While I was gone
Posted by Dave Keller on April 22nd, 2007
I realize that I haven’t posted any new content for several months. Even though I have been busy, I haven’t forgotten my desire to learn more about the Catholic faith and share my own convictions without being overbearing.
The Friday before last, I responded to posters I saw around campus to see a film about Pope John Paul II with the Newman club. The film was good and starred the main character from A Princess Bride as the pope in his younger days. I was saddened by the decision he had to make between the priesthood and a potential marriage, when in comparison, worthy Mormon males are encouraged to magnify both privileges. But as I attempt to understand Karol Wojtyla in the context of his own faith, I can see the good fruit that the decision produced and I am glad he put his talents to optimal use. The film portrayed the pope as having a very keen sense of humor and willing to stand up to his principles, which were sometimes at odds with Communist-controlled Poland. My short response here can’t do justice to such a great man.
I also have written a report of a second lecture on the Mountain Meadows Massacre for the Millennial Star blog, for which I will post a link when it is posted. This post is timely because an upcoming PBS special on the Mormons will cover the massacre and feature quotations from a critic (assuming someone wasn’t merely posing as him) that debated me when my last report was posted there. Another connection is that a man–Jon Voight– involved in the film I watched about the pope is also involved in an upcoming film about the massacre that is, from all reports, historically inaccurate.
I took part last month helping FAIR do a point by point refutation to a recent mass distributed anti-mormon DVD. We assembled our response in slightly over a week and I understand that our response is almost 200 printed pages long. It felt good to get the LDS Church to recognize FAIR’s response on their website, but that by no means gives it a stamp of imprimatur.
I think that President Hinckley’s and Elder Ballard’s remarks in the last general conference may have been a reaction to the video. I notice that Brad Haas suffers some irritation when he encounters Mormon ignorance about the Nicene Creed. I sometimes cringe as well. I would hope he could see President Hinckley’s admission that creeds confuse him as a form of progress. In the past, speaking generally and noting exceptions exist, Mormons have been all too willing to *know* all about the creeds and interpret them as demanding modalism.
If we can turn our attention away from the question of whether the creeds are true or untrue, it is still significant that they are used to define groups within Christianity. Hence there are creedal Christians and non-creedal Christians, but I understand that some would argue the latter is an empty set. The evangelical critics in the video went even further and claimed that their views are biblical whereas Mormon beliefs are not. Yet both of our faiths use the Bible, the more accurate distinction is whether the Bible is interpreted through the lens of historical creeds or modern revelation.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:39 am
Dave,
Is there a consensus by historians (LDS and non-LDS) regarding the events surrounding the MMM? I’m quite ignorant about this history, but would like to read about it from a disinterested party where emotion won’t cloud the facts.
Also, what constitutes anti-mormonism? Is there a workable definition here? I heard people calling this video anti-mormon without ever watching it. That would be like me calling the Mormon Church ant-Catholic the moment a set of missionaries walk up to my door.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Fair enough.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Steve,
I will defer to standard dictionary definitions of what it means to be anti-X. I realize that that may too inclusive for some people. For example, being anti-Semitic often carries an additional connotation that includes bigotry. I was not trying to make a statement that members of Evangelical coalition that produced the video are universally bigoted.
More generally I try to avoid labels the group that the label is for would not self-identify with, if only to avoid offense. Often there are better, more affirmative, vocabulary choices. I made an exception in this case because groups that have no dog in the hunt between Mormons and countercult evangelists, have labeled the production anti-mormon. That would include the Episcopal bishop of Utah, the Jewish anti-defamation league, and even evangelist scholar John Morehead. The groups in the coalition have also engaged in in producing anti-Catholic media. I think we can call a spade a spade every once in awhile. I will get off my soap box now.
I think a number of differences between the video distribution and Mormon missionary proselyting were pointed out by the LDS church itself:
http://tinyurl.com/2jofeq
Now I realize that interaction between Mormon missionaries and Catholics do not always go according to design and that occasionally missionaries do engage in anti-creedal Christian rhetoric.
Let me just speak for myself. I remember, as a missionary, making assertions about the apostasy: the loss of priesthood keys, death of apostles and prophets, and a loss of some, but not all, truths. I don’t remember in engaging in any prolonged defenses that would tear down somebody’s faith that I knew little about. I let people share with me what they believed rather than insisting that since they belonged to denomination X they must believe in Y and then present them with some canned discussion why Y couldn’t be true.
I have been much more anti-Catholic on this blog and on the Catholic Answers forum, than I ever was as a missionary. I try not to make criticisms or evaluate Catholic texts where I feel my efforts won’t be appreciated by at least those Catholics who relish challenges and wish for better articulated arguments to respond to. As a Mormon apologist I am much more interested into addressing cutting-edge criticisms rather than continually responding to stuff that has been answered for decades.
However there is a fine line for me to tred. I think it is important to establish some rapport with the persons I am dialogging with and that what I write doesn’t damage that relationship. I try to be tentative in my interpretations of Catholic belief and allow myself to be corrected. I try not to recycle old sentiments once I have been set straight. To a large extent I try to learn what not to do by observing what happens sometimes in the EV counter-cult community.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Steve,
You also asked about whether a consensus exists about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I think there was one between 1950 and 2000 where nearly everyone went along with Juanita Brooks’s conclusions which were:
1. The perpetration of the Massacre was brought about by local Mormon leaders and not Native Americans.
2. Brigham Young was consulted too late to prevent the Massacre and it happened against his wishes.
3. Complex influences combined to push the Mormon leaders over the brink: a persecution complex, war hysteria over the approaching US army, harsh Mormon rhetoric to retributionally punish sin, Mormon ethic to unquestionably follow leaders, millennial expectations, us-versus-them alienation, frontier violence, mob/vigilante dynamics, desires to ally with Natives, desires to steal property in anticipation of scarcity, and so forth.
4. After the massacre the local Mormon leaders attempted to cover-up their crime from US authorities.
5. John D. Lee, the site leader, was made into a scapegoat, while most participants went unpunished.
6. Brigham Young knew about the Massacre shortly after it happened and obstructed justice from happening.
When I say there was a consensus on these points I would have to qualify that by noting that not everybody was equally informed. Old Mormon myths still circulated that it was the Native Americans that did it or that the Fancher party to a large extent provoked the attack. Likewise less informed Mormon critics sincerely believed that Brigham Young master-minded the Massacre, a holdover from the governmental officials and popular newspapers in the 1860s that believed that as well.
I am sure that some will object that my informed/uninformed dichotomy over-simplifies the intellectual history and that Mormon/non-Mormon is a more useful model for understanding differences. I am a little defensive about notions that Mormons aren’t as objective as non-Mormons. (My main influences on the objectivity question on writing Mormon history are Louis Midgely, Peter Novick, Richard Bushman, and Larry Morris.) I might be hard-pressed to find an informed non-Mormon between (1950-2000)that fits neatly into my categorization. When I was on a mission in 1999 in Oklahoma, I ran into a Church of Christ preacher who had read Brooks’s book which had been published at by the OU press. We had a detailed conversation and I don’t think I can distinguish his position about the Massacre from Brooks’s, except that Brooks had more Mormon sympathies.
But I would say that a nice consensus doesn’t exist since three books came out a few years ago. Two of the books were and still are influential on a popular level but not at all on a scholarly one. Popularity-wise, an upcoming movie will only increase acceptance of some notions that run counter to the ones I am summarizing from Brooks above. A third book by Will Bagley is one that scholars have taken seriously and reviews of that work as well as new studies has staked out two positions.
Bagley’s position rejects #2 above, insisting Brigham Young was in on causing the attack. He simplifies #3 so that only unique Mormon influences are to blame. In this view, Mormons were inherently violent and fanatically followed leaders and other sociological explanations can be ruled out. With this I think he would accept 1 and 4-6, but of course would want to state those ideas in his own words. There is also many things about the MMM to discuss that don’t fit well into my parsing above. (Like whether the Mormon church should apologize, how much of the historical archives be accessible, how much interaction should the LDS church have with historians that bear bad news, etc.)
The new, informed, relatively more favorable Mormon position will differ from Brooks’s as well. It accepts and reinforces points 1-5, but will provide evidence that #6 is wrong. Point 5 will be reinforced with new analysis of Haight’s involvement. Some of this position at least has been preliminarily outlined in the various lectures I have summarized and in some FARMS Reviews and BYU Studies (which are obviously defensive in nature) and the Journal of Mormon History and Sunstone (venues that take pride in their independence from the LDS church).
I predict the new Mormon position on the major points above—after it is properly set forth by the forthcoming volumes by Turley, Leonard, and Walker—will be highly influential in building a consensus on basic points like Brooks’s did. But the public dialog that will ensue after publication won’t be fully matured for another five years or so. I think that there will be some difficult things to accept as point #3 is more fully evaluated and on point #6 Mormons will still wish Brigham had taken a more active role in identifying the participants and seeing they were punished at least ecclesiastically. Rejection of #2 is always going to be popular among conspiracy theorists and those who don’t have the patience to sift through all evidence.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
The issue is not one of rights. Rather, it is that one religious group chooses to target another with a DVD full of distortions of its doctrine and history, and misrepresentations so stark that they call into question the integrity of the producers.
I have heard Catholic doctrine and history distorted from missionaries, return missionaries, first presidency, sacrament meetings, co-workers, etc…with stunning regularity since moving to Utah 12 years ago. I just think there is a double standard here when the Mormons I work with start calling this DVD anti-Mormon without ever watching it. Perhaps it is, but there seems to be a certain victumology within the Mormon culture that blinds Mormons to their own “anti” rhetoric towards the rest of Christendom.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Steve,
You raise some good points. I do not contest that Catholic doctrine and history get distorted frequently by Mormons. I welcome constructive criticism on how to improve rhetoric and understanding. I hope to do my part to provide a forum where some the level of awareness of common misconceptions can be corrected.
In general, I try to be charitable towards those that misrepresent Mormonism especially if they do so ignorantly or will humbly accept correction. In responding to the anti-Mormon video and setting the record straight on some items, I did not launch into a counter-attack of evangelical Christianity although the temptation was obviously there. I am also not in the business of labeling something anti-mormon as a way of using an ad hominem as a shortcut to avoid addressing the merits of the work’s argument.
I think it is quite appropriate for some mormons to believe the video is anti-mormon even without first-hand knowledge. Not every Mormon has the time or emotional fortitude to watch a video that belittles their faith. Much of what everybody knows relies on expert knowledge systems. An expert does have to have first hand knowledge, a proven track record of demonstrating skills within a field of knowledge, and have a relationship of trust with the community he is recognized as an expert in. FAIR is a coalition of experts that has been recognized by the LDS church as such when comes to the question of identifying material as anti-mormon or not. Therefore LDS church members can trust FAIR’s conclusions on the matter. If they don’t, they are free to watch the video and form their own conclusions.
I don’t think we will see Mormons protesting around buildings of worship or start paid ministries solely for the purpose of criticizing other faiths anytime soon. Until Mormons do that I think they should at least be allowed to believe that the degree of their antagonism to other faiths is not as severe as what has been demonstrated towards them from some Evangelical Christians.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Are you still around? Hope all is well..how is your faith journey going?
Love to here from you.
In Christ Jesus
Rich
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:13 am
Nice article. Thanks.
Eugene
November 12th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
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