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.
Dear Friend,
I don’t know if you caught it or not, but there was an exchange in Christianity Today between Dick Bushman and Bruce Kuklick, a prominent historian. (click here) Here are — to me at any rate — the interesting bits of Kuklick’s piece:
What 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.
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. . . . . .
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 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.
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 précis 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.)
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.”
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.
Best wishes,
Nate
PS — In spell checking this letter, my computer suggested that I substitute “moronic” for “Moroni.” Perhaps I should just get the message.
One could substitute “Christian” for “Mormon” (with some accompanying modifications) in Kucklich. I bet the readers of Christianity Today would have loved that. All religion is ridiculous to an outsider unwilling to look at it with a sense of sympathy. These recent thoughts from Dan Peterson seem relevant:
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/050307can.html
If you read the whole exchange, I think it is pretty clear that Kucklich is perfectly willing to substitute “Christian” for “Mormon.” Indeed, I think ultimately that is his point. He has bigger fish to fry than Mormon historians. One has the definite impression that he wants to “call out” all believing Christians writing about the history of Christianity.
On the one hand, I do get uneasy when I read LDS history written for a general or even scholarly audience in the “I’m taking all this as true” vein when it’s clear most readers won’t share that view. For example, Remini (in his Joseph Smith) and Givens (in By the Hand of Mormon) expressly told readers in their introductions that was how they would treat, in their narratives, the supernatural events that form the core of LDS faith claims. That, as opposed to slipping in “Mormons believe that …” everytime a faith claim event came up in the discussion.
On the other hand, as already noted by Kevin at #1 in terms of Christianity, “a connected series of ideas that we have every reason to think are false” arguably applies to Marxism and Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, which together probably supply the framework for at least half of what’s published as academic discussion. So Kuklick isn’t thinking systematically here, he’s just throwing a little mud at Bushman, IMHO.
I think this is where the tolerance hits the road. When do you allow people to be wrong (from your own point of view) and not castigate them for it?
It is a legitimate historical pursuit to critically examine the history behind the LDS church. Being critical does not automatically make one an anti-mormon. But to call it a conversation stopper betrays a mind as closed as my own on the subject (albeit, I’m perfectly willing to allow others to be wrong).
For non-metaphysical notions, such as gun ownership in the early days of the republic (I’m thinking of “Arming America”), the points of contention can be settled by an objective purusal of the records of the time. For a visitation by angels, that is not possible. At some point, I would hope that agreeable disagreement would agreed upon.
I suppose that we have a problem with angels and Mormon history that goes like this:
Mormon Historian: I am going to tell the story of Mormon history with the angels. There are original documents that support their existence and anyway, I happen to believe this stuff.
Critic: But surely you don’t uncritically accept the narrative contained in all original documents. If I read accounts written by 18th century sailors of their sightings of mermaids, do I write a historical narrative in which mermaids are unproblematically swimming next to the ship?
Mormon Historian: Well, er, no. I guess that I wouldn’t have mermaids swimming next to the hull of the ship.
Critic: Ah, but why do you allow angels into the narrative but not mermaids? You are just using your religious faith to selectively choose which incredible stories you will swallow and which ones you won’t. That is cheating.
Neither the Critic or the Mormon Historian in this dialogue are all that smart or sophisticated, but I think that this is the basic nub of the problem, at least when it isn’t couched in crude terms of “Mormons are dumb for believing in angels” or “Mormons are hopelessly biased and dishonest in their use of original sources.”
Mind you, this historiographic question is secondary to the one that I ask in my letter. To the extent that I am interested in Mormon history, the period that I am likely to write about is the prolonged legal battle between the Church and the federal government, roughly 1857 to 1905 or so. Angels are not a major issue in this story. Rather, I am interested in the basic question of how religious one can be in academic discussions before religion becomes a conversation stopper.
I once told a fellow economist that regressing tithing on income wouldn’t work because, owing to the possibility of blessings from tithing, tithing also caused income changes and so the two were jointly determined.
She looked exceptionally non-plussed, but it was fun for me.
I think the difference Nate is that religious convictions are simply widely believed. One need not look at too many polls to see that the majority of Americans believe religious claims that secularism would reject as false. Few accept mermaids. Now Mormonism is unique in that Mormon religious claims are accepted by far fewer people than general Christian claims. But ought that matter? I’d say that it ought to be allowed.
I wouldn’t let the Bruce Kuklicks of the world get us down. By his view no one at the academy would be studying Islam, a booming field nowadays, except in an effort to expose it as “lunacy, madcap.” Whole subfields in history, religion, sociology, and literature would be wiped out if we applied his rigid standard of rationality across the academy. Frankly I find his closemindedness a little surprising for a historian. Few indeed would think to put down an Islamicist or a Classicist for being someone “who elaborates a connected series of ideas we have every reason to think are false.” Scholars do not generally talk that way.
My theory is that Kuklick had his well poisoned on the first third of Believing History, the section with the confessional and devotional essays. Historians rarely speak so openly and so publicly about their own metaphysical concerns as Bushman does there. That is why Kuklick said this is not history. The later essays are much more traditionally historical in the sense of recreating the world of historical actors, a common approach among historians last time I checked. In those essays the angels and the plates aren’t in Bushman’s mind; they are in the documents of the period. I am not sure Kuklick sees that distinction.
In Nate’s case, I doubt very much that an essay about Mormons and the law in the late nineteenth century would have the confessional or devotional tone to put off a potential audience.
Well, if you are discussing the narrative “mormonism” you have to accept the elements of it to discuss it.
If you are discussing Paul’s classic formulation of how preaching Christ Jesus is to the Greeks silliness, well, things haven’t changed in about two thousand years.
It depends what you are studying for how to approach it.
What do you do with a historian [Bushman] who elaborates a connected series of ideas we have every reason to think are false…
Which reasons are those?
It sounds like Kuklick wants to debate for the sake of debating, but Bushman is revealing all his cards right at the start of the hand. I mean, what fun is that?
I find arguments to be useless unless (a) I can convince the other person that he’s wrong, or (b) I discover my opponent’s core belief—the exact point in his thinking where we have to agree to disagree.
If the fun of the hunt is in the pursuit, then Bushman is being unsportsmanlike, and that’s annoying Kuklick to no end.
#6 That sounds like a great topic for empirical research. Go for it!
Either your spell checker knows about Mormon history, or he’s just referring to the capital of the Comoros, named Moroni…. ;’)
John,
Yea, I think it could be cool. There actually was a paper in the AER a few years back on tithing and how your income affected your beliefs about what was tithable. So, for example, did those who had certain obscure forms of income differ in their beliefs about how to tithe them from those who just had labor income. The idea being to identify if there were self-serving beliefs. There was no evidence that people’s views were self serving in that sample.
Of course, the problem with doing more work is the same general problem of doing lots of interesting work on the CHurch. THe data is rather tricky to get!
Bruce kuklick’s views seem to be common in academia, much more than we would like. And the animosity isnt directed at Mormons specifically. liber-left leaning academics seem to harbor a special sort of animosity towards Mormons, and most other forms of Christianity, unless it happens to be a denomination like the Unitarian Universalists, who dont even believe in Christ, and who embrace ever modern, po-mo politically correct idea. However, the study of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and any other religion is considered to not only be OK, butu necessary, to understand ‘why they hate us”, etc, etc etc…………….
Does anybody but Bruce Kuklick call Richard Bushman “Dick”? I’ve never heard anybody call him that (including Claudia), and his emails, an informal mode of communication if there is one, are all signed “Richard”.
I wonder if Kuklick uses the nickname as one more way of showing that he doesn’t think Bushman’s ideas are worthy of adult consideration, or is it an attempt (misguided) to show what a great pal he is of Richard’s? (“You’re a great guy, Dick, but, c’mon, you’re nuts.”)
Mark,
Sharp eyes, but may be a false alarm. I’m sure I’ve heard Jim Faulconer refer to him as Dick Bushman. I think I’ve heard others do the same (Blake Ostler, perhaps?). And I found one comment on T & S, friendly in tone, refering to him as Dick Bushman: http://timesandseasons.org/index.php?p=1789#comment-38233 .
Mark B.: “Dick” Bushman is not an insult on Kuklick’s part. If anything he is trying to be collegial. Bushman’s old friends call him him Dick, a relic of the 60s and 70s when many Richards were called Dick. Today obviously this is not the case. Kuklick says he worked with Bushman “many years ago” on the American Studies Association and that may be where he picked up the term.
Mark B. asks, “Does anybody but Bruce Kuklick call Richard Bushman ‘Dick’?”
Nate Oman does. His letter opens, “Dear Friend, I don’t know if you caught it or not, but there was an exchange in Christianity Today between Dick Bushman and Bruce Kuklick, a prominent historian.”
Scott
When I share Mormonism with my non-member friends (which I do very carefully and infrequently, most of them are believing members of other faiths), I say, “our faith is based on the first vision, where God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith, when he was 14 years old. I believe it happened, but I still love and respect you if you don’t. And I don’t care if you think I’m nuts.”
It’s never caused a problem so far.
#3, Dave, I don’t have a problem with the statements of events as facts without the qualifiers. I admit that it used to bother me, but when I read “The History of God,” and Armstrong did the same thing when accounting the foundations of Islam, I found it quite respectful. So if it’s respectful to do so for Islam, it’s respectful for the Mormons, too.
If an orthodox Jew heard Mormons use the term “Gentile” the way we do I think they would chuckle. We are the Gentiles according to them – and the Lord in D&C 109:60. Historically we “Gentiles” are distracted by every entertainment and diversion imaginable. As LDS we still have that problem. It’s part of our heritage. Until we outgrow that it’s pompous and naive to throw that term around referring to others.
I was wondering when somebody was going to pick up this exchange. It really is worth reading the whole Kuklick piece and Bushman’s and Noll’s reply. Kuklick is basically arguing that there are two types of religious history to write, insider history and outsider history and that they have two different audiences and purposes. An insider history at some point gives up historical practice and says “and then a miracle took place that you have to accept on faith.” The problem is, this doesn’t work for non-believers. Outsider history doesn’t attempt to validate the truth-claims of the religion but it also doesn’t try to debunk them either (that would be a third project not worth talking about). And inisder can write outsider history and many do. Kuklick isn’t saying Bushman can’t write Mormon history. The piece actually starts with Kuklick wondering what insider history would look like written with outsider professional training. He doesn’t like what he sees because the insider trumps the outsider. He was hoping for some new interesting hybrid, I think. I don’t think (but I’m not a mindreader) that such a hybrid was Bushman’s goal.
I taught Bushman’s Joseph Smith biography to a graduate seminar in the History of the American West at the University of Michigan. The book was considered a brilliant failure. Everybody (there were no LDS members in the class) appreciated what Bushman was trying to do, but people were frustrated by Bushman raising these questions and then apparently stopping his historical inquiry at certain points. As non-believers the biography did not work for them.
Since some people object to my use of gentile, I’ll stop calling myself gentile lurker (although I swear we Jews get a huge kick out of it, really). I’m open to suggestions for a new nickname.
Nate,
In specific reply to your request about a “connected series of ideas” in relation to other “connected series of ideas” the answer, I think is, it depends. If your called to debate the merits of Mormon theology, well, I think everybody in the room would be just fine with you saying it’s the best theology around. (How that would come up, in an academic context, I don’t know). In the area of historical inquiry, I can only think of a few narrow specific areas where the Church has closed off discussion that might make religion being a conversation stopper. Otherwise, outside of those areas, the connected series of ideas that constitutes Mormonism couldn’t possibly be a barrier any more than my Jewishness constitutes a barrier (and can you imagine the academy without Jews? I mean, it is practically a stereotype, oh wait, it is a stereotype ;-)). More seriously, I think Kuklick gives short shrift to positionality as a tool (rather than as an end in itself) in mediating between connected series of ideas. If you can establish the position of speaker, source(s), listener, etc. you can triangulate common ground for discussion fairly easily while still leaving the untouchable areas untouched. It requires respect on the part of all (I didn’t like Kuklick’s tone although it may have been necessary to make the point).
Not sure this helps
He in search of a nickname
On Gentiles: It is a Mormon term for non-Mormons with (by Mormon standards) a very long pedigree. Furthermore more, my friend is familar with Mormon history and understands the sense in which I am using it. Finally, I don’t think that it is any more pompous or niave than calling members of the church saints or calling the president of the church a prophet, seer, and revelator. One man’s pomposity is another’s audacity. Mormonism is nothing if not audacious. And yes, I am well aware of the alternative uses of the term, its history, etc.
David: If it makes you feel better, you will always be a gentile to me ;->. As you figured out, my main question is not really with the writing of history per se. I am not a professional historian, and my intellectual baliwick (if I have one) is legal theory and to a lesser extent legal history. I wonder if is possible to write history that takes advantage of religious positionality that is not a failure in the sense that your students decided that Bushman’s book was a failure. It seems that unless one can do something like what Bushman does there is no way of talking about Joseph Smith that doesn’t degenerate into the tired old prophet-fraud debates. Maybe “serious” history leaves us with no choice, but if that is the case then I would suggest that “serious” history is getting hung up on a debate that has the ability to create a great deal of noise and heat, but not necessarily a lot of light.
I do think it is possible for believers to take advantage of their position to write history in a way that can be illuminating to both insiders and outsiders. This history is dependent on two things. First it needs to demarcate the lines of belief: “For believeing Mormons, …” “Mormons believe…” etc. That does an end run around the whole prophet fraud mess. (In the end, for historians, that question is pretty insignificant compared to the fact that people believed and followed Joseph). Second, it is awfully hard for outsiders to understand the significance of certain events. While historians are pretty skilled at getting into minds of other folks, there is simply no substitute for lived experience in certain realms. My own little pet theory about the origins of the New Deal welfare state and its connections to Mormonism is probably a project that needs to be written by an insider (although I may try it someday anyway).
To the extent that there is a Mormon theory of justice, it can be brought into dialogue with Rawls etc. etc..
“My own little pet theory about the origins of the New Deal welfare state and its connections to Mormonism is probably a project that needs to be written by an insider (although I may try it someday anyway).”
I am dying of suspense. What is your pet theory?
Me too, David–you’ve dropped hints about your grand project in e-mails in the past, but never gone into detail. Spill the beans!
Incidentally, I don’t think there is a Mormon theory of justice, at least not in any sense that Rawls would have recognized.
The pet theory is this. Marriner Eccles uses his position in the cabinet to advocate for federal programs based on principles similar to those used by the church. Mormon-philes had long written admiringily of the welfare system and I’ve seen some tantalizing hints that some states had developed programs based on their perception of the Mormon model as well and Roosevelt based some programs on state programs. Caveats: A) my understanding of how the Church’s welfare system works in practice is pretty rudimentary B) the Church’s conception of welfare may have closely paralleled common thinking at that time anyway and thus wasn’t influential C) I’m a long way off from even starting this.
I actually sympathize with Kuklick’s statement that religion is a conversation stopper.
Growing up in Utah, I gradually started to notice that “bearing testimony” was often actually code for “shut up and agree with me.”
The examples are numerous, but not always easily identifiable. For instance, I was discussing Mormon pop with a group of friends. I was of the opinion that Song A was utter trash and said so. Then one of the females in the group gets all choked up and relates how the song was such a “spiritual” experience for her.
Now, her “testimony” didn’t convince me at all. I still felt that the song lacked any interesting melody, consisted of stupid and predictable lyrics, and bordered on preaching outright false doctrine.
But how am I supposed to respond when she gets all “testimonial” on me?
I heard the “shut up, I’m testifying” routine in a lot of contexts. People used it to preach false doctrine, promote shabby literature, and rally support against their estranged spouses. Often, these people didn’t have a leg to stand on. But once they started testifying, everyone was expected to shut up and nod sympathetically.
I have this sneaky suspicion that for a lot of Mormons “the promptings of the Spirit” is just an excuse for doing whatever you feel like doing.
To some extent, any faith-based religion is like this however. Joshua’s statement: “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve” really was essentially saying: “conversation is over people, time to make a decision.” Religion is often intuitive and picks up where rational argument ends.
So I think Kuklick is right. When you get to the point of bearing testimony, the discussion is over. Faith is a conversation stopper.