Examining claims of historical apostasy is a pertinent task for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For the last hundred years, the Great Apostasy narrative has shaped Latter-day Saint historical assumptions, contributed to the construction of Latter-day Saint social and theological identity, and impacted the ability of the Church to develop ecumenical relationships. The contributors want to raise awareness about the influence of this narrative as well as to reconsider some of the assumptions made by this narrative. We hope to cultivate scholarly discourse among the contributors as well as the Latter-day Saint community about the challenges and consequences of simultaneously acknowledging complexity, causality, and providence when interpreting history for theological purposes. We hope to develop a richer understanding of the definitions, connotations, social functions, and theological implications of Latter-day Saint conceptions of the apostasy.

So let’s take that invitation at face value and begin a discussion about “claims of historical apostasy” and “some of the historical assumptions made by this narrative.” The simplest form of the narrative is that there was an original church from which something essential (doctrine, scripture, authority, priesthood, the Spirit) was lost.

Looking for the Original Church

Until the 20th century, no Christian really questioned this assumption (of an original church), and few do now. Catholics claim an unbroken chain of authority and tradition from the original church. Protestants claim there was an original church, but that the excesses of the Roman Catholic church in later centuries necessitated Protestant reforms. The LDS Church claims there was an original church, but that reforms were not enough to restore lost authority: a restoration of divine authority and new provision of the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ through newly revealed scripture was needed.

Here’s the problem. Scholarship in the 20th century suggests that the original condition of Christianity in the decades following Christ’s death — the very beginning of the early church — was not any sort of essential unity but instead was radically diverse. In other words, there never was an early Christian Church, there were, at the very beginning, many different churches (and yes, I recognize that the term “church” is somewhat anachronistic in this early context, but that is sort of the point). Bart Ehrman makes the case for early Christian diversity in his book Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (OUP, 2003). He also summarizes that view in the last lecture in After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, a Teaching Company set of CDs (hey, I drive a lot). Here are his essential points from that lecture:

• Prior to the later 3rd century, there were many competing Christian groups with a wide range of beliefs and practices.
• The term “proto-orthodoxy” refers to those early Christians who held views that eventually (in the late 3rd century) pushed out competing Christian practices and doctrines.
• Older historians simply assumed that the orthodox view (held by the proto-orthodox) had always, even from the earliest period following the death of Jesus Christ, been the dominant one.
• They were wrong.

The standard account of orthodoxy and heresy derives from Eusebius, the Christian historian of the early 4th century. In his victor’s version of early Christian history, everything that wasn’t proto-orthodox was heresy. The newer account rejects the validity of those labels: “orthodox” as right-thinking was evident only in retrospect. It instead stresses the initial Christian diversity that only gradually, over the course of almost three centuries, developed into a more unified Christian Church, by way of an early, slow-acting version of correlation emanating from the influential church at Rome. Ehrman identifies Walter Bauer, a 20th-century German theologian, as the scholar who first articulated this newer view, although his original arguments have been updated by more recent scholars.

An example might help illustrate the degree to which the retrospective and biased view of history can actually obscure earlier events. This is from Henry Chadwick’s classic The Early Church (Penguin Books, 1967).

The Jewish Christians, excluded by their fellow-countrymen, continued to observe sabbaths, circumcision, and other Jewish feasts. As this distressed many Gentile Christians, they became lonely, unsupported groups. … From Irenaeus onwards Jewish Christianity is treated as a deviationist sect rather than as a form of Christianity with the best claims to continuity with the practice of the primitive church at Jerusalem. The Jewish Christians called themselves Ebionites, a name derives from the Hebrew word meaning “the poor” …. Since some of them had never accepted the tradition of the virgin birth of Christ, Irenaeus classified the Ebionites with other heresies that denied this; soon Tertullian was supposing that they originated with a person named Ebion, and later anti-heretical writers even felt able to quote from Ebion’s alleged writings.

And thus we see how a strong normative view of what was supposed to have happened in the past (like the orthodoxy and heresy view of the 4th century) can create its own facts, even its own documents.

An Emerging LDS View?

So here is a general question for the LDS view of the apostasy: How does the idea that the early church was, in fact, a variety of diverse churches with different beliefs and practices affect our view of the Great Apostasy? Rejecting the orthodoxy and heresy account and instead locating the emergence of a unified Christian Church in the later third century certainly raises new questions about what happened in the first and second centuries. Maybe the Great Apostasy wasn’t really so great.

The LDS view in the 20th century seems to be that the original church had God’s favor while the apostles were alive, but lost God’s favor when the apostles died without establishing proper successors. An alternative LDS view, sketched in 1 Nephi 13, is that the Bible (or sacred writings that preceded the Bible) once “contained the fulness of the gospel” (v. 24), but that parts of that fulness, “many parts which are plain and most precious” (v. 25, 28), were later removed.

A discussion that suggests updated LDS views is found in Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy (FARMS and BYU Press, 2005). In the opening chapter, “What Went Wrong with the Early Christians,” Noel B. Reynolds notes how Hugh Nibley’s work on early Christian writings refocused LDS scholars away from the Protestant critique of the excesses of the medieval Catholic Church and towards the first centuries and even the first decades following the death of Jesus Christ. Likewise, he notes that Richard L. Bushman, in a book review published in the mid-sixties, urged LDS historians to move away from Protestant models and take a fresh view of the apostasy. Reynolds highlights the early change from covenant-making ordinances to sacraments (dispensing God’s grace) as a key development in apostasy. He lists three myths about the apostasy that are critiqued by later contributors to the volume:

• Myth 1: The apostasy happened because of outside persecution.
• Myth 2: The apostasy was caused by the hellenization of Christianity or the incorporation of Greek philosophy and culture into the teachings of the early church. [This happened a century too late to be a causal explanation.]
• Myth 3: The Roman Catholic Church specifically is the great and abominable church spoken of in Nephi’s vision. [It is not.]

Reynolds notes that “as our knowledge of these times [the first Christian centuries] grows, the apostasy is again pushed back further, even into the first century.” So here is a second and more particular question for the LDS view: How early can the apostasy be pushed back? The harder we look, the earlier it seems to get. At some point you get early enough that the evidence no longer argues for an apostasy, it argues for the failure of an original church (from which the Christianity of later decades or centuries apostatized from) to ever be established or organized. You end up, I think, with the sort of early radical diversity posited by the Bauer hypothesis and updated by Ehrman.

So that’s a discussion I would enjoy hearing at the BYU conference next month. Can the LDS view of the apostasy be reconceptualized in light of this newer view of early Christian diversity? Maybe we view the original church not as a plane that crashed after takeoff but as one that never really got off the ground. Perhaps we can view the apostasy in two complementary stages, with the original church not enjoying God’s favor because it wasn’t really a church yet (a “proto-apostasy”) and the eventual unified church of the late 3rd century not enjoying God’s favor because it had, by then, lost or changed key doctrines or practices (the fulness of the apostasy).

Any other ideas about the apostasy you’d like to hear about from LDS scholars?

First, a tighter definition of verisimilitude [Note 1]:

The semblance of truth or reality in literary works; or the literary principle that requires a consistent illusion of truth to life. The term covers both the exclusion of improbabilities (as in realism and naturalism) and the careful distinguishing of improbabilities in non-realistic works. As a critical principle, it originates in Aristotle’s concept of mimesis or imitation of nature.

The verisimilitude issue presents two questions, one for the author of a text and one for its readers.

The Problem for Authors and Historians

To what extent does an author intend for the text to offer “truth to life” or an “imitation of nature”? At first glance, this question seems more pressing for fictional works: some genres by convention allow departures from the real world known by the author (science fiction, magic realism) while mainstream fiction typically presents events and characters that are true to life in the sense that they are not out of place in the reader’s world or, for historical fiction, in the period depicted. But journalists and historians face the issue as well. How does a journalist report an observer’s experience of a UFO sighting or a seemingly miraculous recovery? How does a historian deal with historical sources that report events that conflict with the historian’s understanding of the real world?

Historical sources cannot be accepted at face value. Historians must weigh and evaluate the value of any historical source, determine whether it is reliable, and attempt to compensate for any bias in that source. The older the source, the more likely it recounts events that the modern historian will not consider plausible. The issue is particularly pressing for modern scholars of religion who use ancient religious texts. When should a modern commentator dismiss a reported event (say the discussion Balaam had with his donkey at Number 22:28-30), accept an event as reported but not necessarily the interpretation offered in the source (perhaps dreams recounted by many biblical writers), or accept an event more or less as reported (the narrative in 2 Kings recounting the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and deportation of the leading citizens)?

The Problem for Readers

Just as an author of fiction or nonfiction has choices to make, so too does the reader make an implicit evaluation of any book, story, or article. If a novel introduces too many coincidences, the reader might at some point dismiss the events. Even genres that allow departures from reality will lose a reader if the departures are inconsistent or do violence to the plot or story. Readers evaluate nonfictional narratives as well. If the content of a news report appears to reflect a journalist’s bias rather than the actual events, a reader rebels. If a historical account appears to accept questionable sources, ignore credible sources, or accept the occurrence of events that a reader refuses to accept as plausible, a reader may dismiss the history as lacking credibility.

What about religious texts? Does a reader evaluate a biblical passage with respect to the real world as a secular observer would understand it in 2012? As a religious believer would understand it in 2012? As the original author of the text appears to have understood it? What rules should a modern reader apply when evaluating ancient texts, in particular the Bible? This really is the key question for modern readers of the Bible.

A secular reader may simply dismiss events recounted in the Bible that are inconsistent with his scientific or naturalistic understanding of the world as of 2012. But a believing reader has trickier choices to make. Even modern readers who accept the biblical account of events as stated have a hard time accepting the biblical three-tier view of the cosmos: waters above the dome of the sky or firmament, our earthly landscape in the middle, and sheol and more waters below. What do we make of the “windows of heaven” if there are no windows and there is no dome? How do modern readers understand accounts of demonic possession and healing by exorcism when the symptoms described appear to be a case of epilepsy rather than possession? Were there demons?

These examples are given simply to point out that verisimilitude is a complicated issue for a modern believing reader of an ancient religious text. Which departures from “truth to life” do we allow, and why? In terms of verisimilitude, what world is a scriptural narrative true to?

The Problem for You

You are a modern reader. You read the Bible and the Book of Mormon. To what world do you relate these texts? What world do you live in? We relate texts to our world (or to some world) without thinking about it much. Here is a passage from Robert Alter that sketches out the magnitude of the task we unwittingly perform when we read and understand ancient religious texts. His comments are aimed at literature but can be profitably applied to historical texts and religious narrative. [Note 2]

Literature is a representational art, but the relation between the literary text and the world it represents has always been something of a puzzle, and recent trends in literary theory have compounded the puzzlement. The objects of literary representation belong to a wide range of heterogeneous categories, material, conceptual, emotional, relational, personal, and collective. They include states of feeling, moments of perception, memories …; buildings, neighborhoods, industrial processes, social institutions …; world-historical forces and theological ideas ….

Fictional character is probably the crucial test case for the link between literature and reality. Very few people will take the trouble to read a novel or story unless they can somehow “identify” with the characters, live with them inwardly as though they were real at least for the duration of the reading.

You might reject the three-tier conceptual scheme of the cosmos presented in the Bible yet accept Genesis 1 as a claim that God created the cosmos as we now view it. You likely identify with some of the individuals you encounter in the scriptures, even if you don’t identify with how they saw the world in some of the ways Alter notes above. I think we do a lot more work when reading the scriptures than we generally recognize.

The World of the Book of Mormon

So, to now return to the opening question, how do we describe the “truth to life” or “imitation of nature” that Book of Mormon narratives undertake? My suggestion is that the primary reference world for Book of Mormon narratives is not the natural world of 2012 or the natural world of 1830 but the world of the Bible. Jaredite barges are plausible not because of maritime technology but because Noah had his ark, so it makes perfect sense that Jared can have his barges. The descent from the sky of Jesus Christ narrated in Third Nephi is plausible in view of his ascent into the sky and his promised return “in like manner” at Acts 1:9-11. Nephi and Lehi’s prison narrative in Helaman 5 is plausible because of a similar narrative concerning Paul and Silas in Acts 16, and so forth. The fact that about ten percent of the Book of Mormon is textual quotation from various biblical texts only highlights the tight link between the world of the Book of Mormon and the world of the Bible. They are the same world.

For the first generation of Book of Mormon readers, that relation was entirely natural. Those first readers were much more familiar with the Bible than modern readers of the Book of Mormon. Those first readers lived before critical reflection on the Bible had matured, so they likely read the Bible in a more straightforward fashion than we do. Not all of those first readers accepted the Book of Mormon as divine or authentic, of course, but those who accepted the Bible were unlikely to reject the Book of Mormon because of implausibility. A reader who accepts biblical accounts of floating axe heads, God stopping the Earth’s rotation for a few hours so the Israelites could win a battle, and young Jews thrown into a hot furnace later emerging unscathed is unlikely to reject the Book of Mormon for containing implausible or impossible events.

But the second decade of the 21st century is a much different world than the fourth decade of the 19th century. How do we modern readers relate the world of the Book of Mormon to the world of the Bible or to our own world of 2012? Or do we perform that operation in reverse, instead relating the events of our own world of 2012 to the world of the Book of Mormon? Does a deeper understanding of biblical books and events change our reading of Book of Mormon events? Or does the Book of Mormon commit readers to a fixed and unchanging traditional view of the Bible?

Earlier posts in this series:

• Which Book of Mormon?
• The Book of Mormon: What has it done for you lately?
• The Book of Mormon as Narrative

Notes

1. “Verisimilitude,” in Chris Baldick, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, OUP, 2d ed., 2001.

2. Robert Alter, The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age, Simon and Schuster, 1989, p. 49.

Historical Fiction

Here is the key question: How does a reader distinguish between historical fiction and actual historical narrative? Authors of historical fiction may volunteer that information in the title or the text, as with Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War, a historical novel recounting the battle of Gettysburg. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975. Even absent such authorial disclosure, features of the narrative itself can also signal that the text is historical fiction. Sometimes narrative details are obviously supplied by the author rather than by historical records or observations. Here are the first few lines from The Killer Angels, recounting the activities of a spy employed by Confederate General Longstreet.

He rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted. He crawled upward on his belly over cool rocks out into the sunlight, and suddenly he was in the open and he could see for miles, and there was the whole vast army below him, filling the valley like a smoking river.

Even more indicative of historical fiction is when the text recounts the thoughts or even the dreams of a character, as in this short passage concerning John Buford, the Union cavalry commander who on the first day of the battle occupied and held the ridges northwest of Gettysburg until Union infantry arrived to reinforce his position.

Buford rode back to the seminary. He made his headquarters there. … He dismounted and sat down to rest. It was very quiet. He closed his eyes and he could see fields of snow, miles and miles of Wyoming snow, and white mountains in the distance ….

Both of the above quotations describe events as experienced by one character (limited to that character’s point of view) but narrated in the third person, the so-called “third-person limited point of view.” An even more limited point of view would describe only events and observations but not the thoughts or feelings of any character. This is the appropriate narrative stance for true historical narrative. In the other direction, a broader third-person point of view is “omniscient narration,” in which the narrator can know and relate any event as well as the thoughts and actions of any character.

Obviously, historians are not omniscient, hence omniscient narration is not appropriate for true historical narrative. Fictional narrative in general can select any point of view and can use first-person or third-person narrative, however the author chooses for the particular tale to be told. [Note 1]

Book of Mormon Narrative

The above discussion should help the reader pay more attention to point of view and voice (first- or third-person) when reading Book of Mormon narratives. This is certainly not a new idea. In 1995, one Edgar C. Snow, Jr. published “Narrative Criticism and the Book of Mormon,” reviewing how that approach “attempt[s] to isolate the narrative of a text from the real author of the text in an attempt to let a text speak for itself as much as possible.” Snow discusses the roles of implied author, narrator, narratee, and implied reader, as well as the implied author’s use of setting, events, and characters, but does not discuss point of view or focalization. [Note 2]

A more ambitious work is Mark D. Thomas’s Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives (Signature, 1999), which proposes to “focus[] on the internal literary features of the text and how these forms address its original nineteenth-century audience ….” Thomas adopts Robert Alter’s concept of narrative scenes, used by Alter to examine biblical narratives, to consider a variety of repeated Book of Mormon narrative scenes, such as warning prophets, conversion stories, and dying heretics. [Note 3]

Most recently, Grant Hardy employed concepts drawn from narrative criticism in his close reading of the Book of Mormon in his Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (OUP, 2010). Hardy highlights the narrative techniques employed by the three primary Book of Mormon narrators, Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. This is a book any serious student of the Book of Mormon must read. The best quick introduction to the book is Hardy’s 12 Questions interview posted last year here at Times and Seasons (Part 1, Part 2). [Note 4]

Those using narrative techniques to look at specific Book of Mormon narratives generally bracket or set aside questions of authorship and historicity in order to focus on the text itself. Otherwise, the debate over authorship and historicity invariably overshadows the discussion of the text. The LDS position on authorship and historicity is clear and unequivocal. Elder Oaks: “The historicity — historical authenticity — of the Book of Mormon is an issue so fundamental that it rests first upon faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the first principle in this, as in all other matters.” [Notes 5] Elder Holland, from his October 2009 General Conference talk “Safety for the Soul“: “I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days.”

Some Book of Mormon Examples

No doubt any reader familiar with some of the narrative concepts discussed above (and treated in much more detail in the cited references) will notice new and surprising features when reading Book of Mormon narratives. A book that does exactly this is Richard Rust’s Feasting on the Word: The Literary Testimony of the Book of Mormon (Deseret, 1997). Here are a couple of Book of Mormon examples I have noticed in my own reading.

First, the text is often explicitly aware of a limited point of view. While many titles that we now use to refer to Jesus Christ appear in 1 Nephi and the first chapters of 2 Nephi — such as “the lamb of God” or “the Savior of the world,” both used in 1 Nephi 13:40 — the actual term “Christ” first appears in a first-person statement by Jacob at 2 Nephi 10:3: “Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ — for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name — should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him ….” The text here displays awareness that a speaker in the mid-sixth century, unlike a reader in the 19th century, would not know the name of Jesus Christ. A similar narrative device is seen at 2 Nephi 25:19 (where Nephi reports that “according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God”) and at Mosiah 3:8 (where King Benjamin reports that “he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary,” information that in 3:2 he states was “made known unto me by an angel from God”).

Second, the Book of Mormon does at times use omniscient narration, such as the following passage recounting the sea voyage of the Jaredites. At Ether 6:4-6, Moroni’s narration becomes progressively broader as the passage develops:

4 And it came to pass that when they had prepared all manner of food, that thereby they might subsist upon the water, and also food for their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them — and it came to pass that when they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God.
5 And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind.
6 And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.

There are no doubt dozens of examples like these that an attentive reader will notice. What features have you noticed in Book of Mormon narratives?

Notes

1. Lacking a degree in English or literature, I am relying on Chris Baldick’s Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms (OUP, 2d ed., 2001) and Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 1997), especially Chapter 6, “Narrative,” for terms and concepts. Mary Klages’ Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum Books, 2006) is very good for contrasting structuralism with post-structuralist literary criticism, but provides little discussion of narrative. For a discussion aimed particularly at scriptural narrative, the interested reader is directed to Frank Kermode’s The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Harvard Univ. Press, 2006).

2. Edgar C. Snow, Jr., “Narrative Criticism and the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 1995 (Volume 4, Issue 2), pages 93-106. Quotation from pages 95-96.

3. Mark D. Thomas, Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives, Signature Books, 1999. Quotation from page 2. In Chapter One, Thomas discusses his methodology. In addition to narrative scenes, he considers narrative formulas (such as “once upon a time” and “they lived happily ever after” in fairy tales) and biblical parallels when examining Book of Mormon narratives. For a mildly critical review of the book (“Though better than most other LDS revisionist approaches to the Book of Mormon, Thomas’s book seriously underestimates the complexity of the scripture — whether for ideological reasons or just because of the writer’s incapacities as a literary critic isn’t clear yet.”), see Alan Goff, “Scratching the Surface of Book of Mormon Narratives,” FARMS Review, 2000 (Volume 12, Issue 2), pages 51-82.

4. Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (OUP, 2010). Like other treatments discussed above, Hardy brackets questions of authorship and historicity while focusing on the literary and narrative features of the Book of Mormon text.

5. Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “The Historicity of the Book of Mormon,” an address delivered to the 1993 FARMS Annual Dinner in Provo, Utah. Transcript posted at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship site (linked above), accessed January 27, 2011.

What the Book of Mormon Says About Itself

One place to start is the Title Page to the Book of Mormon itself, which (we are told) is translated text that accompanied the body of the Book of Mormon text. That page tells us that the Book of Mormon is intended to do three things:

1. To inform the descendants of Lehi about the history of their ancestors (Nephites and Lamanites) and that they are descended from the house of Israel;
2. To tell the descendants of Lehi that they are “not cast off forever” and that “they may know the covenants of the Lord,” which complements the first item by making Israelite ancestry not merely an item of historical interest to the descendants of Lehi but a status that activates present-day promises and possibilities; and
3. To proclaim to all readers (“Jew and Gentile”) that Jesus is the Christ and that God reveals himself to all nations.

The third item is general, but the first two items are specific to the descendants of Lehi or, as they are often termed in the text, “the remnant of our seed.” Once upon a time, that designation, along with the promises extended at various places in the Book of Mormon to the descendants of Lehi, was thought to apply to all Native Americans. Under the current understanding — that the descendants of Lehi are actually a small and unidentified portion of the Native American population, the large majority of which are admitted to be of Asiatic descent — the special promises in the Book of Mormon addressed to the descendants of Lehi actually do not apply to most Native Americans. I have not seen this obvious point discussed elsewhere, although it certainly seems like the kind of thing that would be addressed somewhere in the twenty volumes of the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture.

Another source for statements about the purpose of the Book of Mormon is the text itself, such as 1 Nephi 13:40:

And the angel spake unto me, saying: These last records, which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall establish the truth of the first, which are of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them; and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues, and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved.

This verse gives what I think is a better statement of purpose than the Title Page, specifically noting that the Book of Mormon would:

1. Support the Bible.
2. Restore plain and precious truths that have been removed from the Bible since its texts were originally delivered.
3. Testify to all people that they must come unto Jesus Christ or they cannot be saved.

Interestingly, the items on this list pulled from 1 Nephi 13:40 seem to match up better with the statements about the Book of Mormon one hears in the present LDS curriculum than the items from the Title Page listed earlier.

Recent Views

From the early days of the Church, the Book of Mormon has been used as a sign of the calling and prophetic status of Joseph Smith. That is certainly true for the LDS curriculum today and also for how LDS beliefs are presented in LDS missionary teaching to those who are unfamiliar with LDS doctrine and history. This tight linking of the Book of Mormon with the life and mission of Joseph Smith is nicely illustrated by a quotation from Elder Holland’s October 2009 General Conference talk “Safety for the Soul.” He related how Hyrum Smith recited Ether 12:7-8 to Joseph as they departed Nauvoo to answer legal charges in nearby Carthage (which led to their detention in Carthage Jail and shortly thereafter to their assassination by a disbanded unit of the state militia). Elder Holland continued:

As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth?

Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor. Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

While undeniably appropriate for exhortation and ministry, linking the Book of Mormon so directly to Joseph Smith (or to LDS doctrine in general) can unwittingly deflect attention from the book itself, as noted most recently by Grant Hardy in Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (OUP, 2010):

Most studies tend to mine the text for evidence in larger arguments about the nature of Mormonism as a religious movement or the credibility of its first prophet. … While historians have searched the Book of Mormon for clues about nineteenth-century America or Joseph Smith, Mormon writers have generally focused either on evidence for the book’s historical claims or correlations with LDS theology. And for many Latter-day Saints, careful scrutiny of the volume’s contents is secondary to the direct relationship with God that the book makes possible. Those investigating the faith are encouraged to pray about the Book of Mormon …. Individuals who feel they have received such a spiritual witness are often content to redirect their energies from textual analysis toward living the wholesome sort of lifestyle that Mormonism advocates. (p. xii-xiii.)

So these quotes give some ideas for how the Book of Mormon can be used or should be used. How do you use it? How does it affect your life? What has it done for you lately?

I was re-reading the 12 Questions responses by Grant Hardy on his recent book Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide [which followed his earlier The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition] and came across this comment:

I was pleased by Rosalynde Welch’s observation that the Reader’s Edition is the more important of the two books. I agree. The particular arguments in Understanding will always be subject to debate and revision, but the Reader’s Edition could be a starting point for a new generation of Book of Mormon scholarship.

Responding to a later question, Hardy was even more emphatic: “If you read through the Reader’s Edition, from beginning to end, I guarantee that you too will see things that you have never noticed before.” Since I’ve got a copy of the Reader’s Edition on my shelf, I guess I’ll take the challenge and see whether paragraphing, headings, and helpful footnotes really make a difference.

But there are plenty of other options. There is Signature’s Reader’s Book of Mormon, 7 pocket-size volumes with short introductory essays, very handy to haul around in a backpack or glove compartment. If you’re feeling textual and scholarly, there’s Skousen’s imposing The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. If, like me, you feel a little squeamish about putting highlights and notes in your leather-bound Sunday scriptures, you can get a simple blue-cover LDS edition and mark it up to your heart’s content. Then there are online editions. I’ve got Gospel Library (the LDS app) on my iPad and of course there are the LDS scriptures at LDS.org and the terribly useful word search tool.

So which Book of Mormon are you going to read this year? What other references, tools, or apps have you found helpful when reading?

The Long Shadow of Mormon Doctrine

Everyone knows that the leading entry in the one-volume doctrinal reference field for the last two generations has been McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine (“MD”). I don’t know whether the title LDS Beliefs was intended to mirror the earlier title, but Deseret Book no doubt hopes the new volume will sell as many copies as the prior one. I certainly think we will all be well served if the general membership of the Church starts going to LDS Beliefs rather than MD for a helpful summary of Mormon doctrine on particular topics. Why?

There’s a big difference between today and the two decades following 1958, when MD was first published, then revised, and when it had its greatest influence. The difference is not so much in the substance of LDS doctrine as in its tone. LDS leaders of that era, including Elder McConkie, took positions on topics (and seemingly committed the Church to positions on topics) from which the 21st-century Church has gently backed away. For example, MD’s Evolution entry covered several pages, endorsing a 6000-year-old Earth and the view that there was no death before the Fall of Adam, then declaring: “There is no harmony between the truths of revealed religion and the theories of organic evolution.” [In fairness, the article also stated, "Obviously there never will be a conflict between truths revealed in the realm of religion and those discovered by scientific research."]

In contrast, there is no Evolution entry in LDS Beliefs. There is no entry on Science. This seems in line with the most recent counsel given by LDS leaders on the faith/science issue: “Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church.” [From the Evolution entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism; see extended comments on that entry in the comments to this earlier post.]

Millet has been arguing for this narrower approach to LDS doctrine for years now, apparently as a result of his extensive interfaith work in a variety of settings. About the hundredth time you have to deal with a sincere question that starts out, “Why do Mormons believe …,” followed by an excerpt from the Journal of Discourses or an accurately quoted but speculative statement from a single LDS leader, you are ready to reassess the regularly repeated folk doctrine that every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of an LDS leader is LDS doctrine. Millet’s narrower formulation, which I have seen expounded at length in several of his books but which is expressed concisely in the LDS Beliefs entry “Doctrine,” is as follows:

Is it found within the four standard works or within official declarations or proclamations? Is it taught or discussed in general conference or other official gatherings by general Church leaders today? Is it found in the general handbooks or approved curriculum of the Church today? If it meets at least one of these criteria, we can feel secure in teaching it.

That sounds a lot like what a properly directed Correlation function should use as a guide to what should or shouldn’t be stated in official Church publications. If Correlation actually uses this sort of approach, then good for Correlation. If Correlation still defers to the traditional CES preference for statements (from whatever source) by Elder McConkie or Joseph Fielding Smith, then please, please get rid of current Correlation management [LDS bureaucrats, not senior leadership] and put Millet et al in their place.

True to the Doctrine

The booklet True to the Faith, an official publication of the Church, was originally directed to the youth. As I recall, when the booklet was first published a copy was distributed to each of the youth age 12 through 18 in their Sunday classes. However, the utility of an officially published doctrinal summary was quickly apparent, and the booklet became a primary resource for LDS doctrinal reference by adults as well as youth and by non-LDS as well as members of the Church.

LDS Beliefs offers more and considerably longer entries, of course, with authorship of each entry disclosed at the end of each article. It’s nice when actual authors are identified — this reinforces the claim that it is an individual speaking, not the Church, and provides a person to whom a reader may direct questions if they so desire. The standard disclaimer is given at the end of the Introduction to LDS Beliefs: “While we have sought earnestly to be in harmony with scripture and with the teachings of our leaders, this work is not an official publication of either The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Brigham Young University.”

When, as with Mormon Doctrine, the identified person speaking is a General Authority, the question of whether they are speaking as an individual or on behalf of the Church can be unclear. I think this confusion has generated much of the controversy over the status of the book Mormon Doctrine. The better practice, I think, is for general doctrinal summaries to have disclosed authors who are not General Authorities (as with LDS Beliefs) and for official Church publications (like True to the Faith) to have no authors listed. Yes, it sure would be nice if some sort of disclosure were provided of the process by which manuals and other official publications of the Church are prepared, but at the end of the day it is good to have a clear distinction between opinions or statements of individuals (however well informed) and statements of the Church as an entity (which should stand independent of who authored the statement).

Five Volumes is Four Too Many

The last comparison is to the five-volume work The Encyclopedia of Mormonism (“EOM”), originally published by Macmillan in 1991. This was a monumental publication that, unfortunately, did not get much attention in the Church as a whole. It’s the sort of publication that gets purchased by libraries but not by individuals (I don’t know any individual who actually purchased the five-volume set). And it is not just the price: the Joseph Smith Papers Project volumes aren’t cheap, but many individuals are purchasing copies. Single volume selections from EOM were published by FARMS around 2000 (I own To All the World, the single volume selection of EOM entries relating to the Book of Mormon) and the entire publication is now available and very accessible (for free) online. Still, my impression is that EOM did not live up to its potential.

Like EOM, LDS Beliefs lists authors and sources after each entry. It is fair to think of LDS Beliefs as a scaled-down version of EOM with (following the Millet doctrinal approach) a narrower view of doctrinal topics. Hopefully LDS Beliefs will succeed in a way that EOM did not. It is perhaps unfair to compare EOM, which was intended as a scholarly reference work, directly with LDS Beliefs, which is intended to be a popular reference work. A rewarding exercise for anyone consulting LDS Beliefs is to go look up the corresponding entry in EOM. But the bottom line is that there is a distinct need for a reliable and understandable one-volume doctrinal summary for the average Latter-day Saint. EOM did not fill that need; LDS Beliefs does.

A Few General Comments

J. Stapley posted a review of LDS Beliefs about a month ago at BCC which provides more details as to the particulars of the book itself. I’ll just add a few quick observations that I didn’t cover above. First, I was surprised that Lectures on Faith was given such lengthy discussion (a six-page entry) and was so frequently cited as a source. That’s a bit unusual. Second, despite the contrast I drew above between LDS Beliefs and MD, the book cites Elder McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith rather frequently. Lesson for the senior LDS leader: write lots of general doctrinal commentaries and you will be cited by three or four generations of LDS scholars. I don’t recall seeing any citations to David O. McKay or Hugh B. Brown.

I am hoping to see some comments on this thread pop up on December 26 by those who unwrap this book Christmas morning and look through it. (I hope you have something better to do on the afternoon of the 25th than to post comments at T&S!)

What might give us pause is the description in the article of three prominent Evangelical leaders who typify the anti-intellectual approach. One has built a young-earth museum depicting humans and dinosaurs living together sometime during Earth’s 10,000 year existence; the second presents a history of America in which “the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation”; the third “has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could ‘pray away’ their unnatural and sinful orientation.”

While there are sometimes disagreements about what LDS doctrine does or doesn’t say about these subjects, the present position of the Church avoids the Evangelical/fundamentalist traps discussed in the article.

• Science students at BYU study evolution, not Creationism or Intelligent Design.
• While the LDS view of history sees the US Constitution and its guarantees of religious freedom as inspired, the Church does not embrace nativist thinking and has recently issued a statement calling for “a balanced and civil approach” to immigration.
• The Church does not presently take an official position on the origin or explanation of homosexuality: in the Same Gender Attraction statement, Elder Oaks said “these are scientific questions.”

The dedicated LDS critic could, of course, dig up statements from earlier LDS leaders that called evolution a heresy or that offered a questionable reconstruction of US history. But it is not Brigham Young or Reed Smoot or even George Romney that are running for president this year, it is Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. This is 2011 and if we are going to talk about LDS doctrine, it is present LDS doctrine that is the topic of discussion. In his interfaith writing, Robert L. Millet has regularly emphasized this point. In his article “What Is Our Doctrine?” he recounted a conversation with a Baptist minister who was genuinely puzzled about how to properly identify LDS doctrinal positions. Here is Millet’s response, which I’ll quote at length because it seems relevant to the sort of doctrinal angst that is regularly aired in the Bloggernacle:

1. The teachings of the Church today have a rather narrow focus, range, and direction; central and saving doctrine is what we are called upon to teach and emphasize, not tangential and peripheral teachings.

2. Very often what is drawn from Church leaders of the past is, like the matter of blood atonement mentioned above, either misquoted, misrepresented, or taken out of context. Further, not everything that was ever spoken or written by a past Church leader is a part of what we teach today. Ours is a living constitution, a living tree of life, a dynamic Church (see D&C 1:30). We are commanded to pay heed to the words of living oracles (see D&C 90:3–5).

3. In determining whether something is a part of the doctrine of the Church, we might ask, Is it found within the four standard works? Within official declarations or proclamations? Is it discussed in general conference or other official gatherings by general Church leaders today? Is it found in the general handbooks or approved curriculum of the Church today? If it meets at least one of these criteria, we can feel secure and appropriate about teaching it.

A significant percentage of anti-Mormonism focuses on Church leaders’ statements of the past that deal with peripheral or noncentral issues. No one criticizes us for a belief in God, in the divinity of Jesus Christ or His atoning work, in the literal bodily resurrection of the Savior and the eventual resurrection of mankind, in baptism by immersion, in the gift of the Holy Ghost, in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and so forth.

So is religious anti-intellectualism an Evangelical problem but not an LDS problem? Or did we just get lucky by having two pro-science LDS candidates in the spotlight this year?

I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any renewal of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and the love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit as swiftly vanishes away. Is there no way to prevent this — the continual decay of pure religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and save all they can: that is, in effect, to grow rich.

Wesley locates this process or progression — practicing “pure religion” leads to industry and frugality [which produces riches] which induces pride — in the life of individual believers, which is where I think it occurs, when and if it occurs. Pride is a characteristic of individuals, not of societies. The recent surge in LDS commentary discussing “the pride cycle” as some sort of social dynamic doesn’t seem to recognize that the concept, as applied to societies as a whole, is largely incoherent. Wesley’s quote seems like a nice way to enrich an LDS discussion of the topic. I wish we got material like this in LDS manuals instead of recycled quotes from the middle of the last century.

Note: I corrected the last paragraph to add riches to Wesley’s progression from religion to pride.

That Was Then …

The book focuses on the two decades after World War II, a period that was preceded by conflict between labor and capital and that was followed by conflict over race and civil rights. The turbulence of the Sixties and the polarized politics of the last couple of decades largely obscures historical memory of the ethic of religious harmony that prevailed in the postwar period. The book gives readers a way to recover this important chapter in American religious history.

Here’s how the book sets up the beginning of the move from America as a Protestant nation to America as a tri-faith nation:

In 1934, Everett R. Clinchy, a thirty-seven-year-old Presbyterian minister, published a short book with a red cover called All in the Name of God. America was not a Protestant nation, Clinchy declared in the book. Instead, it was a nation composed of three equal “culture groups” — Protestant, Catholic, Jewish. Each group had its own unique “way of living,” had its own “folkways,” and thought its way of living was superior to the others. But Clinchy contended that in order to survive in the face of the totalitarian demagogues emerging worldwide in the 1920s and 1930s, to beat back the prejudices on which they were capitalizing, to allow the United States to live up to its most cherished ideals, no group could be allowed to proclaim its superiority in American civic life. At a civic and social level, the three groups were equal. There could be no Protestant hegemony in America. (p. 15.)

As recounted in the book, the gradual displacement of the idea of America as a Protestant nation by the idea of America as a tri-faith nation took a few decades to occur but was largely successful. In the context of its time, that was a progressive change that broadened participation in American civic life to include groups (Catholics, Jews) that had previously been marginalized. The civil rights movement of the sixties carried that change forward to bring full civil rights to previously marginalized racial and ethnic minorities as well.

… This Is Now

But religion in America didn’t stand still. In the closing third of the 20th century, new immigrants from Asia and the Middle East broadened the American religious spectrum to include Buddhists and Muslims. New age religions sprang to prominence as well, including Neo-Paganism, Wicca, and self-congratulatory Brights. And Mormons are in the mix, too, emerging from relative seclusion in the Mountain Time Zone to claim a place in national life. Where do these new religious voices fit in the tri-faith or Judeo-Christian model of harmonious American religious and cultural life that emerged in the postwar period? More to the point in light of current events, do Mormons get a seat at the table?

That’s a question we probably wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t for the presence of Romney and Huntsman in the 2012 presidential race. Politics often brings out the worst in people, so it is unfortunate that this discussion happens in the context of a presidential campaign. When it came up in the 1960 campaign and the question was whether John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism was a presidential disqualifier, here was his response (as quoted at p. 6):

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote. … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

That speech largely resolved the Catholic issue for the campaign, and after Kennedy’s election the issue never returned. Romney’s 2007 “Faith in America” speech obviously did not resolve the Mormon issue, but 2011 is not 1960 and Romney is not Kennedy. As noted above, the religious spectrum is now broader. Mormonism is not Catholicism. The year 1960 was at the close of the religiously inclusive tri-faith period, whereas 2011 is part of an era where politics is polarized along many axes, including religion. The media itself is much broader than in 1960, with extremists at both ends of the spectrum now able to find large audiences through online publications and forums.

So Where Are We Now?

Recalcitrant Protestants who opposed the inclusion of Catholics and Jews into American national life were unsuccessful in opposing the tri-faith movement. Will they now be successful in opposing the inclusion of those outside of the tri-faith club? I think that is an open question at this point. As Kennedy’s election in 1960 resolved the Catholic issue, Romney’s candidacy in 2012 may resolve the Mormon issue, but the message could be “not yet” rather than “come on in.”

A related question that I have not seen discussed is whether “playing the Mormon card” (or any other religious card) is itself a presidential disqualifier. If there’s one thing a presidential candidate has to project at some point, it is inclusion. “Looking presidential” is part of the test every candidate faces, but exploiting religious differences for political gain is decidedly unpresidential. I would hope that it eventually becomes so unpresidential that candidates simply avoid it.