I think I stopped believing that the Book of Mormon was historical in 2011. I keep a journal, but didn\u2019t write that \u201cevent\u201d down. Anyway, sometime around then, but I\u2019ve continued practicing Mormonism. I was called as a bishop in December 2018, so did the bishop thing not believing the Book of Mormon was historical. I\u2019ve seen comments on this blog and elsewhere noting that most non-history BoM believers end up leaving. That\u2019s probably true, but some stick around, like me.<\/p>\n
This is a big topic that I\u2019ll break into a few posts (perhaps post some over at the JI), but I figured I\u2019d start with a little background. As we all know, debates over BoM historicity tend to be central to debates over validity of the faith, so when I got into Mormon history at the end of my undergrad at BYU, even though that meant early republic US religious history and not ancient Mesoamerica, that issues of historicity floated in the background nonetheless.<\/p>\n
I really jumped in when starting my masters back in 2000 and described debates I was having with my friend in the write up I did here<\/a>. To quote myself,<\/p>\n I had gotten far enough along in my graduate work to know that most claims of scholars were open for debate\u2026. How could I resolve these concerns? I could devote my life to studying areas of debate like biblical studies or Mesoamerica, but that wasn\u2019t really my interest. And besides, if I really approached the topic in an open-minded way, how did I know that the data would bear out my beliefs? \u2026 I decided to take God\u2019s advice and rely on Him. As I did, I quickly found I had no need to fight with my friend over anything and he soon found me a rather unperturbed sparing partner giving a lot of \u201cso what\u201d responses to his latest barbs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I continued with my own scholarship and in my masters program, they really beat into the limits of human knowledge especially studying history. I applied that to my very limited knowledge of Mesoamerica: \u201cwho can really say that BoM didn\u2019t happen there when we know so little?\u201d<\/p>\n I kind of stuck with that as I was eventually off to the PhD program. I also adopted Blake Ostler’s expansion model, and also had my own idea (probably not uncommon) that the gospel (as we Mormons understood it) was universal truth that God to give out to all prophets, so I didn\u2019t need to see it as violating time and space to show up when and where it did in the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n Yet I also became aware of what I saw as bad apologetic arguments. As I noted at the JI<\/a>, I did and do feel committed to trying to do good scholarship and not simply defending one\u2019s own religious views (tricky, not totally possible, but should try anyway). I can\u2019t remember the list of problems, but I do remember feeling some frustration with what I saw as a lack of candor in a lot of apologetics, and refusing to conceding to things that apologist didn\u2019t like but were pretty clearly backed by the evidence.<\/p>\n Again, I can\u2019t remember all the details, but I do remember Elder Holland\u2019s defense of the Book of Mormon in 2009<\/a> that a lot of members liked. I remember thinking, \u201cYeah, what he\u2019s saying simply doesn\u2019t hold up academically\u201d though I still believed in BoM historicity at that time.<\/p>\n Around that time, I had a chat with a colleague who seemed not to believe in BoM historicity but was trying to navigate Mormon space. He pointed out a problem and I remember kind of snapping at him that I thought that particular issue was NOT a problem. I got a really bad feeling afterwards that stuck around a while that I took as a spiritual rebuke. I interpreted the feeling as God not wanting me to do what I\u2019d done in that instance, and I interpreted that as perhaps I\u2019d been overly aggressive in my response and needed to be more conciliatory.<\/p>\n A few years later, the day I stopped believing in the BoM historicity, I was in the middle of writing my dissertation<\/a> on Christian Platonism and Mormonism. I was working on my Book of Mormon chapter, and in the diss I attempted to apply a \u201cneutral\u201d stance, not siding with either Nephite or nineteenth-century claims. But I did want to point out some places where the BoM lined up with Platonic ideas or ideas in sources that I thought could have influenced JS.<\/p>\n