The Most Overrated Mormon Scholars

        In the middle of eating lunch at the LDS National Security Conference the person sitting next to me was so sad they missed hearing Patrick Mason speak and without thinking I groaned. The conversation stopped and the table looked at me. I then awkwardly explained that I was rather unimpressed with his scholarship in a number of ways.

        Incidents like this happen on a regular basis as I receive quizzical and sometimes angry looks and questioning when I don’t share someone’s enthusiasm for a given scholar. In many cases that’s because the scholar in question is part of my overrated club. What follows is a list that doesn’t discount the meaningful scholarship of these individuals. The list is more about inflated or misplaced praise and uncritical hype. Yet those behaviors are so pervasive and shape our evaluation of ideas that I need to identify the most frequent recipients of hype.

Michael Quinn

        I attended the same conference as him (War and Peace in Our Times) towards the end of his life and the beginning of my career. The fawning praise he received was closer to worship. Even though he was discussing an issue for which he had no appreciable training or knowledge (military history and ethics), and wasn’t providing anything particularly noteworthy, a reverent hush came over the room when he provided an answer.

        Then the paper he presented had numerous glaring and unexamined implications as I detailed here. I describe how Quin uncritically accepted J. Reuben’s Clark isolationism to such a degree that Quinn failed to notice his subject’s hypocrisy, pro-Nazi stance, and how his views were overruled by other church leaders at the time. The last point is especially egregious since one of Quinn’s book invented disputes among church leadership when it suited his arguments, but seemed to ignore meaningful disputes in this case because of biased favoritism towards the isolationism of J. Reuben Clark.   

        Those are just the problems I found in my personal interaction with him. As summarized by Sarah Allen, he was also known for his tendency to personally attack those he disagreed with, and to play fast and loose with the connections he made between the factual record and its supposed meaning. So I imagine his article about J Reuben Clark probably had even more problems than my cursory review. (As far as I know, no one has interacted with his presentation more than I have.) 

        His popularity seems to result from the good fortune of being from a favored minority group, homosexuals, his writing about the same topic, and his work was thoroughly, and rightfully I believe, dismissed by the ~evil~ “FARMS” crowd. Because Mormon historians are the most biased of any group I’ve ever seen (while ironically calling their opponents biased), he was criticized by the "right" group of people, as a result, those criticisms never carried the weight they should.

Hugh Nibley

        I love Hugh Nibley and his work. His works helped spark my academic journey and often helped me on my mission. But Hugh Nibley was often too sloppy with his footnotes and saw too many vague connections to the point that he embodied the concept of “parallel mania.” Its a real criticism, but I should note that parallel mania is often used by his critics as a pat buzzword to ignore the real connections that he made. Nibley’s work is extremely outdated and there have been often decades worth of additional scholarship that contradicts his work. This is common in academia and not a problem if scholars properly engage and build upon previous scholarship.

        But his fans are often dilletantes instead of scholars. Like a right-wing inverse of the left-wing love for Quinn, too many people uncritically read a Hugh Nibley book and suddenly think they are experts. He is quoted chapter and verse, but there isn’t much thinking beyond seeing a parallel to Nibley’s words, and a quote.

        Chinese theorists had the same annoyance with people quoting Sunzi. They ended up writing about it, and if you change the subjects to Hugh Nibley, it is surprisingly accurate:

Even though the mouth recites the words of [Hugh Nibley], the mind has not thought about the mysterious subtleties of the discussion...[they] merely recite the empty words and are misled by the enemy...

The study of [any subject] must be from the lowest to the middle and then from the middle to the highest, so that [the learners] will gradually penetrate the depths of the teaching. If not, they will only be relying upon empty words. Merely remembering and reciting them is not enough to succeed.[1]

Patrick Mason

        Given my specialty in ethics and just war I encounter Mason a great deal. I’m sorry to say, I’m just not impressed. He has all the credentials, praise, institutional power, and seems to publish or present in every conference imaginable. But I find his scholarship lacking. His book, Proclaim Peace, ignored or minimized many important scholarly points regarding just war. He tries to have his cake and eat it too by claiming the non violent ethic of Jesus from the New Testament is "absolute", while also acknowledging verses that clearly support just war. But the latter is clearly lip service forced on him because he spends so much time supporting the former. 

        In a Maxwell Institute funded piece he ignored King Benjamin’s speech, distorted his preaching and policies, and invented an offensive war to imply the Nephites were colonialist. After reading about Michael Quinn’s lapses in scholarship, I might even say the invention of an offensive war whole cloth from the scriptures sounds like what critics called Quinnspeak. At best, he just didn’t read the text carefully.

        After noticing his failure to read texts carefully, I started to wonder if he read some texts at all. I carefully started looking over some of his work, and I see a pattern where he relies on secondary sources when quoting church fathers.[2] For example, every footnote in “Zionic Non Violence” referencing Christian fathers refers to a secondary source. Based on his footnotes, he doesn’t read the works of major just war theorists, he stumbles across an occasional quote in various pacifist books. Yet he feels imminently qualified to call them “insufficient” and he is celebrated as some kind of guru on peace making.  

        Privately many people tell me that he gives vibes that he thinks he is the smartest man in the room. He asked a smarmy gotcha question to me during a conference I attended that was poor form. The peace studies program at BYU-Hawaii held a peace conference about his book, which I’m sure didn’t help his self-admitted arrogant smugness, and he and his peace studies friends in the audience actually snickered when discussing arguments from people like me. 

        I found that behavior rather unseemly, especially for someone who claims his attitude will bring a Zion like peace. It’s especially hypocritical considering the attacks levelled against FARMS for the same behavior. Anti Mormons included an incident at a conference as one of the “top” events of 2011. #3 on that list described how the ~evil~ Maxwell Institute “scholars” (the scare quotes added by the author) were seen “sniggering” before they lobbed a series of “aggressive and mean spirited” questions in their “verbal assault” on Mike Reed. But when I’m “verbally assaulted” by Mason’s smarmy gotcha questions and heckled by a hostile audience, they remain celebrated peacemakers.

        I liked his book about 19^th century lynchings and his advice designed to help struggling members. But his academic work on peace has numerous methodological gaps and is celebrated far beyond its actual merit. Even more importantly, his unseemly behavior ranging from his poor research into Church fathers, to gotcha questions and sniggering run contrary to the unearned praise he gets for supposedly building bridges and a peaceful Zion.

Conclusion 

        Many of these scholars are household names. But a close look at their scholarship suggests perhaps they shouldn’t be. The biggest flaw is that we often uncritically accept the arguments of a celebrity scholar, when we should be thoughtful and critical readers of any argument and engage their thoughts and arguments. In short, we substitute their reputation for our thought. The result is that we spend more time praising than thinking. I hope this post will help check that tendency. And maybe if you hear something from me during lunch at a conference, you'll understand. Thanks.

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[1] Questions and Replies Between Tang Taizong and Li Weikong in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, Ralph Sawyer trans., (Westview Press, 1993), 338, 360. 

[2] Rethinking Righteousness in the Shadow of War, fn1 reads: Idolatry 19, p. 73, quoted in Lisa Sowle Cahill, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), 77. See also: fns. 6-10 in Patrick Mason, "Zionic Non Violence as Christian Worship and Practice," in How and What you Worship: Christology and Praxis in the Revelations of Joseph Smith, Rachel Cope, Carter Charles, Jordan T. Watkins eds., (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 2020.

Book Review: Maxwell Institute Study Edition of the Book of Mormon

One of the slightest controversies in Book of Mormon studies includes the concept of making the text easier or harder. Readers at Deseret Book often see various scriptures “made easy,” while scholars enjoy what Richard Bushman called wrestling with important questions, or making things harder. The unique joy of the Maxwell Institute Study Edition of the Book of Mormon is that it assembles the text in such a way that it’s easier to read, and thus makes it a blessing for both groups.

The text is reformatted into paragraphs with the markings for chapters and verses added in later additions in Arabic numbers in this edition. I particular enjoy original chapters being marked in Roman numerals. As editor Grant Hardy noted, these were apparently marked on the gold plates, and thus reflect the author’s intent. I found them especially helpful in noticing major themes and sections of the text.

The text is further aided by select footnotes that explain possible emendations to the text, highlight or explain major points, and provide cross references.  I’m currently working on a major project that examines classical Chinese military texts beyond Sunzi (Sun-Tzu). I have plenty of experience noticing how subtle changes in punctuation, spelling, and grammar along with occasional emendations can critically change the meaning of the text. This addition takes particularly trenchant commentary from Royal Skousen’s voluminous and excellent work on the matter and presents it to the reader.

Many of the footnotes, as well as a glossary of short essays addressing pertinent topics at the end of the book provide excellent summaries of existing research and major questions about its provenance and such topics as geography and Hebrew poetry. Simply by summarizing and assessing them in a forthright manner Hardy provides aids to both believers and non-believing but interested academics. Explaining something like seer stones in a forthright manner helps members accept items that may be disturbing in other settings. Providing a careful analysis of past apologetic efforts is more palatable for skeptics studying the book, while still making them aware of pertinent research.

The text also includes basic maps, highlights major figures in the text and its organization through simple charts. Probably the most helpful are the excerpts of primary sources from key people involved with the origins of the book, process of translation, and the testimony of those that saw the plates. These are rather informative on their own, but also show that, as the very least, Hardy and the Maxwell Institute care about grounding the reception and origination of the text by using primary sources and proper historical methods. As a historian this makes me proud, while still leaving unresolved the fact that the new MI seems a bit more interested in the 19^th century than the old AR (ancient research) part of FARMS and the Book of Mormon.

Overall, I highly recommend the text for believers looking to aid in their devotional study of the text to non-believing scholars wishing to familiarize themselves with what some people say is one of the most important books in American history.  This truly fulfills the purpose of being a study edition.

A Very Mean and Nasty Apologetic Post

My discussion of the debate between Stephen Smoot and Heartlander Johnathan Neville prompted a discussion of another topic in the comments that I want to expound upon here. The myth of the traditional apologetic style has been around for a long time. I’ve never seen examples of this style. What I have seen is the usual inter group dynamics on both sides of the debate that can be found in politics, sports, military units, and even debates about television. Labeling one side of the debate as mean when both are similar in behavior also shows an astounding double standard.

First the double standard: Years ago William Hamblin was very upset with the new direction of the Maxwell Institute and made some criticisms of Ben Park. The watch dogs of FARMS attack dogs erupted with disdain and jeering for more of the “traditional style” and mean apologetics that was damaging to a junior scholar and tried to make him lose his job.

Yet I found a similar example with the situation reversed. A short time later David Bokovoy sided with the MI people supposedly under attack. In his defense he specifically called out Stephen Smoot among others in harsh terms. Instead of saying it was unwise, mean, or nasty for a senior scholar to call out a junior scholar, and the potential damage it could do to his career, the same people that criticized Hamblin praised Bokovoy for speaking truth to power and unmasking the evil apologists. Both individuals were criticizing someone’s behavior, but when it was done by the supposedly superior new direction folks it was brave and praise worthy but when done by Peterson, Hamblin or Smoot, it was mean and nasty.

The myth of the mean Dan Peterson and old school apologists has grown into an article of faith in some circles. I’m not defending every interaction he or they’ve ever had, or every article they have ever written or published, but I believe this myth of an arching style is unfairly attached to them. Proponents of the attack style might point to Ralph Hancock’s words when he defended “sharpness of tone,” “irony,” and “measured indignation” (Perspectives on Mormon Theology: Apologetics, p. 98.) I’m not denying those styles exist, but I am saying that for whatever behavior you criticize about FARMS you can find the same or similar behavior on the other side.

The Interpreter writes negative reviews of books as does the new direction Maxwell Institute. Both sides have rolled their eyes at the other and disagree about methods. I have personal correspondence that includes petty behavior from the supposedly superior new direction folks. I’ve been asked gotcha questions at conferences by new direction folks and it went without comment. When Hamblin and Gee asked a difficult question, it became another example of the mean FARMS people. In one nasty incident, a new direction individual literally got in the face of an old school apologist at a conference and told him to go to hell.

The behavior seen on both sides is a result of group and inters group dynamics that include several factors. It is common to view “the other” as a monolith group that is different, mean, stupid, and then view every interaction through that filter. This has especial value in political discussions and I’m sure the readers of this post are ready to jump in the comments with their examples of mopologists. The discussion among groups of like minded individuals often uses a short hand and simplistic view of opponent’s beliefs and mocks them. Sometimes people who are normally kind and decent get stuck in the mire of online debates, having a bad day, and in many cases the individuals are behaving less than their better selves. When these less than stellar behaviors are coupled with inter-group dynamics the behaviors are more easily seen in the other side and furthers divides the two. This happens even though their behavior in incredibly similar. Historian Richard Hofstader pointed out this ironic fact in his classic essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, pointed out how opposition groups often become what they oppose. “The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy.” But the FARMS people are mean and nasty and we poop rainbows.

This post isn’t an attempt to categorize every interaction and the entire groups and sub groups of scholars, critics, and interested individuals. As churchistrue can testify, trying to categorize people can get messy very quickly. Personally I have no problems with either side. I’ve submitted to both the new direction Maxwell Institute and Interpreter, and I’ve published several pieces with the latter. I’m very proud to publish with an organization that still cares about the AR and not just the MS part of FARMS. And that’s why I think it was created, not so it can continue to be “mean” and “nasty.” I can’t speak for every publication of course, and there was one piece by Duane Boyce that had a multitude of serious issues, but even that doesn’t reflect or prove the myth of mean and nasty apologists. (Ironically enough, I really likedhis book so even his case isn’t simple.)

In conclusion, I think the behavior of various groups within, outside, and about Mormonism are closer in behavior than many think. I think that because of incredibly specific examples of behavior I’ve seen from both sides, but also because of what I’ve seen around the internet in debates about every subject, and because of what I’ve gathered about group dynamics. This post isn’t an invitation to discuss that one time (or many) an apologist was mean to you, or to express your disdain for Dan Peterson, but to offer a thoughtful reconsideration of common ideas.

Book of Mormon Geography and the Terrain of a Rocky Conversation

As I’ve been online I’ve started to notice certain behaviors. After reading religious, sports, and political discussion boards I see the same behavior over and over again. I wrote about my deal breakers some time ago. I’ve also discussed the way that words can be abused and manipulated. My research has taken me into robbers, terrorists, warmonger, neocon, and on this blog neo apologist.

I bring those points up because of the minor tempest that occurred between Jonathan Neville and Stephen Smoot last week. The latter wrote an article assessing, critiquing, and essentially debunking the use of a letter by Heartlanders, or those that believe in a strictly North American setting. Instead of focusing so much on the use of the letter in question, or even larger issues of geography’s role in Book of Mormon historicity, this post examines the rhetoric of Neville and its application in striving towards productive dialogue.

First, a couple of caveats. Much like Smoot I don’t have a problem with those that believe the geography of the Book of Mormon takes place in North America, a limited setting, and even a hemispheric model or one that believes the Book of Mormon is some kind of fiction. What does bother me is when some people claim, as Neville does, that if you disagree with his position than you are fundamentally in error and disagreeing with the prophets. I also get annoyed, as I discussed with churchistrue last week, when people critique or scoff at other positions while showing the same negative qualities they critique. These individuals call others dogmatic, simplistic, weird, and literal, even as they are vague, simplistic, weirdly literal and dogmatic in their own positions.

With that introduction I wanted to use Neville’s response to Smoot as an example of the way that loaded terms and nicknames and other terms can be used to shape the discussion and really detract from the discussion. To save space you may assume that all quotes are from Neville’s response and I invite you to read his whole article for context.

M2C intellectuals terrified of Letter VII

This is the title, and it reads like a headline from a rag magazine, so I think it’s great (or really bad) example of his editorializing.

No-wise

Book of Mormon central writes a series of articles called KnoWhys, which are accessible articles written for a general audience that summarize past research on the matter and connect it to larger issues in Mormon scripture study. Neville uses this bastardized version of the term 12 times in his short article including in the second sentence. Just two sentences in Neville displayed two of the most childish ways to engage a discussion.

M2C intellectuals feel threatened

This is editorializing and mind reading. He can’t know exactly what they feel, but he can interpret their actions in the most sinister way possible. I call this the Judge Judy test. I’m a writer that works from home (except for my third job driving for uber on nights and weekends, Viva Las Vegas.) As a result I watch Judge Judy every day, and she does an excellent job of finding out what people say, not the interpretation of what people say. If a witness says they “feel threatened” she would immediately say something like, “No, no, no. I don’t want to know how you felt or your editorializing, what did they actually say and do?” And writing an article, even one as bare knuckle as Smoots, still doesn’t warrant that editorial.

[Like] Ephesian sellers of idols who tried to silence the Apostle Paul.

The second half of the sentence where he said the intellectuals were threatened. This is poisoning the well. A long time ago I wrote a paper that won me the George C Marshall award. In discussing isolationists my roommate wrote: Morgan, I can tell you don’t like these guys. Ever since that point I’ve tried hard, even if I disagree with somebody, to avoid poisoning the well.

I also found that people often use analogies to carry their arguments. Instead of specifically describing the congruities between apologists and idol sellers, Neville makes an allusion and expects his readers to fill in the blanks based on the negative comparison. Thus in a sentence that is painfully short of details and specific arguments, and just the third one in his article, he makes as many as 5 childish and tendentious errors (for the same of brevity I skipped over explaining several of them): mind reading, editorializing, poisoning the well, and two short hand insults.

I could stop now but there are even more egregious examples that demand inclusion:

This [deletion of his article] is typical of the way the M2C citation cartel censors any information that contradicts the M2C dogma.

There is so much in this sentence but the biggest offender is “citation cartel” with dogma coming in second. He explains it later, but he’s upset that other material is quoted and not his. And he is upset that places like Meridian, FairMormon, and church correlation materials will repeat what he sees as unrighteous and pernicious research. Like the word robber in the Book of Mormon, or terrorist in modern discourse, cartel is used for its pejorative and shock value more than its clinical definition and explanatory power. In plain language, he is tossing bombs and insults at people he doesn’t like, and not making a serious and substantive argument.

The Mormon research world is small, but as somebody who is a part of it, I’ve never gone to the meetings of the cartel and with a secret handshake decided to exclude Neville. I ignore his work because I find his behavior odious and his professional work is a joke. My work stands on the strength of my research and arguments, and not because I’m with a certain faction. In fact, I don’t go to Deseret Book because I’m shocked and appalled they carry his crap instead of so many other good books out there. So either the cartel fell down on that one, or he has a vital outlet that many Mesoamerican scholars don’t have and there is no cartel. I can’t speak for Book of Mormon Central and the rest of the cartel but after reading posts like this [start sarcasm voice] I can’t imagine they have any reason to dislike Neville or maybe not use his work.

This title [of the KnoWhy] demonstrates the unrelenting arrogance of these intellectuals.

Playing fallacy cop is on my list of deal breakers especially because debates usually descend into mutual accusations of ad hominem. (It also leads to what I have named Deane’s Dagger: Any critique of a person’s tone automatically invites the same accusations against that writer.) That being said, this is a pretty blatant example of ad hominem that should be identified for what it is. There is also a rather stunning irony here, as Neville’s central case is that the Mesoamerican setting means you don’t believe in the prophets, and yet Neville assumes the role of speaking for church leadership and judging the worthiness of members, which is actually pretty arrogant.

I never agreed to join a church run by intellectuals, but that’s what these M2C ‘scholars’ are attempting to establish.

I’ve never taken the scare quotes seriously and that’s likely because of this sketch. Its funny in SNL, but sad in this case: https://youtu.be/vlDuD8zPMI0?t=8s

If you think that a person has made a faulty case I would like to see a counter argument and specifics explaining why. But scare quotes around the word scholar is petty and says more about the person using the scare quotes than the argument in question.

Conclusion:

This is a debate that many at Wheat and Tares might not care about. I totally understand that if you don’t believe the Book of Mormon is historical, or think the book is providential but don’t care for its location you probably believe the intramural debates over its geography are silly and pointless. That’s great and I thank you for reading anyway. Regardless of the topic, the way we discuss issues matter. Arguments that are light on substance, reason, and evidence but make extensive use of emotionally charged words like cartel, scare quotes, absurd nick names, and excessive editorializing do a disservice to the truth, discussion, and increasingly the fabric of the country in this rancorous age. (Also, Neville’s favorite tactic when called on his tone seems to be forcing people to sift through his 50 blogs for citations. Hit control f and type “citation” on Smoot’s post to see scores of examples.)

Those that think Trump’s twitter feed is the herald of the apocalypse should care as well as those that think denying service to a Trump supporter is awful. I used to teach a class on Pakistan, and my students would often assume a sense of superiority over Pakistanis that riot over rumors of a flushed Quran or believe the CIA and not terrorists are responsible for violent attacks. But people here in America can lose their jobs before they get off the plane, and racist notes can get thousands of shares before turning out to be false. While Smoot threw some elbows, I think Neville’s reaction perfectly displays the major problem our society faces in processing truth and having productive dialogue and its why I discussed it here.

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Cloak and Dagger Research: The Greg Smith "Hit Piece"

I just concluded a long, intriguing, and sad read here.  This is the infamous "hit piece" written by Greg Smith about the podcast of Mormon Stories.  Shortly after this piece was pulled from publication the director the Maxwell Institute fired Daniel Peterson and others as editors of the Mormon Studies Review.  This was considered the end of FARMS, and I linked to it previously. 

I thought the article itself was good, especially the part about the Micheal Coe interview. This is mostly because I listened to that podcast, had the same impressions as Smith, and I may have inspired his parenthetical thought about how Coe didn't know about chiasmus and Dehlin had to google it in the middle of the interview. (See page 28 of Smith's article and compare to comment 46 from me.) I don't understand the hyperbolic reaction to it, and didn't see it as a "hit piece" filled with ad hominem attacks; though it was certainly critical of Dehlin.

The second article discussed the timeline and facts surrounding the suppression of his piece, and the rather intense politics associated with the direction of the review and their termination.  Ironically enough, it made me rather sad.  I research and write about The Book of Mormon because I love it.  It pains me to think my research might have entered me into some sort of gladiator pit match with other Mormons in academia.  So Smith's article described the kind of fighting that comes from the cutthroat world of academic politics, and recalled the vicious cloak and dagger  stories from The Book of Mormon.  It also made me kind of grateful I'm not yet important enough to have to avoid getting shanked by academic politics. In short, being invisible sometimes feels better than being stabbed. I'm relatively anonymous enough to go about my work and I feel blessed to have avoided a great deal of controversy in my career so far. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share my research, and to have your readership.