A few days ago Latter-day Saint apologist Jacob Hansen of A Thoughtful Faith had a debate with noted Catholic apologist of Pints with Aquinas fame Trent Horn that has been garnering some attention.
At the outset, I love these sorts of things. A respectful but straightforward debate about contrasting religious views can help both sides articulate their beliefs and responses better. When a faith does not face explicit doubts and pressures their scalpels become dull. Another example of this in our tradition is Stephen Robinson’s excellent back and forth How Wide the Divide? With Craig Bloomberg. Eminently respectful but not holding anything back.
There’s a long, venerable tradition of structured interfaith debates; even in the Middle Ages Christian kings would sponsor religious debates between Jews and Christians in the great “disputations” (which, given the power imbalance weren’t exactly “anything goes” debates on the part of the Jewish rabbis), and prominent, structured debates between Proto-Protestants and Catholics played a vital role in the early religious fermentation of the Reformation.
However, anybody with proselytizing experience knows that the following literally never happens: two people get into a debate about this or that theological point, one person marshals their argument and convinces the other by sheer reasoning, the other person concedes, loses their faith, and converts to the other faith.
When somebody has a strong faith to begin with, some people see the conversion as a two-step process: 1) destroy their initial faith, and 2) rebuild it in the image of the proselytizer. That is the premise, I assume for why, for example, some Christian groups attack Latter-day Saint truth claims. However, this approach never sat well with me, and on my own mission I adhered to a strictly positive rule; always proselytize based on the Latter-day Saint message, but don’t ever go on the attack against their beliefs, whether with Jehovah’s Witnesses or what have you.
Even if you accomplish #1, the chance that #2 is going to happen is still pretty small, but in the meantime you have destroyed something that has potentially brought a lot of meaning and purpose to somebody’s life. Instead, the more likely option is that you will leave in your wake a trail of completely disaffiliated people, missing out on all the benefits that religious adherence brings. Focusing on the positive keeps open the door for conversion while not potentially destroying something so valuable in their life while not providing anything to replace it with.
The current religious ecosystem is not like some small town where half the town is Catholic and the other half of Protestant, where one side’s loss is necessarily the other’s gain. Instead, there’s one big black hole of secularism and disaffiliation that’s eating up by both sides, so like the Chinese Communists and Nationalists putting aside their differences and joining forces during World War II to combat the Japanese, from a purely strategic perspective it is not worth the energy and resources to do cross-faith sniping when we’re both being eaten alive by the same conquering force. We are not “losing” our children to Evangelical Christianity and the Evangelicals are not “losing” their children to the Church; rather, both of our children are becoming unchurched altogether.
There is a quote from Elder Cook I vaguely recall from when he was talking to Cardinal Dolan that I can’t find the reference to for the life of me, but whether he said it or not it conveys my own sentiment. “Of course, we would love it if you became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but barring that..you need to get your Mass attendance up.” And this is the crux (again, whether he said it or not). It is in our interest to have a thriving religious ecosystem, and it is not zero-sum. Once the entire world is attending a religious faith then we can talk more about zero-sum, competitive dynamics, but with the on-the-ground sociological reality of today makes it clear that that approach is wrongheaded.
I’ll just add that the lack of anything better makes a lot of criticism directed against the Church uninteresting. You say the Church should give up its truth claims so we can contemplate endless nothingness / struggle in a world of doubt and confusion / go back to a world of competing confessions that wasn’t working out in 1830? No, thank you.
Why is the Hansen-Horn debate getting attention?
I fear one of the big swings now is that members are losing faith in their religions from people within their own religion who hold views harmful to the strength of their church. Splintering from within is now hurting the folds.
I have a brother who believes the removal of the Bible from schools is the foundational cause. In early America children grew up speaking the same language learning to read and write from the Bible. As a truly Christian nation we all generally agreed in the providence of the Almighty God and our morals all generally aligned. Different religions fed off of that reality which caused the great disputations. Then secular humanism came along and it’s eroding every church from within now.
@Jonathan Green: I think because both of them are young, articulate, relatively well-informed defenders of their own faith. In today’s world of shorter attention spans this is going to reach people more than some lengthy, dense analysis (even if the latter relies less on showmanship than the former).
@Kibs: I do suspect that selection effects are operating. As I’ve mentioned before, I suspect the non-believing cultural Mormon is becoming less of a thing, so people who have views antithetical to the Church probably aren’t getting out of bed on Sunday mornings enough to cause problems in Elder’s Quorum. Why would they?
Stephen C,
Those antithetical to the church post in a lot of forums, blogs, youtube, social media, videos, etc though. They have a viable stage with many members sitting on the edge of the fringe or close to it who have willing ears to listen.
While I largely agree with your analysis I think there’s good reason for apologists in the LDS tradition to engage with conservative members of other faiths for converts. It’s certainly true that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not losing many members to evangelical or other faiths, but I would be interested in seeing the data on where converts to the church come from. My hunch is they are coming from other conservative Christian sects. Folks in those sects are more likely to convert thn those unchurched category. At roots is whether someone who is a Roman Catholic watching the debate is more likely to become unchurched or to become a member of the LDS Church. I’m not certain which is the case, but there’s an argument that they’re more likely to become a Latter-day Saint.
I do think that friendly debates and engagement is useful for a number of reasons. It’s true that most converts do come from other religious traditions (https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4911&context=byusq#:~:text=According%20to%20these%20weighted%20estimates,Leaving%20the%20Church%3F%20a%20Latter). However, I suspect, again conjecturing, that most of these are nominal or not super active members. The kind of people who care about the historicity of the primacy of the Roman See or, on the other hand, the probability that chiasmus can arise from chance, are probably heavily invested enough in their own tradition that the likelihood of them switching is small.