Outer Lightness » Within the Bubble » September 2007

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Within the Bubble

• 

  Inaugural Post at VSOM

  Posted: September 14th, 2007, 1:31am EDT by Steve M.

  Tags:    [edit]

  If you're interested, take a look at my first VSOM post: The Church's Recent Handling of Mountain Meadows: A Step in a New Direction?
• 

  Blogging stint at VSOM

  Posted: September 11th, 2007, 2:36pm EDT by Steve M.

  Tags:    [edit]

  While this blog will probably remain fairly quiet (for now, anyway), I'll be blogging over at Various Stages of Mormondom for the next little while, so come visit! Don't forget to bookmark VSOM on your browser, and add a link on your blog!
• 

  Bushman's going to Claremont

  Posted: September 6th, 2007, 8:06am EDT by Steve M.

  Tags:    [edit]

  It's official--Richard Bushman is going to fill the Mormon Studies chair at Claremont (see here).
  
  My parents, who live in Claremont, heard about the decision to bring Bushman through the grapevine several months ago (it may have still been tentative at the time, though), but it appears that it's finally been made official.
  
  How awesome would it bee if Bushman attended my home ward?
• 

  New Local Sunstone Communities

  Posted: September 6th, 2007, 11:32pm EDT by Steve M.

  Tags:    [edit]

  Take a look at this: New local Sunstone communities.
  
  Several have been set up so far, most of which are in the West, but there are also some Eastern and Southern communities, including Washington, D.C.; NYC; Raleigh, NC; and Atlanta, GA.
  
  Cheers to John Dehlin and Sunstone.
• 

  Duty to inoculate?

  Posted: September 4th, 2007, 11:46pm EDT by Steve M.

  Tags:    [edit]

  Yes, as indicated earlier, I will still blog here, albeit sporadically and infrequently. Here's a quick one.
  
  --
  
  After listening to the Sunstone Session on inoculation and the two follow-up Mormon Matters podcasts discussing it (here and here), I'd like to share a few thoughts about "inoculation," as it pertains to controversial church history.
  
  In the year prior to my mission, I did a lot of studying. I read the scriptures like crazy, but I also discovered an interest in Mormon history. The first substantive book I read on the topic was Bushman's Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism. In addition to various books, articles, and websites, I also like to read apologetic material, which probably influenced my approach to troubling aspects of church history--they were problems to be explained and resolved from an orthodox perspective (as much as that was possible). Envisioning myself debating anti-Mormons and Baptist ministers in the coming months (I never saw myself serving a mission in Asia), I was more concerned with learning to defend the faith than critically examining it.
  
  The multiple First Vision accounts didn't really bother me. Translating the Book of Mormon using a peep stone in a hat didn't, either. I wasn't even too concerned with Joseph's practice of polygamy (although, I may have only had a general awareness that he married multiple women, and no real knowledge of the details). I was somewhat troubled by Brigham Young's teachings on blood atonement, but a straightforward Institute teacher helped me learn to take a lot of Brother Brigham's teachings with a grain of salt (even though this somewhat skirts the problem of how to grapple with the implications of some of his more controversial views).
  
  In short, I managed to be a quite orthodox member and missionary in spite of my awareness of some of the more controversial areas of church history. My knowledge may have been somewhat cursory (and perhaps tainted by apologetic bias), but it amounted to more than that of most of the missionaries I served with, and was almost entirely attributable to the personal study I had done outside of Sunday School, Seminary, and Institute.
  
  The two points I wish to make are that:
  

  • Controversial history is not necessarily faith-destroying, and
  • Unfortunately, a (relatively small) handful of books, articles, and websites provided me with a more comprehensive understanding of church history than that provided by my "formal" ecclesiastical training, which included hundreds of hours of Sunday School lessons, Priesthood quorum meetings, early morning Seminary lessons, Institute classes, and an eleven-week stay at the Missionary Training Center.

  My own journey into unorthodoxy wasn't sparked by the discovery of some well-hidden facet of church history. It began with a difficult encounter with a well-meaning but ultimately mistaken Priesthood leader, which challenged my fundamental assumptions about how the church functions. This difficult experience forced me to reevaluate and reconstruct my spirituality and world view. Of course, this prompted me to try to look at LDS history with a more objective eye (if that's even possible), which did present some challenges to my faith, but the end result was what I consider a more mature faith--one that accounts for the paradoxes of my church's origins and legacy and allows for the existence of doubts (and I've got plenty of those), but which nonetheless finds value in the symbols and teachings of my faith community (even if I don't believe in the literal truth of everything that's said).
  
  So I don't think that the Church is "trapped" by its history, as some allege. I think that most Mormons could handle a less idealized version of history than that currently presented in official church curricula and literature. I don't think it's as threatening to faith as some tend to assume.
  
  In my opinion, the problem of history has more to do with
  

  • the simplistic and problematic assumptions that a "pure milk" diet fosters (e.g., that prophets are necessarily great models of morality, that prophets won't contradict one another, that the Church and the gospel are either 100% true or totally fraudulent, that the Church and the gospel are the same in every age of time); and
  • the feeling of betrayal that members often feel when they discover something about church history that
    
  • challenges the basic assumptions of their testimony (as fostered by the "pure milk" diet), and/or which
  • is at odds with the version of church history that they have been taught from childhood.

  Therefore, while I think our current approach to teaching history is problematic, I don't think the solution is necessarily a comprehensive "inoculation" to every controversial aspect of church history. I believe the solution has more to do with embracing the following principles and practices:
  

  • Nurturing testimonies that allow for complexity, ambiguity, paradoxes, and even doubt.
    
  • Encouraging members to ask questions and to seek answers to those questions.
    
  • Producing and making available materials (both electronic and print) that deal with history from a less idealized, more objective, and more comprehensive perspective (a good example would be something like Rough Stone Rolling).
  • Focusing more on principles, faith, and Christian living in our church services.
  • To the extent that we do teach and incorporate history into our church training and education, presenting it in a straightforward, unambiguous manner.
  • Allowing for scholarly and critical examination of history by LDS students and scholars in appropriate forums (conferences, symposiums, academic journals, and even BYU and Institute classes), without a threat of church displeasure or discipline.
    

  In other words, while I do believe that the Church has a responsibility not to neglect or cover up certain areas of its history, and to treat history in an honest and straightforward manner inasmuch as it chooses to address the topic, I do not think that it needs to start a Controversial Episodes in Church History Sunday School class, teach Primary Children about the Adam-God doctrine, or even commission artists to paint pictures of Joseph Smith with his face in a hat. I believe it is more important to foster more mature, complex testimonies from the ground up and create a culture in which one's faith and standing in the Church is not so dependent upon an "orthodox" belief in church history, and in which members are not only encouraged to study these issues out for themselves, but also have easy access to accurate, straightforward history from a trusted source (i.e., the Church itself).
  
  Those are my thoughts, anyway.