Since I have spent time in conversation discussing these points with Feldman, it is perhaps unremarkable that I have mostly praise for his observations and as such won’t rehearse my significant agreements with him. Instead, what I will draw attention to are the LDS responses to Feldman which I find most interesting.

Feldman argues that “Mormonism’s political problem arises, in larger part, from the disconcerting split between its public and private faces.” The faces of the missionaries that seem to evoke wholesomeness and clean living on one hand and temple rites intended only for the worthy few, leaves outsiders uncomfortable and uncertain about the Mormon faith. Does Mormonism epitomize all-American, apple pie goodness or does its non-public sacred temple rituals, holy garments, and theocratic past define Mormonism as marginal and worthy of suspicion?

According to Feldman, Mormonism’s understanding of sacred mystery implies a certain theological secrecy leading to public distrust. When distrust and fear turn to persecution Mormons feel external pressure to be secretive about even those beliefs regarding which there may be no theological rationale for silence and which they might more readily share but for the possible persecution they might face. Silence or secrecy then becomes a protective strategy. The category of secrecy looms large in the article as one of the sticking points that ostensibly both explains and engenders continuing national bigotry. Feldman suggests that Mormonism not only began in secrecy but that Mormon theology remains relatively inaccessible to outsiders because much of Joseph’s Smith’s revelations are thought of as sacred secrets to be shared only with select initiates.

Many Latter-day Saints have a knee-jerk reaction to the charge of secrecy. However well-informed the outsider, they take these observations about the church as an accusation of shady practices so they respond like Paul when speaking of the early Christians to King Agrippa that “this thing was not done in a corner”! To demonstrate this transparency, which seems for some to imply goodness, they point to the church’s extensive international missionary program which seeks to educate anyone who will listen about the doctrines and practices of Mormon faith and issues reminders that the Book of Mormon is published in more than 36 languages and distributed all over the world. They note that the official church website publishes all major addresses by church leaders and that the current president of the church has gone on national television, agreeing to be interviewed by the likes of Larry King and Mike Wallace.

Though Latter-day Saints might bristle at this observation and offer evidence to the contrary, it is difficult to not to concede Feldman’s point. Plural marriage was a sacred secret for many years and the temple ordinances have never been meant for public consumption. Granting these points however does not do the damage that some LDS may think. Feldman draws analogies between Mormonism’s sacred secrets and medieval Islamic esotericism, kabbalistic mysticism and ancient Christian Gnosticism, effectively arguing that there are strands within Mormonism that bear resemblances to old strands within Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. If Feldman is right that “antiquity breeds authenticity,” then Feldman’s emphasis on Mormon secrecy in the context of an argument for the antiquity of such a practice does Latter-day Saints a favor.

Feldman’s recounting of Mormon history is mostly the good standard story you’d expect from an academic who has read the most important secondary sources. I do however think his account of what he calls Mormon “normalization” could have benefitted from a more careful perusal of Armand Mauss’ The Angel and the Beehive: the Mormon Struggle with Assimilation. Feldman suggests that the level of assimilation that Latter-day Saints have been able to accomplish is due largely to a deliberate reticence to discuss religious beliefs (i.e. secrecy) as a survival tactic. Mauss paints a more complex picture than the one Feldman describes by arguing that there has been and continues to be much opposition to the diffusion of Mormon distinctiveness that has led to what Mauss calls the predicament of respectability. There is evidence of a hardening position against further assimilation and sometimes an apparent desire to reverse this trend from both the leadership and laity. That we are becoming too much like the world is not an uncommon cry. Mormons are proud to be a “peculiar people.” Though Feldman acknowledges that it might be hard for contemporary Latter-day Saints to imagine such radical change, I think it unlikely that Mormonism would ever come to look like mainline Protestantism. Latter-day Saints want to be accepted as part of the mainstream, but they want to be accepted into the mainstream as Latter-day Saints.

Feldman spends very little time developing what, for me, is one of the most interesting comments in the article. Near the end of the piece, Feldman suggests that Mormon esotericism (which is perhaps less controversial a category than secrecy—I suggested early on that he use “mystery” as the native term to Mormon scripture, but that wasn’t quite right either) is reflected in the political speechmaking of Romney and defined by “the attempt to convey multiple messages to different audiences through the careful use of words.” Any effort to do this might sound coolly calculating and manipulative and these charges have certainly been thrown at Romney, but I would argue that learning how to discuss the religious premises that ground one’s moral and political beliefs in a way that is accessible without distortion is the challenge that faces every Latter-day Saint who enters the public square.

To introduce the symposium and provide a contrast to the coming reviews we thought it might be of interest to offer a window into what sorts of questions Rough Stone Rolling is raising for some non-LDS scholars. Last month at the annual meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, one session was entirely devoted to responding to Bushman’s book. Here is the gist of what these scholars had to say.

The first presenter pressed Bushman on his subtitle. What is a “cultural” biography exactly? Is it about contextualizing the figure? This is not what it seems to mean to Bushman who takes a quite different approach. Culture is not used to give a naturalistic explanation of Joseph Smith, but to show how he’s unique. For example, Bushman writes that the Book of Mormon might be considered a “profound social protest.” But, in fact, it makes sense to say, and many have in fact said, that the Book of Mormon is rather the very embodiment of the cultural period.

His second critique was that Bushman does not portray Mormonism as a new religious movement with a charismatic leader although it belongs in this category. Joseph is described as an emotionally and verbally abusive leader who insists on strict loyalty from followers. When that loyalty is breached there are heavy consequences. When proper contrition is showed, followers are welcomed back to the group. These are characteristics of charismatic cult leaders. Another feature of such movements and their leaders is the perception sexual perversions. Sexual excess was considered the all-too common fruit of new religious leaders. Here is another example where Joseph Smith seems to be a representative of his culture rather than an anomaly. Hence, the book can’t properly be considered a sociological or “cultural” biography since it fails to illustrate how JS was similar to rather than distinct from other charismatic leaders of the time.

The second presenter began by referring to Bushman’s claim that Joseph Smith was a product of his environment that couldn’t be contained by it, that Joseph transcends his context. He questioned Bushman’s desire to distinguish Joseph from the other visionaries of his time to try to shed some light on why Joseph’s movement succeeded when other similar movements failed.

He went on to call Rough Stone Rolling “believing history” and to suggest that believing Mormon historians share more than we might think with radical feminist sociologists since both reject a positivist epistemology. We can neither evaluate Vogel’s work with Bushman’s tools nor Bushman’s work with Vogel’s tools. So, what tools do we use? He asked whether believing history has an agenda and wondered what the prospects of believing history are in the academy where positivist methods reign

The third paper focused on the “very thin tight wire” Bushman had to walk between writing a serious work of scholarly integrity on the central character who founded his religion and repudiating the core assumptions of his faith. The presenter commended Bushman for walking that line admirably well and acknowledged that both the open minded believer and the open minded skeptic will encounter much, new valuable insight here.

He then suggested that a purely sociological biography would flirt with being a contradiction in terms. Of course, every person is a social being with a social history of self-meaning, socializing relationships, influences and pressures emanating from others, etc. A good biography will take into account such influences on the character, development and actions of its individual subject. Bushman does this throughout much of his book. The sub-title of the book, “a cultural biography of Mormonism’s founder,” indicates that he takes the cultural emphasis quite seriously. As an historian of the era in American history when Joseph lived, Bushman is knowledgeable about the social and cultural currents of that time period and repeatedly links these to his account of Joseph’s career, character, assumptions and even personality quirks. In fact, one of the ways in which Bushman’s approach differs from many standard biographies is that he doesn’t give us a rigid, detailed, chronicle of every activity or encounter the subject is known to have engaged in. His chapters are identified with significant themes which keeps the narrative from getting bogged down with the minute, inessential details.

But, ultimately a biography is in fact the story of a particular individual, even though it can and should be anchored in the larger social, cultural, and historical milieu in which the individual lives. For a biography to become a purely sociological treatise would amount to more than just taking into account some of the social forces operating on a particular individual. The social forces themselves become the ultimate focus; the career of an individual become a case study to illustrate the nature and effect of these forces. The task of sociology is to study social relationships and the group structures in which they are anchored. The sociologist qua sociology seeks either to develop general social concepts or even theories that have explanatory scope or seeks to apply already existing social concepts or theories to illuminate a specific case.

The book advertises itself as a “cultural” biography, but Bushman doesn’t adequately draw upon existing sociological insights that might broaden or otherwise benefit his interpretation of the singular life, career and character of Joseph Smith as the prophetic founder of a radically controversial, new religious movement. One will look in vain throughout the entire text and endnote section for inclusion of any specifically sociological concept of theory. There is an enormous scholarly literature in sociology on topics like charismatic authority, prophetic leadership in the founding and early development of new religious movements and countless other conceptual themes like reference groups, plausibility structures, utopian social movements, deviance labeling, inter-group conflict, etc. These are issues that have been theoretically and empirically pursued by sociologists for a hundred years from Max Weber to Rodney Stark. None of these works is cited by Bushman. Bushman’s book would have benefited from judicious use of this literature.

The last paper argued that believing history is the same thing as religious apologetics and that sociological analysis must restrict itself to naturalistic explanations. Although Bushman’s book offers a superbly detailed description of JS, there is not general theoretical framework for accounting for Joseph Smith; there is no sociological typology. Sociology necessarily parts company with the particularizing moves of biography.

Richard’s response to these papers was gracious as well as compelling. He acknowledged feeling out of place among the sociologists in the room and then explained his aim was to recover the world of Joseph Smith because that’s the only way to understand the people of the past. If we poke holes in their stories we become unable to understand their power. As an historian he is interested in knowing why Joseph Smith was able to command such allegiance?

Social scientists try to colonize the past. But, as an historian he seeks to enter the exotic and foreign. He wants to know that *other* land. History is like traveling. We have to recover past worlds.

Bushman admitted to being handicapped in this project in one way. He kept trying to answer the question of how JS went from an unpromising rural boy to a prophet, but, just couldn’t answer the question partly because he didn’t want to. He said he *wants* it to be a marvel. He wants Joseph to be as difficult to understand as Muhammad is.

And so he is for many.

These are the questions the scholars are posing. What questions do you have? Perhaps some of your questions will be answered this week as we discuss Rough Stone Rolling on Times and Seasons.

I think you fathers out there are luckier than you realize. You get to be parents without pregnancy or childbirth and without giving up your other demanding and valuable work. I may not ever get to be a parent, but if I am presented with that opportunity, it will most certainly require all of this from me personally.

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

If I had the choice of trading with my husband, I wouldn’t. (Although he’d be much better at being pregnant–at 6’1, he’d still be able to reach faucets without turning sideways, which is something I can only dream of in the final trimester). I’ll spare you the treacly rhetoric about motherhood because I hate it myself, but what I do is more important and more rewarding (even in the short term) than what he does. To contextualize that, he is doing what he wants professionally, in good (extremely flexible) circumstances, adequately compensated. But he’s still hunched over a monitor for 9 hours per day, while I read aloud about alchemists, tour ice cream factories, teach the baby to clap, read the Little House books to my kids for the first time (and to me, for the first time), and, in general, have much more control over my life, schedule, and environment than he does. Which is not to say that I don’t deal with way more literal and metaphorical poop than he does, but I still think he has the short end of the stick.

Julie
——————————————————————————————

Julie, I know you feel this way and I love the fact that you do. But, I can’t help wondering if your husband agrees? Does *he* think that he’s got the short end of the stick? Bracketing theological and practical considerations for the moment, would your husband want to change places with you?

How much of not wanting to trade with your husband has to do with what he is actually doing (hunched over a monitor all day)? I don’t know what it is you might want to be doing except for raising kids–because it seems like that’s what you love best–but what if there were something else you really loved and couldn’t do as long as you were a full-time mom? What if you could be an engaged and devoted parent and still pursue that passion (I don’t just mean having the ability to do enjoyable things like “tour ice cream factories and teach the baby to clap”) in a concentrated way like some (certainly not all or even most) men get to do? Wouldn’t you want to?

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

>How much of not wanting to trade with your husband has to do
>with what he is actually doing (hunched over a monitor all day)?

I honestly didn’t know. I asked. He said he wouldn’t trade because he didn’t think he could do what I do the way I do it, and that I’d be ticked at him. I asked him to take that off the table and imagine that I’d be fine with whatever he had or had not done when I got home from work. He said he couldn’t do that because then I wouldn’t be me.

>I don’t know what it is you might want to be doing except for raising
> kids—because it seems like that’s what you love best—-but what if
>there were something else you really loved and couldn’t do as long as
>you were a full-time mom?

This made me cringe. (Although I am sure that wasn’t your intention.) Raising kids isn’t what I love best. Raising kids while homeschooling, teaching Institute and Sunday School, writing, reading, experimenting with new recipes, and going out to dinner with my girlfriends in the ward is what I love best. Raising kids by itself would make me someone-cidal (self or other, I don’t know). As for your question after the ‘but’: I don’t know how to answer that except to say that it isn’t just about moms. Maybe 1% of men love their jobs to the point where it is ‘the thing that they love’; the rest are paying the bills and having their time to do what they love devoured by their children. In other words, being a working dad is usually just as incompatible with doing what you love as being a SAHM mom is. BTW, had I not had kids, I’m sure I would have taken a PhD at the GTU, finished around 2000, and looked for a job.

>What if you could be a engaged and devoted parent and still
> pursue that passion (I don’t just mean having the ability to do
>enjoyable things like “tour ice cream factories and teach the
>baby to clap”) in a concentrated way like some (certainly not
>all or even most) men get to do?

Ah, I just don’t think that is true. Men who work full time give up a huge chunk of ‘engaged and devoted.’ (I’m not saying they are bad fathers; I am not saying society does or should call them disengaged and lacking devotion, I am saying that they miss out on a lot of good stuff.) I addressed above my thought that very few men are actually pursuing their passions 9 to 5.

> Wouldn’t you want to?

No. I may just be a dilettante, but I am happier on a day with a few hours of school, a (grudging) hour or so of home care, time at the park with friends, dinner with the family, and then ‘holing up’ (as we call it around here) with my books for 5-6 hours in the evening. I wouldn’t trade that for a 14 hour day with the books. I think balance improves all endeavors.

Julie
——————————————————————————————

Sorry for asking such personal questions, but in honest moments I’ve had not a few men admit to me that they would never want to trade positions with their wives. I’d be interested in what your husband would say if really pressed–maybe he’d say the same thing he did–or perhaps he’d be duplicitous about it (for whatever reason), but then again maybe not.

>In other words, being a working dad is usually just as incompatible
>with doing what you love as being a SAHM mom is.

Of course, this is true. I made the same point at M* last week. I was just interested in the question theoretically for you two. As for the cringing, you’re right I didn’t mean to evoke that response. Of course, I recognize that you do much more than raise kids. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I’m also sure that your life is MUCH more balanced than mine is. I sat in two 3 1/2 hour seminars today (has anyone else ever heard of seminars longer than THREE hours?) one of which I directed. I was up at 5:00 to finish reading and writing my notes for that meeting and I’m still at work now–not even close to being done yet. Although I spend a lot of the day reading, I can’t imagine 5-6 hours of reading strictly for pleasure. I too like to cook but cooking for myself feels like a waste of time when it’s so easy to stop by the salad bar on campus or pick up a cup of soup at the cafe across the street. I haven’t actually cooked a single meal since I’ve been here. It’s really not enjoyable to cook for yourself and it turns out to be more expensive too. Whether or not balance improves “all” endeavors is another question we can argue another time–but certainly your life is more balanced and varied than mine and that might be a good you wouldn’t want to sacrifice.

I tried to make it clear that I know that most men, like many women, don’t get to do what they love. This seems to be an obvious and uncontroversial claim. I was just wondering what you thought about a woman who does have a job she loves which happens to be incompatible with full-time parenting. Of course, I’m talking about myself here. I realize I am one of the infinintesimally small numbers of lucky people on the planet for whom this would even be an issue. Nevertheless, I am not the only person on earth for whom the following description is apt. I simply *love* what I do. Not a single day passes when I’m not struck by feelings of amazement and gratitude that I get to be doing the sort of work I do. Of course there are challenges in my profession, but that would be the case no matter what I was doing. I am so passionate about and committed to my work that I can’t even fathom leaving. It would be a profound, identity-altering sort of loss for me to walk away from academia, especially my teaching. Although there may be but few men who have the luxury of feeling this way about their work, there are certainly some who do. These men will never be asked to give up their professions to become parents. You’re right that there are things that fathers who work outside the home all day miss—and I think that’s unfortunate. Part of what I was arguing at M* is that our current way of doing things is bad for men as well as for women. But, even in our flawed setup men can still pursue a profession of interest to them and also become parents. Provided that men take an active interest in their children and are generous with their time in the evenings and on the weekends they are even considered and can consider themselves good parents (even if they do sometimes miss important moments). This sort of picture would never be acceptable for a mother. I could never be considered a good parent if I worked outside the home full-time by choice no matter how much I adored my children or how involved I was with them in my off-work hours. What’s worse, in my experience, most LDS men who are serious about the gospel would
unreflectively expect me to leave my profession once we became parents.

A man expects to carry on with his professional life more or less unchanged when he becomes a parent. In contrast, as a woman, I am expected to walk away from (or severely curtail) my profession in order to do the same thing—become a parent. For some men very little needs to change in their lives to be able to experience parenthood. But, my whole world would have to change (physiological, professional, social . . .).

If we both love our jobs then this arrangement seems to favor him. If he is only marginally happy with his job the scenario is even worse! Why should I leave a job I love while he stays in a job he’s indifferent to (and possibly even despises) so that we can become parents? Aren’t there other arrangements that make more sense than this one? It’s one thing to start having babies in your early twenties; it’s quite another to you start having babies in your early thirties, and yet the norms are the same. A woman who has spent a decade or more receiving education, professional training, gaining experience and advancing in her career is expected to leave it behind (some even expect her to want to do so and are “shocked” to discover that might not be the case). If I were a man the fact that I love my career would NEVER prompt the question, “don’t you want to have kids?” but as a woman I get this question all the time. Parenthood and professional pursuits are seen as mutually exclusive activities for women but not for men. Let me make it clear: this wouldn’t bother me so much if I didn’t care about being a mother! It troubles me precisely because I do want to have children. I don’t want this point to get lost in the conversation.

Of course, I am always willing to acknowledge the possibility of my becoming so besotted with my own infants that I couldn’t imagine leaving them for a moment. I am willing to entertain the idea that the reason I don’t feel that way now is that I don’t yet have children. Perhaps my feelings will drastically change when this is no longer merely theoretical.

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

>I’m also sure that your life is MUCH more balanced than
>mine is.

I’m not sure that is true. I’ve only seen glimmers of your life, but you do things I don’t: exercise, pick berries and apples, host dinner parties. I would be a better person if I did those things.

>Although I spend a lot of the day reading, I can’t imagine
>5-6 hours of reading strictly for pleasure. I too like to cook
>but cooking for myself feels like a waste of time when it’s so
>easy to stop by the salad bar on campus or pick up a cup of
>soup at the cafe across the street. I haven’t actually cooked
>a single meal since I’ve been here (besides it’s really not
> enjoyable to cook for yourself. It turns out to be more
>expensive too).

I hope nothing I have said appeared to sound as if I were trying to suggest that my life is better than yours; what I was trying to suggest is that I think the ‘SAHM-life-is-so-hard’ card gets overplayed sometimes. I got a little of that vibe from your post about fathers being grateful, and I just wanted to suggest that even for a woman with lots of academic and non-child interests, even for a woman for whom the language of duty and ‘woman’s natural inclinations’ rings hollow, there are a lot of advantages to this arrangement (which, incidentally, I had to work to establish–I didn’t feel this way at first).

>I tried to make it clear that I know that most men, like many
>women, don’t get to do what they love. I was just wondering
>what you thought about a woman who does have a job she loves
>which happens to be incompatible with full-time parenting.

God asks different sacrifices of each of us, and it may be that some women (those with career interests incompatible with motherhood) may have to lay that on the altar. But this isn’t primarily a feminist issue–many men do, too. Have you seen the pictures of Pres. Hunter’s band–he toured on cruise ships–that he gave up because he knew it wasn’t conducive to family life? To the extent that a woman is more likely to have to give up career aspirations than a man, well, he’ll have to end up sacrificing some significant depth of relationship with his children. From a gospel perspective, he is getting the short end of the stick, whether he realizes it in any individual case or not. Let us not forget that God is a stay at home parent, primarily responsible for the nurture of children.

>I am so passionate about and committed to what I
>do that I can’t fathom leaving. It would be a profound,
>identity-altering sort of loss for me to walk away from
>my work, especially my teaching.

I felt exactly the same way during my graduate program. I felt like a fish out of water–a really, really angry fish–during my first year of motherhood. I had to refashion my identity, I did, and I am happier now than I was then.

>Provided that men take an active interest in their
>children and are generous with their time in the
>evenings and on the weekends they are even
>considered and can consider themselves good parents
>(even if they do sometimes miss important moments).

Yes, but even with the social and religious approval, they are still missing out on good things of great value by not getting to spend those hours with their children. They are still making a trade-off.

>This sort of picture would never be acceptable for
>a mother. I could never be considered a good parent
>if I worked outside the home full-time by choice no
>matter how much I adored my children or how
>involved I was with them in my off-work hours.

Your passive contruction here intrigues me–by whom would you not be considered a good parent? God? Yourself? Your family? The gossip sitting behind you in sacrament meeting? The prophet? I would consider you a good mother if your husband were home full-time. Otherwise, I would think that your children were missing out, and you were, too. I also think the focus is off: we shouldn’t be nearly so concerned about whether you are (or are perceived as) a good mother as we are about what is happening to your children. What would happen to your children if you weren’t there? I don’t wish to make this too personal or accusatory, but I’d no sooner have paid someone 2.25 an hour to write my book than I’d pay someone that rate to watch my kids–why would I assume that appropriate attention would be given to the latter but not the former?

>In contrast, as a woman, I am expected to walk away
>from (or severely curtail) my profession in order to
>become a parent. For some men very little needs to
>change in their lives to be able to experience parenthood.
>But, my whole world would have to change (physiological,
>professional, social . . .). Why should I leave a job I
>love while he stays in a job he’s indifferent to (and
>possibly even despises) so that we can become
>parents? Aren’t there other arrangements that make
>more sense than this one?

In that situation, I would be carefully prayerful about it and go with that. I am not opposed to SAHDs, assuming God is onboard with that plan, and I have no reason to think that is impossible.

Julie
——————————————————————————————

>It would be a profound, identity-altering sort of loss for
>me to walk away from my work, especially my teaching.

As Julie pointed out with the President Hunter example, Melissa, I know many men who give up doing something they love expressly because they wish to provide support for their family and, in some cases, so that their wife could be at home with the children without the financial pressure of a low income. Your ideal profession, a professor of religion, would actually be a prime example of the sort of thing that many men would never even attempt because they know it will, with high probability, not provide for their family and is too risky a job. Let’s face it, a PhD in the humanities is as much about personal consumption and gratification as about investment in future income. How is that professional sacrifice substantively different than the one you envision you may be faced with?

As for giving up my job to stay with my kids, I’d be happy to give it a shot. I am not so naive to think that I know how I’d feel about it before trying it, but then, who is? But it is a little silly of you to think you know whether or not any man is properly grateful for the work of his wife and the mother of his children.

Frank
——————————————————————————————

>But it is a little silly of you to think you know whether or
>not any man is properly grateful for the work of his wife
>and the mother of his children.

I don’t think I’ve suggested that I know this at all. Being “properly grateful” is very different from being willing to trade places. In fact, it may be the case that some men are grateful for what their wives do at least partly because their wives’ labor at home makes possible their pursuit of other projects which matter a lot to them. I’m not saying that this is the way it is, but I am posing questions.

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

I feel pretty bad for you, Melissa, but I don’t have anything useful to say about your personal situation. I do think that you are making a mistake by converting your personal anguish into a feminist critique. I hear you saying two things that don’t seem right to me–first, that the current system favors men because, while many men don’t love their job the way you do, some do, and they get to keep it–and second, that the problems of people having to spend their lives doing what they don’t love would go away if we stopped having gender roles. Neither bears up under inspection (in fact, the second point almost contradicts the first).

Adam
——————————————————————————————

>I’m not sure that is true. I’ve only seen glimmers of
>your life, but you do things I don’t: exercise, pick
>berries and apples, host dinner parties. I would be a
>better person if I did those things.

Well, I pick fruit four days a year and I can’t remember the last time I threw a big dinner party (it may be almost a year ago). On a daily basis your life sounds a lot more “balanced.” Again, we could debate the relative importance of balance, but that’s another question.

>God asks different sacrifices of each of us, and it may
>be that some women (those with career interests
>incompatible with motherhood) may have to lay that
>on the altar. But this isn’t primarily a feminist
>issue–many men do, too. Have you seen the pictures
>of Pres. Hunter’s band–he toured on cruise ships–
>that he gave up because he knew it wasn’t conducive
>to family life?

I’ve already agreed with this at several turns. I know that men make great and good sacrifices for their families. That’s not in question. My central point is that men get to be parents without giving up their careers. If we are going to pull out the general authorities as examples, Frank, Elder Oaks got to be a lawyer and then a judge AND be a father. Elder Nelson got to pursue medicine and become a leading surgeon AND be a father. Their wives, as far as I know, did not pursue any career but motherhood. This is not a denigration of motherhood it is simply an empirical observation.

>To the extent that a woman is more likely to have to
>give up career aspirations than a man, well, he’ll
>have to end up sacrificing some significant depth of
>relationship with his children. From a gospel
>perspective, he is getting the short end of the stick,
>whether he realizes it in any individual case or not.
>Let us not forget that God is a stay at home parent,
>primarily responsible for the nurture of children.

I’m not sure about any of what you say here. I certainly don’t think that “from a gospel perspective he’s getting the short end of the stick.” And it doesn’t seem like God is primarily “responsible for the nurture of children” since he’s also busy organizing worlds without number among countless other things (if we subscribe to the theology that God is still progessing it is certainly the case, although this doctrine has been up for debate historically).

>Your passive contruction here intrigues me–by whom
>would you not be considered a good parent?…I also
>think the focus is off: we shouldn’t be nearly so concerned
>about whether you are (or are perceived as) a good
>mother as we are about what is happening to your
>children. What would happen to your children if you
>weren’t there? I don’t wish to make this too personal
>or accusatory, but I’d no sooner have paid someone
>2.25 an hour to write my book than I’d pay someone
>that rate to watch my kids–why would I assume that
>appropriate attention would be given to the latter but
>not the former?

Since I think being a good mother is directly tied to what’s happening to my children I didn’t separate the two. I have never suggested day care. I don’t think I’d ever consider anything but the most minimal type of friend/family/ward member exchange sort of day care arrangement. The question about what other people think was not really my point, but we could have a long discussion about it someday. As a member of a ward community it is very difficult to be deeply misperceived and misunderstood on an ongoing basis. I don’t imagine that as a stay at home, homeschooling mother you have ever been perceived as anything but the quintessential example of womanhood and motherhood by members of the church. If you were to experience being marginalized, mistrusted, overlooked, demeaned, patronized, pitied, etc., etc., for any extended period of time at church you might feel very differently about whether how others perceive you is important. Lots of Latter-day Saints, especially LDS women, seem bothered that I adore my work and generally have a strong sense of wellbeing even though I don’t have children. Sometimes it seems like some of them would be much more comfortable if I seemed just a little unhappy.

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

My feeling, with Frank, is that I’d love to give child-rearing and domestic operations a try, but, unlike him, I know ex ante that the results would be a shambles. Sara’s a lot better at this stuff than me.

Adam
——————————————————————————————

I haven’t meant to convert my situation into a feminist critique, Adam. The critique exists whether I make it or not and stands quite apart from my own experience when I do go down that path. I know many full-time stay at home mothers who are NOT happy with the way that work and childraising gets divided up. I don’t think that the extreme specialization model is the best model for anyone (including children). That has less to do with my own experience (since I don’t have children am not even faced with the challenge) than with what I’ve observed over a lifetime.

Melissa
——————————————————————————————

I would, I’m almost certain. Trade places with my husband, I mean. (Not with any man, to be sure, but with a man who has had the same opportunities and choices as my husband–which I have every reason to believe I would have had if I had been born an oldest son, as he was, instead of an oldest daughter.)

Yes, I enjoy pregnancy, and yes, I enjoy a qualitatively different relationship–far closer, far more interdependent, far more emotionally fraught, and, undoubtedly, far more constitutive–with my children than does my husband. But my husband, who frankly admits that he would not trade places with me, doesn’t feel at all the lack of these in his own life, and I have no reason to think that I would, either, if I were a man. My husband, I think, enjoys the children during the time that he’s with them, he feels responsible for them and certainly loves them, and I think fatherhood has generally been a very rich personal experience for him, despite the fact that he is not an especially involved father, either by temperament or, of course, by profession. My father was not at all a hands-on father, either; he performed even less of the physical care of us, if possible, than my husband does of our children, and he spent very little one-on-one time with any of us, and yet he takes an enormous pride and satisfaction in his children–he always wanted more. The point is, I think I’d be like my husband and my father, if I were a man: I would enjoy and benefit from my children, and I wouldn’t miss the emotional interdependence or the physical experiences of pregnancy and childbirth.

And of course, both my husband and my father take great satisfaction from and, even more importantly, derive a significant sense of self-identity from their work. They do not experience the sort of transcendant radiant attachment to their work that Melissa does to hers–it may very well be that most human beings are constitutionally incapable of that sort of transcendant radiant attachment to anything! ;) –and, of course, their work is high-pressured, sometimes boring, and not always glamorous. Still, according to what they tell me, they have greatly enjoyed and profited personally from the opportunity to develop an expertise of their choosing, and from the sense of, what, underlying self-worth (I hate that phrase, there must be something better) and realization that it has given them. I experienced some of that as a graduate student, and as I said in a previous message, I feel its loss acutely.

Rosalynde
——————————————————————————————

This is because my (and Julie’s) claim is not limited to upper or middle-class, professional men. I was just talking about men in the whole, wide, world, of whom the upper middle class (American) professional set is neither representative nor particularly large, nor particularly important. It is a set many of us are members of, but that has little relevance to its global importance.

The first problem with Melissa’s “feminist critique” is that not getting to do what you love applies almost equally to men and women across the globe, outside the clique Rosalynde mentioned above. It is a classic case of overemphasizing one’s own box.

And Melissa, if Oaks and Nelson are the test cases, we all pretty much look like losers, right? Those men have had far more opportunities than billions of other people, because of their extraordinary skill and spirituality. Both those men were called to leave their professions by God to do something else. The sacrifice may have been small because they recognized the incredible value of the Apostleship. Is it more important to be an Apostle than a mother? If so, why? Don’t we all serve where we are called? To my children, Carrie and, to a lesser extent, I, are vastly more important to their spiritual development than Elder Nelson. No offense to Elder Nelson.

Frank
——————————————————————————————

It is my observation that men who most strongly support naturalized traditional gender roles are also the first to insist that they would trade places with their wives in a minute, if the tables were turned. And then, almost invariably, they add that their wives are much better at it than they would ever be, etc etc etc, thus re-naturalizing the roles. Don’t get me wrong, and please don’t take offense: I don’t doubt theirsincerity in the least; in fact, I’d think it’s probably psychologically necessary to believe this in order not to feel bad about insisting on the rigidness, too.

Conversely, men who are most equivocal about naturalized gender roles tend to be much less sanguine and much more qualified about their willingness to give up their chosen work.

There are a few men, just as there are a few women, for whom childcare is a true avocation, who take true pleasure in interacting with and caring for kids—and these men are often quite flexible about traditional gender roles, but also would be quite willing to give up their own work to be with their kids. I think Kaimi may be one of that sort.

Rosalynde
——————————————————————————————

>I would, I’m almost certain. Trade places with my
>husband, I mean.

Are you saying here that your choices were limited in your family because of your gender?

>But my husband, who frankly admits that he would
>not trade places with me, doesn’t feel at all the lack
>of these in his own life, and I have no reason to think
>that I would, either, if I were a man.

You know, I’ve had many conversations with working women who say that their relationship with their children is just fine, thank you. I want to say (but don’t): that’s becuase you don’t know what you are missing! (Analogy: if you have never enjoyed a fine meal, you might think a frozen dinner is just fine, thank you.) My point is that just because he doesn’t feel a lack, and just because you might not in his place, doesn’t mean that something real is not missing.

>The point is, I think I’d be like my husband and my
>father, if I were a man: I would enjoy and benefit from
>my children, and I wouldn’t miss the emotional
>interdependence or the physical experiences of
>pregnancy and childbirth.

I wonder how much family of origin plays into all this. My father (a nonmember with only 2 kids) was with us constantly: wrestling on the floor every night, swimming, going sailing almost every weekend, etc. This might be my template for what constitutes adequate parenting. (BTW, my mother taught school during most of my school years.)

Julie
——————————————————————————————

>My central point is that men get to be parents
>without giving up their careers. If we are
>going to pull out the general authorities as
>examples, Frank, Elder Oaks got to be a lawyer and
>then a judge AND be a father. Elder Nelson
>got to pursue medicine AND be a father.
>Their wives, as far as I know, did not pursue
>any career but motherhood.

I think the problem is that you are assigning equal value to Elder Nelson’s ‘fatherhood’ as to his wife’s ‘motherhood’, as if because they both got to check off the boxes, they both did the same thing. I read his bio; during his career he was out of town ONE THIRD of the time. He also had demanding callings. I hate to comment on other’s (especially church leaders’) personal lives, but I daresay he put much less into those relationships and therefore got much less out of them. It isn’t equivalent. In a very real sense, I think
he gave up 80% or so of fatherhood (NOT that I am questioning his decision) for his career. He made a
sacrifice.

>I’m not sure about any of what you say here.
>I certainly don’t think that “from a gospel
>perspective he’s getting the short end of the
>stick.” And it doesn’t seem like God is primarily
>”responsible for the nurture of children” since
>he’s also busy organizing worlds without number
>among other things.

Well, I cannot say much to your assertions, but I’ll engage them if you flesh them out. Do you really think that God devotes as much energy to physical creation as to nurturing children?

>As a member of a ward community it is very
>difficult to be deeply misperceived and
>misunderstood. I don’t imagine that as a stay at
>home, homeschooling mother you have ever been
>perceived as anything but the quintessential example
>of womanhood and motherhood by members of the
>church.

(falls on the floor laughing) You have no idea. I generally get shunted off as a feminist firebrand because I actually disagree with what people say in Relief Society and present challenging Sunday School lessons. No one thinks I am normal. They think I am bookish, weird, geeky, etc.

>If you were to experience being marginalized,
>mistrusted, overlooked, demeaned, patronized
>etc., etc., for any extended period of time at church
>you might feel very differently about whether
>how others perceive you is important.

Perhaps. But that wouldn’t make it right to privilege other’s opinions over what I knew God wanted me to do.

Julie

>(falls on the floor laughing) You have no idea. I generally get shunted off as a feminist firebrand because I actually disagree with what people >say in Relief Society and present challenging Sunday School lessons. No one thinks I am normal. They think I am bookish, weird, geeky, etc.

I have no doubt that you stand out in any ward as being “bookish” and “feminist” because you’re smart and articulate. But, this isn’t at all what I mean. Take your experience of being labeled as “feminist bookish, weird, geeky,” and multiply it exponentially. I’m considered all those things because of my education too but I’m oh so much worse because I’m not married, don’t have children and don’t seem to be actively mourning this situation. In an earlier email you said that one of the things you love best is going out to dinner with your girlfriends from the ward. The very fact that you have girlfriends (plural!!) in your ward indicates clearly that you just do not know what I’m talking about. I would guess (although I’d be happy to be wrong) that those LDS girlfriends of yours are all married with children. Am I right? I hope I’m wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I were right.

>But that wouldn’t make it right to privilege other’s opinions over what I knew God wanted me to do.

This discussion has been so wide-ranging that it’s easy for the different issues to begin to bleed into each other, but let me make it as clear as I can. I never ever said or meant to imply that it is “right to privilege others’ opinions over what I knew God wanted me to do” If I believed that it was I would have gotten married and had kids a long, long time ago. I engaged you on the “what other people think” line of thought when you picked up a loose thread from another of my comments but in terms of causality it is simply a nonissue in my situation. It is tangentially relevant to the larger conversation in that being ill-treated by some members of the church can sometimes be a consequence of being in a situation like mine, but that’s a different point from letting other people’s treatment determine behavior.

I began this conversation to try to get everyone to see a different perspetive from the essentialist one that underlies most LDS conversation on this issue. I am not different from you, Adam or Frank! I do not think that I would find it natural (or easy or . . . insert your own adjective here) to raise children or make a home. I don’t think I’d be any good at it. . . at first! Just like Julie said of her experience, I think it would take a lot of deliberate effort for me to learn how to do it well and to finally embrace and enjoy it. (reiiteration: that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a mother, or that I don’t value motherhood! On the contrary! It is too simplistic to say that the qualities necessary to be a good parent are inherent in women and not in men. It dismisses the real work involved in acquiring key virtues like patience, compassion, unselfishness, perserverance, and so forth). I was trying to say that as a woman, in order to become a parent, I will be asked to do something that I don’t think of as being an expression of the “essence” of my identity. So many of you have talked about “sacrifice,” and rightly so. There is a lot of sacrifice involved for both spouses in the decision to become a parent. What I want to call greater attention to is what sort of sacrifice (if we are going to use this word in this way) it is that women are often (perhaps unnecessarily) compelled to make.

I have framed this conversation around pursuing a job that one enjoys partly because I personally really love what I do, but also because I think there there is value in choosing one’s own life path. What I don’t mean by “one’s own life path” is a veiled reference to radical individualism or even the misguided attempt to be as different as possible for the sake of being unique. What I do mean is that in choosing the course of one’s life (inasmuch as we can choose some parts of it) we should take our agency very seriously; planning one’s life should be an active, engaged, imaginative endeavor. A life that is deliberately constructed in this way is qualitatively better than a life in which one uncosciously mimics another’s plan or defaults unreflectively to custom or convention. But, just because that is the case, does not mean for a minute that I am suggesting that one should leave God out of the enterprise. The opposite is in fact what I suggest—since without seeking God’s active participation in our plans it is too easy to succumb unthinkingly to society’s expectations of us—whether that society is the church or the world. For me, constucting a life plan has always been a dialogical affair. At every step in the process of my education I have counseled closely with God. In every decision regarding my personal life I have sought His guidance and direction. In the course of these conversations, I have often been asked to make sacrifices that I never dreamed I would have to make. Indeed, there have been moments when I’ve been asked to do things that I believed were beyond my capacity to endure only to find ultimately in my Jacob-like wrestling that I could.

While the aerobics instructor tried to be kind, she was obviously annoyed that my lack of coordination had interrupted her class. Some of the other class members were patient, but most made it clear that my sprawled, sweaty self impaired their full participation in the rather involved choreography. Just when I had decided to drag myself to the door to get out of everybody’s way, one of the personal trainers on staff appeared and carried me down the steep flight of stairs to the lobby where he called 911.

As I waited, the club managers rounded up witnesses, asking for written descriptions of what had happened in case of litigation. Meanwhile, a rather heated argument began between another of the personal trainers and an in-house nurse about whether or not the ankle should be wrapped. In another corner a couple of muscle-bound gym regulars started taking bets about whether my ankle was broken and if so just how bad it might be. One of them berated me for taking off my shoe telling me that anyone who knows anything knows not to do that. Since it was the nurse who’d taken off my shoe, I just smiled dumbly and nodded.

To make matters worse, a police officer, who introduced herself as the “advance team,” showed up to drill me, “Are you a Massachusetts resident?” she asked. “Well, no,” I tried to explain. “Are you currently employed in Massachusetts?” she barreled right ahead. “Uh, no, but why is this necessary? ” I asked. Was this some sort of reality show stunt? I hurt my ankle, I didn’t rob a bank! “Just answer the questions, ma’am,” she said. And so I did. I sat there, self-conscious in my damp gym clothes, humiliated, and surrounded by dozens of staring eyes as I tried not to howl in pain. Any remaining hope I might still have had for a graceful exit evaporated when the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, blaring sirens and all. As the EMT guy wrapped my ankle, he asked if there was someone he could call for me.

I had been largely successful in my efforts up to that point to keep my composure during the chaos, but his question made me feel pathetic. “No,” I whispered. “There isn’t anyone to call.” He asked me again, “certainly there’s someone who will be worried if you don’t call.” Nope, no one at home who might be worried and no one to call. Though I have a big family, none of them live in New England. My closest friends live hours away as do my rarely-seen home and visiting teachers. I certainly wasn’t going to call any of them to come unnecessarily from so far away. “No, no thank you. I’m alright,” I said. But, I wasn’t alright. I was miserable and in pain and I was going to have to be miserable and in pain by myself.

All of a sudden a woman I’d never met before was at my side. She introduced herself as Donna and said, “I was right behind you in class and saw you fall, you poor thing. I’m going to the hospital with you, honey. It’s going to be alright.” And because she said so, I believed her.

Donna followed the ambulance to the hospital and helped me check in when I arrived. She wheeled me around the ER, found ice for my ankle, and told jokes to make me laugh during the long hours of waiting. She bought me sodas, showed me pictures of her kids, sat with me while they took X-rays, and later helped me with my crutches. When I couldn’t do it myself, she even helped me put my stinky old gym sock on again so my foot wouldn’t be exposed when I hobbled outside and into her car which was waiting to take me safely home.

Later that night, after spending almost six hours as the grateful recipient of a stranger’s service, I couldn’t help but wonder, had the situation been reversed and she had fallen before my eyes, would I have been the one to notice, to go and sit with a stranger when she was hurt? Were we in different positions would I have made myself a friend to the friendless and been the one to bless another’s life? Would it have been me?

Recently, Adam reminded us that despite our sincerest commitments to virtue, we can’t be sure how we might respond to every situation. Will we respond with service, love, even self-sacrifice when the chips are down? It is a meek acknowledgment of mortal frailty to admit that we can’t be certain. We see an example of this in one of the most poignant of all passages in scripture. As Jesus sat with the twelve immediately prior to the great sacrifice He would make on their (and our) behalf, He revealed that one of them would betray him. Although such a possibility would have grieved them deeply even to consider (think how Peter later zealously declares that he will never be offended at Christ) in a moment of contrite clarity, each ask, “Lord, is it I?” (Matt 26:22)

Adam’s recent post and the passage from Matthew point to the courage necessary to face the possibility that we might fail to achieve our highest aspirations, that in that darkest moment we might turn out to be someone other than we thought we were. These examples point to the need for grace in those darkest hours. If the ship were going down into the black abyss I have no doubt that my natural survival instincts may override my better qualities, requiring an act of grace-infused heroism to overcome. However, such moments are rarely, if ever, experienced by most of us. I may never have the opportunity to rise to the heights of heroism in sacrificing my life by drowning in the deep for another. But, grace is required in less dark hours too. What I do have, almost on a daily basis, is the opportunity to overcome self-interest and live a life of service, to learn to be like Donna for wounded others.

Even with that much more muted goal, I remain uncertain. I’m left wondering whether I would always be the one who would lift the fallen stranger. While honesty constrains me to admit potential failure even in this intention, were the situation reversed, I hope it would be me.

This got me thinking about the nature of our journaling. Knowing that what we write will be viewed by posterity, do we, consciously or not, write for an audience? If so, does it influence what we say and how we choose to say it? If we thought that burning our personal papers at the end were an option, would our journals be different?

I wonder how many people blog instead of journaling now? If blogging has become a substitute for journaling for some has the substance and style of their personal reflection changed or not?

When President Hinckley announced the earring and tattoo prohibitions during the general Relief Society broadcast several years ago I was at my local church building sitting between the two women I visit taught. On my right was a brand new member—a beautiful and brilliant African American post-doc. I sat with her through the missionary lessons and had participated actively in the journey that led her to join the Church. On my left was a woman who had been inactive for many years and was married to a non-member. She was new mommy searching for some direction in her life. The Relief Society broadcast was the first time she’d been back to Church. I had promised her that if she came she would feel the Spirit. That night, I sat between these two women, whom I loved, and tried not to grimace as the prophet condemned tattooing and double earrings. Both of these women had multiple tattoos and body piercings and were made terribly uncomfortable by this talk. Although I have never pierced my ears and do not have any tattoos, I felt their deep discomfort as though it were my own.

This could have been the moment for me to say something profound about prophetic revelation or about responding in humble obedience, but I was blind sighted and angered by this talk, for my sisters’ sake. It would not put too strong a point on it to say that I was ashamed. As President Hinckley indicated in his talk, his remarks, which were directed explicitly to the mothers, were inspired by a Rave party that had been recently held in downtown Salt Lake City. His words couldn’t have seemed more provincial or less relevant to my little circle of sisters sitting in New Haven.

After bearing strong testimony repeatedly to these women for many months about the restoration of the Gospel, about the glorious blessing it was to have a prophet among us, about the spiritual strength and support they would find in and through the Church, even working successfully through one sister’s concerns about the priesthood ban, I sat there after this meeting in bewildered silence. How could I explain to these dear friends that earrings and tatoos were not what the Gospel was really about? How could I tell them that being members of the Mormon Church would bless their lives, that here they would feel the love of the Lord and be accepted for who they are? Perhaps I should have. But as I looked into their pained faces, I couldn’t say a thing. I hugged them both and drove them home. I wept bitterly that night, wishing that things like white shirts and earrings could somehow be irrelevant. I was angry at what seemed to me to be the illogic of the prohibition. How could a distinction be made between one earring and two? If one earring is allowed why is two a desecration of the temple of the body? It troubled me that counsel, which seemed so arbitrary and culturally conditioned could potentially lead women who needed the blessing of the Gospel away from the Church.

Keith and Jed have both have called the clean-shaved expectation, which I think is parallel to the single-earring-only expectation, an issue of “consecration.” In his original post, Jim framed this issue as one of obedience (doing what he was asked to do) and didn’t use the language of consecration. So, I’m brought to my question. Is it helpful to think of these sorts of issues in terms of “consecration.” Is obedience the same thing as consecration? If not, what is the difference? Is it a difference of substance or just degree? Does it have to do with personal initiative? If obedience is doing what is asked, is consecration going beyond what is asked? Since we believe that we are asked to consecrate, and even that it is required of us by our covenants, then consecration cannot be defined as going beyond obedience since consecration is already a law we must obey. To the extent that we think of consecration as a “higher” law, might there be different requirements for different members of the Church? If so, what relevance, if any does this doctrine have for issues like beards and earrings?

7. How do your professional colleagues view your interest in Mormon Studies? Do they see it as a legitimate scholarly interest, or do they see it as weird and peripheral?

I don’t know much of what people say outside of my hearing, of course. I do know that my religious background made me something of a sensation on campus during my first year at Hanover College, a school with historical Presbyterian connections; there was a buzz about the College’s unprecedented appointment of a Mormon to the Department of Theological Studies. The search committee, of course, had explored the issue thoroughly, the more so because I did my dissertation on a Mormon topic. The buzz settled down within six months of my being here, as people got to know me and my family. These days, even new faculty members often indicate awareness of my Mormon attachment, as do some students, so it seems clear that that information circulates. I learned after the fact that a trustee of the College—an influential Presbyterian minister in Indianapolis—had argued forcefully against awarding tenure to a Mormon whose scholarship substantively entails Mormonism. And, more broadly, I am sure that there is some condescension around and about. Richard Bushman said once that the folks who hired him at Columbia later told him that they found his credentials so strong on other grounds that they decided his Mormon orientation and interests “didn’t matter.” And Jan Shipps tells me that a colleague congratulated her in the 1980s about the favorable reception of her book on Mormonism, then asked her when she was going to move on to a more serious topic.

But in general it seems that people respect the work and recognize that Mormonism represents an increasingly significant culture that is worthy of study. Perhaps in my case it helps that I write on other topics as often as I write on Mormonism; this may offer others some perspective on what I do. In any event, I have encountered only warm and supportive responses when I have sought financial support for research on Mormon topics, whether locally at Hanover College or through national funds and endowments. Invitations to speak both on campus and around the nation come as readily for Mormon subjects as for other concerns. When the study of Mormonism is not addressed parochially, but approached in relation to questions that should be of interest to students of religion and culture and to humans generally, the topic rightly commands increasing respect.

8. I’m concerned that young LDS students who now have the ability to easily access information like the “New Mormon History” will become completely disillusioned with the Church. How can we as parents and adult leaders incorporate the New Mormon History with Church-sponsored lessons to create an environment of thoughtful discussion and learning? Is this even possible given the climate in the Church? What would you recommend in terms of church curriculum given the recent New Mormon History scholarship?

That is a good cluster of questions. I don’t have easy answers for them. As you suggest, it may in our current climate not be possible to promote a thoughtful environment in most wards, though I find there are privately thoughtful individuals most everywhere. The Institute system in the Church has also moved further away from such an environment than once it was.

I try to remember with as generous a spirit as I can muster that for most people the implied purpose of (for instance) our Sunday Schools is a reaffirmation of faith and bonding in Zion—a workshop for love, which is crucial. This need not be, but these days generally is, construed in our classes as a series of semi-rhetorical or fill-in-the-blank questions yielding a kind of scripted discussion calculated to reaffirm testimony and what we think we already know. When more authentic questions are posed, they often come from places of misplaced zeal and ill-informed esoterica that lead into bizarre, so-called “mysteries.” I suppose that the need to combat this is one reason we have over-reacted with such tepid, correlated fare in our manuals and habits of discourse.

I suppose one key to our doing better is a thoughtful, prayerful bishop inclined to call (or to hear suggestions to call) a thoughtful, prayerful, and informed teacher who has the gentle strength to direct a more substantive discussion without letting it enter unfruitful cul-de-sacs or wild tangents. Maybe a group of Saints known to be faithful rather than rabble-rousing could ask to visit with the Bishop with your series of questions as the agenda. The Bishop may not know what the New Mormon History is, and at least in our present circumstances I am not sure that is necessary. But such a group plausibly could nonetheless have an authentic discussion about what ought to comprise a good Sunday School class, designed to promote a thoughtful faith.

Our God, if worthy of our worship, is a God of truth—who thus, I believe, encourages our pursuit of truth. God chastened Job not because he questioned, but because (behind his angry rhetorical questions) he accused God. And yet God ranked Job above his friends who failed to question. They were sure—and they were wrong—that they already knew the truth. So it isn’t authentic inquiry as such that tends toward the erosion of faith. Without faithful inquiry, spiritual growth is not possible. Indeed, faith by itself, although necessary, is not necessarily good. Terrorists who fly jets into tall buildings full of innocent people have deep faith. What is required for mature spiritual health, however, is a thoughtful and even self-critical faith, which includes faithful inquiry.

I know of no way to encourage this in our wards in our current climate beyond modeling, all the while making our faithfulness, tolerance, and love transparent, our service devout and genuine. Perhaps talking with the Bishop about good classes. Being willing to serve where, in good conscience, you can. Asking good questions in class to try to seed the conversation may also be good, but in most wards the conversation is not likely to catch wind unless a good teacher is directing things.

I was sorry to see that one reader/participant in Times&Seasons mistakenly (in my view) posited Lowell Bennion’s writings as overrated. Bennion’s profound mind tended to transcend complexity to achieve simplicity (as opposed to being simplistic). His think books offered an entire generation of (especially college-age) Saints an avenue to authentic religion and spirituality when their alternatives seemed either a mindless faith or a departure from the church. Many of these thin books—such as The Things That Matter Most, I Believe, The Unknown Testament, The Book of Mormon—a Guide for Christian Living—would themselves be superior manuals for study in our classes. (And the idea is not preposterous; Bennion was the most prolific author of Church manuals from the 1930s through the 1960s.) These are not cutting works of scholarship; they are simple and profound meditations, summaries, and questions that provide a path for a more fruitful public LDS pursuit of God and good.
Bennion was also a simple (again, not simplistic) teacher. I used to drive from Bountiful to Salt Lake City once a month to attend his Sunday School class. His idea of a good Sunday School or Institute lesson was “one idea—unpacked, exemplified, explored.” He thus abhorred the tendency of later, correlated manuals whose thrust was to move serially through the scriptures, several chapters at a time.

I doubt that in our current climate we can expect Church interest in a direct study of the New Mormon History. Perhaps our goal should be an encouragement of the local appointment of judicious, faithful, loving teachers who are themselves informed by thorough scriptural study and such things as the New Mormon History and can draw on these in the framing and discussing of single questions each Sunday that might foster genuine spiritual exploration and edification.

9. If I remember aright, a footnote in Mormons and the Bible discusses the rare instances when Mormon biblical, or related, scholarship was praised/well-respected/taken seriously as scholarship and not overt apologetics. In your view, how are things looking these days for rigorous biblical scholarship by Latter-day Saints?

I devoted an entire chapter (chapter 4) to a consideration of the Mormon response to “Higher Criticism,” so you could take another look at that if you cared for a more ample response than time allows here. Among the case studies I considered there was William H. Chamberlin, an example of a faithful Saint who in the early 20th century embraced critical tools in his teaching and writing about scripture. On the one hand, he was run out of the Church Education System. On the other hand, President McKay thought that fact a tragedy and wrote that we ought to have embraced him and treasured his knowledge and faith. Chamberlin was also later invited to return and teach within the System, but not, alas, until his health and resources had run down. I mentioned in response to an earlier question that some teachers at BYU are launched upon a project whose end product is to be a multi-volume commentary on the Bible and who aspire at least to be informed by modern critical tools. I can see a dozen ways that this enterprise could go awry, but it sounds like the most ambitious effort I am aware of to date in Church-sponsored circles.
But in general not too much has changed; few Latter-day Saints are interested in serious biblical scholarship. That is of course a basic problem for thoughtful believers; we would do better as a people to understand more of these matters. And yet an uncritical, unambiguous embrace of the methods of the secular academy can be problematic, both logically and spiritually, just as an uncritical embrace of all the rationalist assumptions of Enlightenment thinkers seem a problem from the vantage of the 21st century. For more on this, see #6 above.

10. What are some research projects you would like to see taken up by Mormon scholars in the near future?

We might do well to parse the term “Mormon scholars”: there are Mormon scholars and there are scholars of Mormonism, Mormon and otherwise. It may be that the finest art our people achieve will be rendered by those informed by their Mormon spirituality and sensibilities as they deal with themes of universal importance, rather than by those who focus exclusively on explicitly Mormon images, figures, and concepts.

Similarly, it is plausible that our most profound scholarship may emerge from Saints informed by a Mormon consciousness and spiritual questing, not necessarily from Saints treating an overtly Mormon topic. For example, is there something in the journal-conscious Mormon background of Pulitzer-prize winning Harvard historian Laurel Ulrich that contributed to her illuminating an entire culture through a tale teased from an old midwife’s diary? Is there something in her quilt-conscious Mormon genes that enabled her to do similarly by attention to quilts and the history of material culture?

Another idea: no Mormon scholar that I am aware of has done for another religious tradition what Perry Miller did for the Puritans or Jan Shipps has done for Mormon studies—revolutionizing a field by looking intently through sympathetic but critical eyes at an understudied religious culture apart from one’s own.

As for topics focusing on Mormonism itself, I spoke on matters that include this at last October’s conference at Claremont on positioning Mormon Studies in relation to Religious Studies and American Religious History. As there are people working on the possibility of publishing the papers, I shouldn’t undercut this effort by going into detail here. But an example is the need to de-parochialize the study of Mormonism, to work at placing it in wider contexts than typically occur. Another is to pursue topics of universal importance in their Mormon iterations. Combining these two principles, I am working on a series of case studies (one of which is Mormonism) on religion and the concept of “time.” Another project I am pursuing, though I am not sure how and whether it will deeply intersect with Mormonism, is religion and “silence.”

11. Has the emphasis on reading the Book of Mormon in the last twenty years resulted in a weakness in knowing the Bible, and thus undermined our understanding of all scripture?

I do think there is something to this. It is one of the reasons why I believe scholars are missing something elemental when they fail to grasp the importance, much less the nature, of the complex historical relationship of the Latter-day Saints with the Bible. I personally allow room for the notion/experience of inspiration and revelation. But the other LDS scriptures are more complexly related to and based on the Bible than the Saints (and most even of their scholars) are conscious of. To be further removed from a deep understanding of the Bible is to be more superficial in understanding other Mormon sacred texts, even if one has virtually memorized them.

12. What advice would you give to LDS graduate students in the field of Religious, Biblical or Ancient Near Eastern Studies?

I have been impressed and blessed to correspond with and even to get to know a number of such students pursuing advanced studies currently at some of the best institutions in the country. It is moving and exciting to sense their talent, ambition, thoughtfulness, and hopes. They are capable of giving me good advice too. But in response to the questions, here are a few personal points and a professional one.

First: give yourself some psychological, emotional, spiritual, and even temporal space to enjoy what you are doing and to enjoy the fact that you are doing it. You need not be self-congratulatory (in the spiritually eroded sense) to remember to take joy in the adventure that you have chosen. It takes a measure of courage, curiosity, faith, openness, and disciplined wonder to embark as you have. It entails the capacity to tolerate ambiguity and irony. Like most growth, it entails sustained hard work. But if you quit enjoying it, including the difficult challenges and even some of the pain, you are off-track in some way, and might consider backing off for a time. If you choose to respond well, what you are doing is a good thing for its own sake, even if you later decide to become a banker or a farmer. Because of this experience, your consciousness will change; your inner life will change. You will approach life differently. You will, then, be a different, and potentially better, person. This is all worthwhile irrespective of unfolds for your professionally.

Second: stay humble. In church settings, you are going to spend the rest of your life understanding some problems, facts, and concepts that are invisible to the faithful around you. With restraint, care, wisdom, modesty, and love, you may be able at points to draw on some of this understanding constructively to enliven your own mind and spirit and/or the minds and spirits of those about you. You may be tempted to think yourself superior when in conversation, church classes, and worship, as academics are tempted to do whenever they engage in subjects in which they have training. Remember that God’s Project entails an invitation to the divine, which leaves little room for preening, artifice, self-promotion, inert or arrogant intellectualism, or one-upsmanship. Understand that you are always surrounded by people, even when they appear simple, who are better at some things than you are—often without conceit. Some of them are expert at fixing the engine of your car, at removing your tonsils, at growing or preparing food, at making music; in none of their superiorities is aloofness or condescension appealing, admirable, or helpful. Some Saints with whom you attend church or among whom you live are expert at disciplined, courageus, intelligent (or naive) loving, which generally matters more than whatever academic perspectives you bring.

Third: seek out good conversation partners and role models, including some LDS ones, with whom to stay in regular contact as you progress in your studies. No matter how smart and well-grounded you are, this is wise. It is easy to get lost in your unusually complex terrain. Cultivate, share, and exchange with some one or two friends who are working in this realm—or with a small group that gets together regularly—concerning your delights and insights and struggles and doubts. There is now a critical mass of you doing what you are doing—a privileged circumstance unavailable to any who preceded you.

Fourth: do not forsake the wisdom of the 13th article of Faith. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, we seek after these things—they are a part of our religion, whatever their immediate source. We have good things to offer the world; we have good things to learn from the world.

Fifth: do appreciate, but do not be overawed by, brilliance in your colleagues and teachers. The form of intelligence that lends itself to genuine scholarly accomplishment is rare and wondrous in the general population. It is not so rare in the academy. Brilliance and learning are treasures; they are wrongly disdained by those who sneer at and with the epithet of “intellectuals.” But brilliance and intellectual accomplishment are also not adequate compensation for lack of wisdom and character and loss of God. Moreover, the correlation between brilliance and goodness, or between brilliance and mental and spiritual health, is not obvious to me.

Sixth: do not overestimate the rise in the academic interest in Mormonism by anticipating a burgeoning of positions in Mormon Studies at non-Mormon colleges and universities. As I noted in Question #3, the prospect of endowed chairs for accomplished scholars at major universities is a significant development for Mormonism and in the study of religion. But it is not at all clear to me that such positions will multiply. Unless you are hoping to teach at BYU and have reason to believe that BYU has interest in recruiting you, plan your studies around your passions as though you were going to work in the wider world of religious, biblical, or Ancient Near Eastern studies. You are probably better off doing that either permanently or for a portion of your career anyway. Your interest in Mormon studies will maintain itself simply because you are Mormon; you need to establish strong competences in other arenas, both for their own sakes and because you will make better contributions to the study of Mormonism if you do this. In most instances, that means a Mormon should find a dissertation that focuses elsewhere than on Mormonism, or at least makes Mormonism a case study in a wider arena. Exceptions exist, but that is my general advice.

Well, I hope I have not gone on excessively. Again, thank you for having me.

Warm wishes,

pb

1: Many books that apply academic perspectives to LDS history or doctrine get sucked into the apologetic debate and get labeled as “notorious,” criticized by one side and championed by the other, or sometimes attacked by both sides. Mormons and the Bible, however, somehow escaped that fate. I stumbled across this gem of a book one day at my neighborhood Borders bookstore in the general religion section. Do you share the feeling that the book somehow slipped in under the radar, and if so, why didn’t your detailed account of how Mormons use or misuse the Bible strike a more responsive chord among Mormon readers and scholars?

If Mormons and the Bible “slipped in under the radar” of religious attack and defense, I am pleased. I hope the work is not bland, but I do remember that, when writing it, I sometimes pictured myself reading aloud what I was writing to a small audience of specific people. Among these imagined hearers were my deeply spiritual and devout mother, my teachers at Harvard, Elder Boyd Packer, my institute students, a brilliant atheist friend, several LDS and non-LDS scholars of Mormonism whom I admired, and a representative from each of several denominations and religions. It wasn’t that I figured I could or necessarily should please them all. But I did work to imagine them in the room with me, to look into their eyes as real people, to respect their sensibilities and intelligence and their differences with me, even to learn from each of them. Perhaps something of that experience seeped through in the writing and has muted the book’s becoming prominent fodder for apologists and critics of the Latter-day Saints. My effort was more to explore the underpinnings of my own and my people’s religious thinking in relation to the wider world of religion than to defend or attack.

Scholars from around the country or, occasionally, from abroad, call or write to ask a question or to exchange about something involving Mormons and the Bible, or to invite my contribution to an encyclopedia or an edited book or to propose some joint project dealing with how believers relate to scripture. And Latter-day Saints, most of whom I have not met, continue to write. Occasionally they do so because I wrote or omitted something that surprised or displeased them: How could I fail to give Hugh Nibley more space? Why didn’t I resolve more issues with the Book of Mormon while I was dealing with the Bible? More commonly, however, they write because they seek grounds for faith that do not compromise their minds, and they sometimes bring up something from the book that they are wrestling through, things that have puzzled them or helped them. So conversation about issues related to Mormons and the Bible is an ongoing experience for me and for a fair number of Latter-day Saints. The book remains in print.

As to the extent that the book has yet to strike a deeper chord among Mormon readers and scholars, others may be better positioned than I to comment. The most obvious potential culprit is surely my own limitations as an author. Beyond that, a contributing factor may be that the book is published by Oxford University Press, which does not display its wares at small specialized conferences like that of the Mormon History Association or Sunstone. Arthur Bassett, in reviewing the work for Sunstone, noted that the BYU bookstore placed the book in some general historical or religious section, away from its more perused section of works by Mormon authors.

I am sure that the subject of the Mormon relation to the Bible does not seem to people on the street like a very sexy subject compared to, say, biographies of Joseph Smith or to polygamy or magic. As my colleague at the Cambridge Institute of Religion said long ago with good-humored sarcasm when I told him the subject of the dissertation on which I was at work, “Oh, I bet THAT will sell a lot of copies.” And perhaps I titled the book poorly; Kenneth Winn began his review (for the American Historical Review as I recall) something like: “This book has rather a dreary title for one of the most interesting works on the Saints to appear in years.”

Beyond my own weaknesses and my particular book, however (or perhaps in part because of them, who knows?), I do think that a portion of the Mormon scholarly community does not yet apprehend the fundamental importance of the subject. That may be partly because the Bible has long been taken so for granted in American culture that people scarcely knew how to say or conceive anything interesting about its role. The great Protestant scholar, Mark Noll, has found a similar frustration in trying to get the point across about the need to probe the Bible’s function in American history generally. If we remove the Bible, Mormon history dissolves—or becomes something else entirely. But the nature and function of its role, which affects LDS religious consciousness profoundly both among those who scarcely pick up the Bible and among those who believe they understand it, is not nearly so obvious as it may appear at first glance. You may be right that the book remains under some folks’ radar, in that I continue to encounter historical treatments that seem oblivious, that don’tseem to get it, and therefore indulge in misleading or innocent historical accounts.

2. Has the Mormon attitude to the Bible changed at all since you published Mormons and the Bible?

I don’t think so, not in any fundamental way. Offering a new edition of Mormons and the Bible has been suggested to me, however, and if I decide to do that I would need to invent a way to take a fresh look at the question beyond the casual anecdotal evidence provided, for instance, by my own experience in church.

As I will mention in #5 below, the First Presidency issued a statement, some months after the publication of Mormons and the Bible, reiterating the church’s commitment to the King James Bible. Authors of relevant entries in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which seems one good gauge of popular or widely accepted church practice and understanding, cited Mormons and the Bible in their bibliographies, but then wrote as if they had never encountered the book.

I do know that some folks at BYU are planning a large, multi-volume commentary on the Bible, and among those they have recruited are some capable LDS graduate students in religion programs around the country. So it is possible that a more even and informed product than we have heretofore enjoyed might emerge from that effort; we shall see. On the other hand, while talented people are sometimes hired within religion at BYU or elsewhere, the overall direction of the Church Education System in recent years seems to be yet further distancing itself from the notion that competence as a scholar, or even being well-read, is requisite to teaching our college students. So these are two somewhat contrary developments, and the latter is more pronounced than the former.

3. What are your thoughts about the development of university “Mormon Studies” programs?

I think this development is scandalously overdue. Mormonism now constitutes, among other things, a significant presence among the world’s cultures, one that warrants serious and sustained exploration, and not only in confessional settings. That higher education, especially at centers in Utah and the western United States, is at last inaugurating such a program is a mark of the maturing both of Mormon culture and, at least in Utah, of state culture. By comparison, and as I said to a reporter who inquired a year ago on the matter of university programs in Mormon Studies, it is difficult for me to imagine New York City as too proud, defensive, or indifferent to have engendered university programs in Jewish Studies.

I am pleased that the brainchild of Gene England is creating its niche at Utah Valley State College. I think that Ann Taves and Karen Torjesen at Claremont have been imaginative and resourceful in building bridges between the necessarily independent academy and the religious people it studies through the formation of counsels that may generate sufficient support to found endowed chairs in the study of Islam, Mormonism, and other traditions. I also have been impressed with the thoughtful initiative and years-long care behind the emerging shape of things at Utah State University. The success of the aspirations of the two universities naturally hinges on who inhabits these endowed chairs, because the social, political, intellectual, and religious forces that attend these developments can be potent, complex, and contrary. But all this may well result in the elevation of the study of religion in higher education in the West, and it may be also a historic moment in the study of Mormonism. This is not only the concern of Latter-day Saints and Mormon watchers. National agencies, such as the American Academy of Religion and the American Society of Church History, will take due note if these new prospects are realized in Utah and California.

4. The overwhelming majority of Mormons simply assume the JST is in its every work a literal restoration of material lost from the original texts of the Bible. Church scholars have done little or nothing to try to correct this perception. Is this a powder keg waiting to blow up a lot of people’s testimonies due to unrealistic expectations? Or is it more likely that the status quo in pre-critical attitudes and assumptions towards the JST will simply go on unabated?

I think, quite simply, the latter. This sort of thing can and does blow up in individual faces; they feel betrayed when they find something they have relied upon as important, because it was assumed and taught by all those around them, is not so. But as a group church members can bend quite a stretch; I think most would do so if the nature of Joseph’s relation to the Bible, including what he called his “translation,” were to become more broadly understood.

5. Do you think that the Church will ever abandon the KJV as its official English language translation? If so, how far off into the future do you see such a development? With what would the Church replace it? Do you think that there will be a modernized translation of the Book of Mormon done by the Church in the next few decades?

Thirty or fifty years from now, it would not surprise me if the Church made a change. Nor would it surprise me if it did not. So I’m a pretty cowardly predictor.

Chapter 5 of Mormons and the Bible treated the historical evolution of the King James translation from the “common” version (which it was in Joseph Smith’s day) to the “official” Bible of the Saints, which it became (de facto) after J. Reuben Clark and (unambiguously) in 1979 with the appearance of the current LDS edition. Within six months or so of the publication of Mormons and the Bible, the First Presidency issued a statement in the Church News (June 20, 1992) reiterating its commitment to the KJV. I defer to the policy of the brethren in their difficult roles and do not lobby against the policy. And the KJV has important virtues. It remains important, though, that we understand the nature, context, and implications of the use of our official translation.

We are in a bit of an awkward position no matter how we choose to relate to the KJV at this point. On the one hand, continued use of this antique version is going to make us, increasingly as this century moves on, seem Amish-like in our dealings with the outside world (that is, attached to a specific time and style for religious/cultural reasons that we ourselves do not well understand) in the specific matter of our biblical choice. 16th-century KJV idiom will continue to retreat rapidly from the rest of the culture’s usage, consciousness, and understanding, making our use of it in missionary endeavors seem increasingly quaint.

In addition, the KJV functions in some ways as a conceptual prison for 21st-century readers. The reason for this is not merely the inaccuracies in the Greek and Hebrew texts on which the KJV is based, which have long been surpassed by better and more ancient texts. Nor is it merely the obscurity of antique words, phrases, and general expression, and the oddness of perpetually having to resort to the footnotes for limited explanation at least of some words—when modern and natural translations abound. Nor is it even the fact that most modern readers would be hard-pressed to follow the complex style and ideas of Paul, Isaiah, and other biblical writers even were they presented in lucid and accurate contemporary prose. The most basic problem is that the elegance of the “Authorized” English Bible warps for the modern ear the tone of the original texts, thus distorting our perception of the very nature of biblical scripture, which our additional scriptures then echo. One can hear no King James-like cathedral bells ringing in the background when one reads the Gospel of Mark in koine Greek. Mark’s writing is raw, fresh, breathless, primitive. The lordly prose of the KJV, as it is heard by 21st-century ears, is for many texts an external imposition, shifting the locus of authority away from the power of the story itself and toward an authority spawned by the partially artificial literary holiness suffusing our culturally created notion of scripture.

This exterior authority in one respect gilds the lily of the original message, then construes respect for the gild rather than the lily as a mark of orthodoxy. We compound the tangle by arguing that Joseph patterned his formulations of revelation after Jacobian language (which he naturally did) and that this neo-17th-century style is therefore sacrosanct. To extend the logic, it’s a little like suggesting that because Luke wrote in koine, 1st-century Greek, modern Greeks (who understand koine Greek less well than most Americans understand Beowulf in its original early English prose of 1,300 years ago) should therefore only use koine Greek.

On the other hand, to be “holy” means to be set apart, and one could argue that retaining an antique and beautiful scriptural style serves the function of deepening the sense of “set apartness.” This can be an asset as well as a liability. Despite what they may think they are doing, most people of faith are not actually trying to discover the sense of scripture as it was penned, but rather using scripture devotionally, to gain and maintain a sense of the divine. And, of course, the beauty of the KJV is pronounced, and beauty can be akin to holiness in some contexts and some respects. Most important, since Joseph Smith cast his revelations in language colored by KJV style, to shift to a biblical translation that is more clear and closer to the original texts would likely induce the need to transpose the language of the Book of Mormon and perhaps other modern revelations. As a people we are naturally reluctant to alter the language of Joseph Smith’s casting of his revelations, and some Restoration understandings (such as the “dispensation of the fullness of times”) are dependent on KJV phrasing rather than on what the original texts said. And all this has been made more complex and difficult by the well-intentioned interweaving of the annotations in the LDS editions of the scriptures published since 1979. Such prospective changes as you inquire about in the phrasing of scripture may or may not come to be seen as in the purview of modern prophets. That is for them, not me, to decide. But either to proceed or not to is rather a substantial decision; it conditions our religious consciousness.

The Church has already adopted more modern translations in languages other than English. The explosive growth of the international church, which is in some instances using modern translations (and not to do so would strike many peoples abroad as strange indeed), is apt in the future increasingly to rub against the usage of an early 16th-century text by the (minority) English-speaking church.

Whether the Church in the foreseeable future will adopt a modernized phrasing of the Book of Mormon is thoroughly entwined with the KJV problem, and I have no way of knowing how it will address the issue. Certainly, in theory, Church leaders could act on prophetic authority in modernizing the language, just as (because of a shift toward a global context for its readers) they have amended and clarified the language of the 10th Article of Faith and (because of shifts in perceptions of the Saints) added a sub-title to the Book of Mormon.

If the Church did feel inspired to loosen its attachment to the King James Translation, it could one of several paths. It could re-adopt its policy operative before J. Reuben Clark, wherein the KJV was widely but not officially in use, with Church members frequently consulting other translations. That is, the Church would not have an “official��? translation of the Bible, as it did not for most of its history and as most other churches do not. Or it could produce its own translation, which would have the virtue, presumably, of integrating well with other LDS scriptures along with the liability of potentially being or seeming more sectarian. It could adopt the New King James Translation, which makes helpful though modest and conservative changes in the KJV, including taking note of scholarship and of Hebrew and Greek texts which are superior to those available to the 17th-century translators. Or it could embrace one of the best modern English translations, and perhaps concurrently be more thoroughgoing in updating the language of distinctively LDS scriptures.

6. Mormonism does not seem to have many scholars who do source criticism of the Bible. We have believing scholars who apply the tools they learn in graduate school toward understanding the text as it now stands, but there seems to much more reluctance in applying the tools in ways that break apart the texts or question their authorship. Composite texts are not countenanced and literal readings are encouraged if only by silence. What are the implications of this phenomenon? Is it important for Mormon biblical scholars to accept the fundamental assumptions of their fellow academic colleagues? Will Mormons feel “left behind” and see themselves left out of important debates? Should Mormons care? Will Mormon views of the Bible become aligned with Christian Fundamentalist readings? Will outside biblical scholars have anything to learn from Mormon biblical scholarship?

I am tempted to interpret some of these excellent questions as rhetorical. That is, one implication of our unawareness of, or lack of response toward, these issues, as well as our incapacity to deal with modern critical tools of textual analysis, is that this spawns among us a false consciousness: a sense that we are a competent, Bible-believing people, when in fact we have little idea of the fundamental developments of the past two centuries that reveal much about the texts. We are indeed badly “behind,” whether we feel it or not. It’s a little like believing that because we are spiritually attuned and have deep faith in God, we therefore have no use for science, a man-made thing that has produced a lot of atheists. We should care about the issues you raise if we believe in the 13th Article of Faith; we should care if we believe that God is a God of truth and that the glory of God is intelligence. We should care to the extent that we take scripture seriously.

But there is another side to all this. While I would never advocate our failure more thoughtfully to understand the texts to which we profess allegiance, including gaining mastery of the tools and issues of modern biblical scholarship, I do not think this inevitably requires adopting all the assumptions of espoused by various professional colleagues. I think, for instance, that some of the procedures and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar are basically off the mark.

Criticism of the Bible becomes a somewhat pointless task if it does not have a spiritual end product. It may give a great deal of insight into matters of composition and historical setting, but these conclusions are not particularly helpful in determining the ultimate point of the scripture unless they can be brought into conjunction with the actual practice of the religion in question—in this case our own Mormonism.
An example from outside Mormonism: the formidable New Testament scholar Ulrich Luz, who works out of the University of Bern in Switzerland and who has published two of his three volumes of commentary on Matthew, says that he was trained in the historical-critical method, but finds it incapable of producing fruitful results at the deeper levels of meaning. As he read commentaries based on the higher critical methods, he found himself bored and increasingly persuaded of the slender benefits (mostly tangential) that come from historical criticism. By contrast and at the same time, he realized as he read the commentaries of writers like Augustine and Luther and Aquinas and Calvin, he encountered real theological depth. The basic problem, he then realized, is that theological issues are bracketed out of most scholars’ “higher critical” approach. The results therefore tend to be more or less theologically sterile, almost by definition.

The other basic problem is that, as many seem now to agree, it is not possible to be “objective” when pursuing a matter of biblical interpretation. It seems more fruitful, then, to define one’s point of view and use it openly in doing one’s interpretations. (This is not to say, of course, that there is no such thing as good and poor quality and a broad array of relative intelligence and spiritual and intellectual insight in defining and applying one’s point of view.)

In sum, I would urge a rare recipe: a serious, competent, and non-defensive engagement with critical analysis, whose real object is understanding rather than the barricading of pre-established notions—but all fueled by an awareness that the point of critical study is theological understanding and spiritual edification. Faith seeking understanding. A broad, flexible, resilient, open faith seeking honest understanding of the divine and of the history of human approaches to the divine.

Sunday, February 27th
8:00 pm

St. John’s Chapel, Episcopal Divinity School

99 Brattle Street, Cambridge (this is right across from the LDS chapel)

For more information, visit http://longfellowsingers.com

In Professor Barlow’s widely acclaimed Mormons and the Bible he discusses the variety of different perspectives toward the Bible taken by leaders of the Church, beginning with Joseph Smith. Besides this text, which quickly became a classic in Mormon Studies, Professor Barlow has also written the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America and numerous articles on Mormon topics published in the Harvard Theological Review, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and in compilations by Oxford University Press. He also edited A Thoughtful Faith: Essays on Belief by Mormon Scholars. Professor Barlow received his B.A. from Weber State College, and his M.T.S. and Th.D. from Harvard University where his work focused on Religion in American Culture. Professor Barlow is currently a professor in the department of theological studies at Hanover College and has recently presented papers on the Mormon use of the Bible, the hermeneutics of Joseph Smith, and the place of Mormonism in American Religious History.

Please post questions you would like us to submit to Professor Barlow.