opinions, so blinded by their own worldview that they have no ability to temper that view with the possibility of nuance or ambiguity. It is, more often than not, they, not the faithful, who have left the road of seeking after truth, and have become anti-intellectual in the certainty of their opinions, and the blinders they wear against any other possibilities.
I suspect that if I were transported in a time machine back to the era of Moses, and I learned intimate details of Moses’s personality and day to day life, I would find much of what I learned, to be, from my perspective as a 21st Century American, odd, unsettling, politically incorrect, even horrifying. Ditto for Peter, James and John. I suspect the same would be true, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree, if I were transported back more recently in time to Joseph Smith’s day. Some of this would be based on cultural differences that would blindside me, and some of it would be the realization that these men put their pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else. If a skeptic or a new-fangled Mormon dissident wants to take me on that journey, my answer would be the same as if I had traveled there myself: So, what’s your point? These men were either Prophets or they were not. That they had mortal flaws and weaknesses which Satan would have exploited to the highest degree possible, that they were people very much of their own time and their own place, I already knew. That doesn’t mean they weren’t also Prophets. In fact, their feet of clay actually makes me admire their stories even more. Look what they accomplished, in the forging of a new faith and a new people, in the bringing forth of scripture, in the realization of Moses’s dream of a kingdom of priests, despite all of that.
3. The claim that the Church is on the wrong side of history.
Much of the new anti-Mormonism grows out of modern left-wing politics, which has become increasingly bold in its radicalism in recent decades, despite the historical evidence which mounted throughout the 20th century of the core weaknesses, and horrendous outcomes, which are precipitated by the application of its precepts. For those whose dissent stems from a left wing political agenda, claiming that the Church is on the wrong side of history, in its male priesthood or in its views on the meaning of marriage, has become a powerful rhetorical tool. In response, I would offer the following statement from a Catholic conservative, who has been confronted with the same type of arguments from the more liberal members of his religion.
Here is Robert P. George, speaking in 2014, at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., in a speech entitled, “Am I ashamed of the Gospel” : “These forces tell us that our defeat in the causes of marriage and human life are inevitable. They warn us that we are on the wrong side of history. They insist that we will be judged by future generations the way we today judge those who championed racial injustice in the Jim Crow south. But history does not have sides. It is an impersonal and contingent sequence of events, events that are determined in decisive ways by human deliberation, judgment, choice, and action. The future of marriage and of countless human lives can and will be determined by our judgments and choices, our willingness or unwillingness to bear faithful witness, our acts of courage or cowardice. Nor is history, or future generations, a judge invested with god-like powers to decide, much less dictate, who was right and who was wrong. The idea of a judgment of history is secularism’s vain, meaningless, hopeless, and pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of Almighty God. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our judge. One day we will give an account of all we have done and failed to do. Let no one suppose that we will make this accounting to some impersonal sequence of events possessing no more power to judge than a golden calf or a carved and painted totem pole. It is before God, the God of truth, the Lord of history, that we will stand. And as we tremble in His presence it will be no use for any of us to claim that we did everything in our power to put ourselves on the right side of history.”
If the 20th century taught us anything, it is that ideological fantasies which ignore fundamental truths and realities of human nature, sooner or later, hit reality. This is true of all fantastical ideological propositions, no matter how seemingly virtuous and well-meaning, no matter how passionately believed in, no matter how socially impossible, in a given time or place, to dissent from. The fantasy of communism, with its unwillingness to confront the truth of human nature, held sway for decades in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but eventually crashed against the realities it was trying to ignore. If current trends are any guide, we will no doubt pretend, for many decades hence, that human beings do not come in two sexes, that chromosomes have nothing to do with your sex, which is instead based on your own purely subjective and internal feelings, that children do not need both a mother and a father, and that there is no reason why sex, marriage, procreation, and child-rearing should be thought of as necessarily integrated concepts. Our Church will no doubt face a great degree of hostility and pressure and persecution if we refuse to bow to these ideological winds. Our children and grandchildren will no doubt be taught that there was something cruel, primitive, and unenlightened about their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, for holding views which were heretofore held by virtually every society on earth for thousands of generations, regarding sexual morality. They will be taught to scoff at the idea that, as sex’s most important biological function is procreative, any sound sexual ethic requires an institution which fosters commitment between the men and women whose sexual activities produce new human beings, and that, based thereon, the whole point of matrimony was essentially and distinctively to foster male-female unions, and to encourage abstinence outside of such unions. But the damage that is already being done to human beings raised in the shifting family structures of a society which clings to these new, anti-scientific, biologically insane, fantasies, will eventually become too overwhelmingly obvious for even the most obtuse among future generations to ignore. The end of the story has already been written, in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. It tells a sad story, but one that always keeps repeating itself. To determine who is truly on the “wrong side of history” is the work of generations and centuries, not years and decades, and requires us to take the long view, and have the courage to withstand the pressures of the current view. Our age’s instapundits, welding sitcom stereotypes of any who dare dissent from the new orthodoxies of our age, are not up to the task.
4. Comparing the Church to Civil Institutions, and Averring that the Same Rules of Appropriate Conduct Apply to Both.
Much of the commentary offered by the new Mormon dissidents uses political rhetoric which might be politically useful in critiquing a government or a civil society, to critique the Church. Thus, we are told that the rules governing conduct on Temple Square, make the place a little like Red China. Or that the Church is too intolerant of dissent, or too unwilling to learn from those who offer their services as a loyal opposition.
The problem with such arguments is that they misunderstand a vitally important fact: A church is not a government. The rules which apply to creating a good government are not the same as the rules which apply to creating a good church.
The views of classical western liberalism (now known as 21st Century conservatism) with respect to an appropriately constituted government include certain concepts which we utilize to judge the dangers to liberty and freedom which a government might start posing if it strays from those concepts, including concepts designed to prevent the government from becoming totalitarian. (Ironically, much of the modern left who are so happy to cheer-lead the Mormon dissidents making these arguments against the Church, would like to remove these concepts from our understanding of the rules of civil society, as inimical to their vision for changing that society--but I digress.)
These concepts include the idea that there should be no "political heresies"; that political parties which rotate peacefully in and out of power are important to allow for a loyal opposition and freedom of thought without fear of punishment or reprisal, that a healthy society will allow for and tolerate widely divergent viewpoints, without thought police, etc. I believe in all of those concepts as applicable to judging the current state of America, and to the extent that America seems to be diverging from those principles (as in the recent threats and public discrimination against anyone who does not tow the line in upholding the new political orthodoxy on same sex marriage) we will all be worse off. But here's the deal: a church is not a civil government, and while some of the principles we use to judge civil governments and civil societies may be usefully applied to other social institutions, this application can be taken too far, and lead us to forget the fundamental differences between a church and a nation.
A church is a private, not a public, institution. Membership and participation in a church, and complying with the rules of behavior required of those who wish to so participate, is purely voluntary. It is, by contrast, not typically legally possible to easily disclaim one's citizenship in a nation. Nor are the laws which we are required to comply with as citizens of a nation voluntary in nature. The penalty for violating such laws is not exclusion from the nation, but imprisonment within the nation.
By way of example, the Supreme Court has ruled as follows, in a case upholding the religious liberty of a Jehovah Witness who did not wish to pledge allegiance to the flag as a condition to attending public school: "[N]o official, high or petty, can [under our Constitution] prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." (Justice Jackson, W. Va State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)[emphasis added].) In another case, the following ruling was announced: -"Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief [i.e., a belief a particular citizen believes to be repugnant] nor penalize or discriminate against individuals because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities." Justice Brennan, Sherbert v. Verner (1963).
These are beautiful statements of the civil principles which distinguished America and other liberal western democracies from the totalitarian governments which offered a competing vision during the Cold War (and which are now under attack in America by the very leftist ideologues who love to champion and write news articles sympathetic to the new Mormon dissidents who claim that the Church violates these principles, while concurrently working to violate these principles themselves in the governmental sphere, and to establish new political orthodoxies and penalize and discriminate against individuals because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities--but again I digress). For present purposes, the vitally important fact about these two Supreme Court explanations of our Constitutional rights, is that they are designed, by the very vocabulary used therein, to differentiate government from religion. It is because a government is not a religion, that government should neither require "orthodoxy" nor create tests of citizenship which involve holding orthodox belief systems. But to aver that a religion may not propogate orthodoxy about the tenets of its own faith is to deny the very nature of what a religion is. Similarly, to claim that a religion should not propogate certain beliefs, and should not be concerned with what its members believe, as a prerequisite for holding certain callings or participating in certain ordinances is to misapply a standard applicable to one type of institution, to another type of institution altogether. (It should be noted here that the list of things which a faithful Mormon is expected to believe to be considered orthodox, is really fairly short, consisting of only the most basic of doctrines, covering approximately 4 of the Temple Recommend questions. Even as to those core doctrines, moreover, much, much, more than a waffling belief, or even an outright lack of belief, would be necessary before the Church might deem it necessary to take any formal action to remove an individual from the Church's membership rolls as a result of apostasy. As the case of John Dehlin shows, even years of overtly hostile attacks will only lead to a person's name removal on grounds of apostasy when it becomes overwhelmingly clear that no further attempts at reconciliation are possible. Meanwhile, every ward in the Church has lots of names on its rolls who consist of no-longer-active and no-longer-practicing and no-longer-believing members whose names the Church takes no formal action to remove. The criteria for remaining a member of the Church are very, very, low, especially in matters of orthodoxy of belief or level of activity; and the hope of working with members to reengage them in the faith is very, very, high.)
This is not to say that a church has nothing to learn from a comparison of a church's principles of self governance and the principles of self governance applicable to other institutions, including governmental or societal institutions. It is entirely possible that certain helpful principles and best practices might be derived from such an effort. Nevertheless, any comparison of a church to a civil institution based on hostility to the former or made in an effort to critique or criticize is an unfair apples to oranges approach, which will, either by design or inevitability, produce more heat than light. It should also be noted that, even in those civil governments which are based on and seek to emulate the principles of classical western liberalism, it is still possible to commit treason, and the government is still allowed to protect itself from advocates for its overthrow and dissolution. Similarly, even if the critiques of the Church for not abiding by principles which, by their nature, do not apply to private religious bodies, were helpful, it would nevertheless still remain perfectly appropriate for the Church to revoke the membership of individuals who have dedicated their lives to destroying the Church and leading its members away from the Church. In that regard at least, the applicable standards by which a church and a civil government may be judged, do share one thing in common.
FIRST POSTED: September 27, 2014
LAST UPDATED: February 10, 2015
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ENDNOTES
1. In the course of writing this post, I tried to remember and find the precise article in question, but my research led me to discover that there was more than one candidate, and I couldn’t remember which article about the historical Jesus I'd been reading when I’d had this experience, though I still vividly remember the thoughts I had at the time, from having completed Lewis's tome. The “historical Jesus” has apparently been a recurring theme in certain magazines, and my own memory of things I once read or ideas I was once exposed to has become so full that not only years, but decades, are now starting to collapse in on themselves in my mind.
2. That’s the phonetic spelling for English speakers: it should actually be spelled “Der Praes” or “Der Präs” as a shortcut for Der Praesident, with the German “s” pronounced as an English “z.”
3. President Cracroft knew and was friendly with Nibley, who was a member of his Stake, and President Cracroft introduced me to the book, Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless, which contains some of Nibley’s easier-to-read and pithier articles, while nevertheless advising me that some critics did not agree with Nibley’s bone-to-pick style of scholarship.
4. This article has a special place in my heart. When I read it, it prompted me to write President an email of appreciation, the first time I had communicated with him in many years. His response e-mail to me, full of encouragement, became one of my most prized possessions, especially as he passed away shortly thereafter, and this was the last time I ever heard from him.
5. There are few things in life that will ever bond two people together quite as quickly as finding that they both roll their eyes in response to the same stimuli.
6. Anyone who has been on an LDS Mission can imagine and should be familiar with the scene. A group of Elders and a couple of Sisters are visiting in the mission home, waiting for a nice meal featuring a culturally appropriate dish (raclette, of course, for Schweizer missionare) whose aromas they can smell wafting in from the kitchen, to be followed by their final counsel from their Mission President, a testimony meeting, and then off to bed before catching tomorrow’s flight home, where they will be released of their mantles, to much mixed emotion. As I recall it, President Benson had recently given a pulpit-thumping General Conference speech, calling on any bachelors within earshot who might be getting a bit long in the tooth to repent, rise up, be men and do their duty. Inevitably, given the subject matter, the speech had become the topic of some degree of humorous commentary. Spotting the most recent Conference Ensign on the table, I found the speech, which we’d all heard about, but not yet read, and began finding the good parts to read to my flight group, the perfect audience for this particular address, as we were not yet RM’ed, and so too young to be guilty of the sin at issue, but knew that avoiding the fate of these aging bachelors was to be our next duty. I tried to muster as much pseudo-brimstone as I could in my voice, as I read the most strident passages, to what I felt was great comic effect and a lot of laughter, when der Prez came into the room and jokingly berated me for stealing his thunder, while simultaneously giving me precisely the correct look to convey that, though he loved me, I was being a little irreverent with what was after all prophetic counsel, and that I should perhaps tone it down a little. Oh, how I miss that man. I had not, in fact, stolen his thunder. The topics for the evening ran far afield of President Benson’s talk, though it was of course referenced.
7. My first exposure to the dishonest methodology of the antis of my mission era was on the plane from Salt Lake City to Chicago, where we would be boarding our Swissair flight to Zuerich. My companion and I found ourselves sitting next to a man who asked us to give him a list of reasons why we believed Joseph Smith was a Prophet. After a bit of debate that followed, he revealed that he was a member of a group calling itself “Ex-Mormons for Jesus.” When I asked when he had left the church, he revealed he had never been Mormon. When I asked by what right he then called himself an “Ex-Mormon for Jesus” he explained the rhetorical importance of the name, and indicated that whenever his group set up their booths at various Christian gatherings, they always tried to find at least one actual “Ex-Mormon” to be on hand, even though he eventually conceded that most of the group’s membership did not actually fit the title. That was what it took for me to write him off as someone so intellectually dishonest as to not be worth spending any more time on. I enjoyed my nap on the rest of the flight.
