{"id":42984,"date":"2022-05-15T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=42984"},"modified":"2025-05-26T10:05:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T16:05:06","slug":"rabbis-in-the-marketplace-celebrity-scholars-and-firesides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/05\/rabbis-in-the-marketplace-celebrity-scholars-and-firesides\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Studies and the Church, Part II: Rabbis in the Marketplace, Celebrity-Scholars, and Firesides"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Latter-day Saint community the renowned gospel scholar has traditionally enjoyed a lot of social esteem. Much of what I\u2019d say here I\u2019ve already said previously<\/a>, but to summarize: our attention is being fractured into a million pieces, making it hard for any one figure to get more than a fraction of the attention space. The days of a Hugh Nibley or other figure that could command monolithic respect and acknowledgment are gone. I\u2019m posting on the bloggernacle, which I know makes me a fogey, as the kids these days are posting on Twitter and Tik Tok (or so I hear). T<\/span>he \u201cconversation,\u201d even in such a narrow space as, say Latter-day Saint sexual minorities, is so variegated that it\u2019s difficult to say where it actually is taking place at any given time, and public intellectual types are forced to expend more and more energy producing a constant stream of content or promotional material to capture a\u00a0 drastically shrinking part of the pie of our attention. Of course, at some point you realize that your efforts are almost worthless in the grand scheme of things, require a lot of energy, and that that time would be better spent throwing a ball with your kids. (Yes I know, pot meet kettle, but for what it\u2019s worth I\u2019m planning on \u201cretiring\u201d from my own slow motion, wannabe public intellectualizing in a year or so).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Latter-day Saint religious studies\/CES types (again, here I\u2019m including church history, biblical studies, etc.) interested in their material being read face the same issues as public intellectuals in general, but it\u2019s all overlaid with the gospel, which makes it particularly tricky. On one hand, I think it\u2019s great that, for example, John Bytheway and Hank Smith have a massively successful podcast (even if I haven\u2019t listened to it); good on them. I applaud their success like I would applaud the success of somebody having a successful sitcom or any other communications or entertainment venture.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, to achieve that level of success requires some level of self-promotion; it\u2019s part of the game. If you don\u2019t play the self-promotion game your content will probably be completely unnoticed, and then what\u2019s the point of creating it? The Emily Dickinson situation where other people put in the elbow grease to force your work into the limelight is extremely rare. More common is the situation of Thoreau, who spent more time promoting Walden<\/em> than actually living at Walden. Orson Scott Card talked about a professor of his who claimed he only wrote for God, but talk to any academic who\u2019s published a piece read by a dozen people how demotivating it is to have another piece swallowed up in the aether.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, there is a fine line between promoting one\u2019s ideas and a sort of priestcraft, striving for disciple\u2019s of one\u2019s own, and the \u201chigh places\u201d on the stand at firesides. Furthermore, I think what was said about D&C 121 about power is relevant here; \u201calmost all men, as soon as they get a little\u201d attention\/fame let it go to their head at least a little, for me that\u2019s the default assumption, but maybe I\u2019m cynical. The desire for religious or academic honors is just as crass as the desire for money (if not more so, since money is neutral and is meant to be used, religious honors is using the gospel for your own personal ends).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t know what the answer is; I admit to feeling a visceral reaction against religion scholars promoting themselves. On the other hand, if you\u2019re going to be in the ideas business marketing is part of the game now, and I\u2019d rather have John Bytheway et al. holding the microphone of public attention than some other people, as long as they don\u2019t inhale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Note: The title is a very specific allusion to Matthew 23:7, and is not in any way imputing anything negative about Jewish religious authorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Latter-day Saint community the renowned gospel scholar has traditionally enjoyed a lot of social esteem. Much of what I\u2019d say here I\u2019ve already said previously, but to summarize: our attention is being fractured into a million pieces, making it hard for any one figure to get more than a fraction of the attention space. The days of a Hugh Nibley or other figure that could command monolithic respect and acknowledgment are gone. I\u2019m posting on the bloggernacle, which I know makes me a fogey, as the kids these days are posting on Twitter and Tik Tok (or so I hear). The \u201cconversation,\u201d even in such a narrow space as, say Latter-day Saint sexual minorities, is so variegated that it\u2019s difficult to say where it actually is taking place at any given time, and public intellectual types are forced to expend more and more energy producing a constant stream of content or promotional material to capture a\u00a0 drastically shrinking part of the pie of our attention. Of course, at some point you realize that your efforts are almost worthless in the grand scheme of things, require a lot of energy, and that that time would be better spent throwing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42984","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\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42984"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50117,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42984\/revisions\/50117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}