Mormon Studies continues to be a hot issue on the Bloggernacle. Recently, at Times & Seasons, the news that Claremont has established its first chair for Mormon Studies elicited scores of responses. Understandably, many faithful Mormons are excited by the prospect that their religion has become the focus of greater academic attention. In spite of some reservations regarding placing Mormonism under a secularist microscope, Mormons are cautiously optimistic that more academic attention is a mark of increasing respect for the faith and its founder Joseph Smith.
Unfortunately, discussion of the rise of Mormon Studies is temporarily mired in the question of why D. Michael Quinn cannot land a job. As proponents of Mormon Studies observed, Quinn would arguably have some hurdles regardless of the Church's attitude toward him (although some of these issues are the result of unjustifiable Church actions). So, while we may feel justifiable sadness for his current plight, these problems should not be the predominant focus of the current discussion of Mormon Studies. Having said that, his story raises many of the issues that should cause concern for those interested in the academic study of Mormonism, because it is what his story teaches that makes some of us very uncomfortable.
Nate Oman has called out Hellmut Lotz for being paranoid with regard to the prospects for Mormon Studies in an environment where academic institutions are sensitive to the feelings of the Mormon community, many of the donors for chairs in Mormon Studies are faithful LDS people, and in at least one case the LDS Church was contacted with reassurances about the university's intentions in having a Mormon Studies chair. On the face of it, all of this seems reasonable and no cause for alarm. Add to this the fact that the academic paradise of totally unfettered inquiry and speech is a fantasy, and you begin to wonder why people are the least concerned about LDS influence on the study of its faith.
Are people like Hellmut merely indulging in unwarranted alarmism? Why be concerned about LDS influence on the academic study of Mormonism?
The reasons for concern are rooted in recent Church rhetoric and action. They include 1) the Church's record of anti-intellectualism and hostility to academic inquiry; 2) the political alignment of the Church with groups who seek to remake society on religious models; and 3) broader institutional control over the thought and expression of LDS people through the instrument of temple covenants. The last in particular is both subtle and insidious in that endowed members of the Church make expansive oaths of loyalty to the institution of the Church, thus creating a situation in which the least hint from the leadership is all that is necessary to persuade members to pursue or to avoid a particular line of thought or course of action.
Let's consider a few events in recent LDS history that have caused people like Hellmut and me concern about the Church's regard for academic inquiry into Mormonism. First, in 1981 LDS apostle Boyd Packer gave a paper tellingly entitled "Do not spread disease germs!" about the responsibility of Mormon historians to write faith-promoting history. Evidently anything but historical rhetoric designed to promote the missionary and devotional interests of the LDS Church is comparable to communicable disease. This all sounds perfectly reasonable, no? In this talk, Packer sought to define the proper writing and teaching of Mormon history and thereby dissuade Mormons from pursuing academic perspectives that might challenge a Mormon's belief in the status quo version of official Mormon history.
In 1989 LDS apostle Dallin Oaks cautioned members of the LDS Church against listening to "other voices" and "alternate views," pointing to unofficial LDS publications (Sunstone, Dialogue) that frequently took a critical perspective when dealing with the institutional LDS Church. It should be noted, for the sake of perspective, that in a Church of millions of members, Sunstone has never reached 20,000 subscriptions. One wonders why a worldwide Church with such a large membership should need to call attention to the very few people who read articles espousing critical perspectives, and the even fewer who write them. This was followed up in 1991 by an LDS First Presidency warning against attending certain "symposia," again a swipe at Sunstone.
A decent barometer of the official LDS stance toward academia would be the atmosphere at its flagship institution, BYU. Consider the following: 1) administrators have in the past planted spies in classrooms to make sure that professors were not teaching or promoting certain political views or theories like "evolution;" 2) BYU students have continued to inform on professors voluntarily in a quest to hone their own righteousness or gain the attention of Church authorities; 3) by the year 2000 BYU had seen the firing or resigning of a number of academically competent professors for their political views, research, or philosophies. One English professor was fired essentially for publically airing pro-choice views. Keep in mind that the LDS Church is not officially a pro-life institution.
Consider now the political alignment of the LDS Church. The Church committed many thousands of dollars and its members' time and efforts to the defeat of ERA. One of their sadly amusing tactics was to rile up LDS people by focusing on the horrors of uni-sex bathrooms. The LDS Church now allies itself with the Religious Right in the fight against gay marriage. To this end it has enlisted the help of BYU professors to prostitute their credentials in offering specious expert testimony in court. It has also committed millions of dollars in funds, all of which ultimately derive from tithing moneys, to the cause of seeing that 3% or so of the population do not acquire the privilege of marrying the person they love. The dirty little un-secret of Mormon politics is that they have skewed right for some time. Read "The Mormon Corporate Empire" to see how far in bed Mormons were with the fringe Right up to (and beyond) the mid eighties.
Think of it. The Religious Right is the same group of folks that want to bring their religion into the schools either directly or through the backdoor theology of Intelligent Design. On the local level they bully school administrators and teachers to keep evolution from being taught to the children we hope will one day find a cure to cancer and AIDS, build and pilot rockets to carry us to Mars, etc. Fat chance if the theocrats have their way. These folks also lead the fight in equating human conception with full-blown personhood in a quest to make abortion of any kind (including cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother) illegal. Thanks to people of their ilk the hands of US scientific researchers have been tied in stem-cell research. If the most extreme of these groups had their way, the United States would be the Western equivalent of a medievalesque Islamic regime like Taliban Afghanistan.
The leaders of the LDS Church have certainly made their point with regard to their position on LDS intellectuals, politics, and scholarship. They have orchestrated BYU firings, and local excommunications, even going so far in the case of Simon Southerton of coming up with a highly questionable pretext to get rid of him. After writing a book about DNA and the Book of Mormon, Southerton was subjected to Church discipline for a long past affair he engaged in while separated from his wife.
Is there any question about how the Church feels when intellectual arguments lead members simply to question contemporary Church teachings? By the same token, is it at all unclear to the faithful member what the Church expects of him or her when investing in a Mormon Studies chair? After all, these folks have probably covenanted in an LDS temple to commit their entire lives to the welfare of the LDS Church.
As far as the institutions taking up Mormon Studies are concerned, given the Church's record of dealing with its ideological foes quite aggressively, is it any wonder that they seek to avoid the Church's and LDS community's ire when bringing the academic study of Mormonism into the university? Is their willingness to bend over backwards to reassure the LDS Church an unqualified positive? I rather think not. The fact that universities are so inclined is more an indicator of Mormon hypersensitivity than it is of non-LDS sympathy.
There is no question in my mind why one should scrutinize the way that Mormon Studies are conducted. Any academic pursuit should be subject to scrutiny. Indiscriminate leftist hate for the military and the Republican party within the academy should be subject to greater scrutiny. Since the LDS Church and its members have, especially in recent years, shown a proclivity to limit speech severely within their own community, to fight against the extension of human rights outside of their community, and to cooperate with groups whose stunning anti-intellectualism is not only shame-inspiring but downright dangerous, surely it is prudent to be concerned about how the LDS Church may influence, directly or indirectly, its presentation and discussion within the world of academia.
Finally, if there is paranoia about the Church's possible role in Mormon Studies, it is surely one that was born in the Church's own paranoid behavior. Any Church that would instruct its members not to take notes in meetings and not to circulate them on the internet clearly has some issues with trust. Any Church that is willing to cooperate with the Religious Right cannot cry foul when it faces the consequences of that choice to its own image. Any academician worth his or her salt would be remiss in their professional duties if he or she was not wary of the influence of such an organization on the academic study of said institution.
