click here<\/a>) Here are — to me at any rate — the interesting bits of Kuklick’s piece:<\/p>\nWhat do you do with a historian [Bushman] who elaborates a connected series of ideas we have every reason to think are false [referring here to the founding stories of Mormonism, angels, gold plates, etc.], and who defends his narrative by simply saying he has faith? It is clear to me Bushman is not functioning as an historian; if he is, he merits our contempt, not a respectful review. Coffman seems to think that we have made progress because Columbia University Press, where Bushman taught, and not Brigham Young University has published the book. I find it disturbing.<\/p>\n
Bushman has two reputations. He has carved out a niche as a trustworthy historian, but his other life, as an apologist for Mormon truths, has been largely lived within the community of Latter-day Saints. The editors of Believing History collected these essays and proposed their publication at first by BYU. In some ways they take Bushman out of the closet. . . . . . <\/p>\n
My problem is the stretching of my tolerance. I am a great believer in the virtues of open dialogue. People ought to speak their minds, and free conversation will lead to accommodation, forbearance, and mutual understanding. Let’s talk, I want to say. Bushman shows the limit of my commitments. His religion is a conversation stopper.<\/i><\/p>\n
I am wondering if being a believing Mormon is really as bad as all of this. I realize that as a believing Mormon a great deal of what I think is true seems like utter nonsense to most. I am just fine with this, and it is not something that I expect to change. I think that I have good reasons for believing as I do, but perhaps not. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to regard me as a simple victim of the particular demographic cards that fate has dealt me, ie sixth generation Mormon, grew up in Salt Lake City, etc. etc. In an odd way, I don’t really find this all that interesting of a conflict any more. I don’t expect to give up my basic religious beliefs, and I don’t expect the world to stop thinking that certain core aspects of those beliefs are basically nuts. I feel as though we — the world and I — have reached a truce on this point. I certainly don’t see myself as an apologist in the classic sense of purporting to offer proofs for claims of supernatural events, etc. (I am an apologist in the sense that I am interested in dispelling the lingering image of Mormons as lawless sexual monsters, but that is a different issue, I think.) Hence, my concern with Kuklick’s remarks is not that it dashed some quixotic hope that I had of convincing by argument or otherwise a skeptical world that they ought to believe in angels, gold plates, and Lehi traipsing though the desert. Rather, my concern is with his claim that religion is always a conversation stopper.<\/p>\n
To a certain extent, I suppose that he is right. If one is having a discussion of whether or not Moroni actually handed over the plates to Joseph, at a certain point after all of the arguments have been lined up and we have poked at them with sticks, I am going to start making claims about personal spiritual experiences that are — by their very nature — going to be particularly resistant to public discussion. At this point, I would assume that the best thing to do — in the absence of supernatural intervention — is tactfully to shift the conversation in another direction. In this sense, I agree with Kuklick that religious belief becomes a conversation stopper. What I find more disturbing is his rhetorical flourish about a scholar who “elaborates a connected series of ideas we have every reason to think are false, and who defends his narrative by simply saying he has faith.” I don’t hold out any hopes or desires about converting any academic audience to my religious beliefs. On the other hand, I do have the hope that my faith might form “a connected series of ideas” that — despite the fact that the audience on some level has “every reason to think are false” — nevertheless form a complex of thought that is interesting, illuminating, and valuable. At a certain level, I rather passionately believe that Calvinism, Marxism, and logical positivism are all false, yet they all strike me as legitimate voices that I can understand sympathetically and learn a great deal from. My hope has always been that at a certain point my own Mormoness could occupy a similar position. (And even here, I think that I am fairly modest in my goals. I have written two articles on the philosophy of contract law and am at work on a third. I don’t see that there is anything at all Mormon about this articles, with the single exception that I consciously modeled my pr\u00c3\u00a9cis of the current state of contracts scholarship in one piece on Joseph’s description of the Palmyra revivals, but only as a private joke to myself.)<\/p>\n
Hence, I have two anxieties about my intellectual interest in religion generally and Mormonism specifically. My first anxiety is that as a subject matter it is viewed as peripheral and irrelevant and hence presents a professional danger to be avoided. Kuklick touches off a second, deeper anxiety, namely that religion can somehow metastasize through my thinking in a way that renders it ultimately useless to any but those “within the fold.”<\/p>\n
In a sense, I suppose that I want you to pat me on the back and say, “There, there. Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine.” I realize that nursing my insecurities, however, is far beyond anything that you should be called upon to do. Thus, more than reassurance, I am interested in your reaction to Kuklick’s claims and the problems of the place of religion in the academy not only as a subject matter, but also as a “connected series of ideas” that might be called into conversation with the other any other “connected series of ideas” that circulates through intellectual discussion. I think of you as my friend, and also — if you will forgive the bit of insider\/outsider Mormon lingo that is meant as a high religious compliment — a “righteous Gentile” whose thinking I trust. I want to know what you think.<\/p>\n
Best wishes,<\/p>\n
Nate<\/p>\n
PS — In spell checking this letter, my computer suggested that I substitute “moronic” for “Moroni.” Perhaps I should just get the message. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The following is the (modified) text of a letter that I recently sent to a friend. I have no intention of revealing who he or she is or of posting his or her reply, but in the letter I ask some questions that might be of interest to the readers of this blog. I am certainly interested in your reactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}