Can The Maxwell Institute Go More Secular?

[blackstrap]

Most people don't have to because they live a couple of paychecks away. The bottom 5 billion people in the world can surely use more than the true meaning of Leviticus to get them through the next day. My point is,a little less reading,a little less discussing,and a little more doing something to ease the pressing burdens of others. I know,I know, there are 3 fingers pointed back at me.

Edited June 26, 2012 by blackstrap

[CASteinman]

Look, the students are already discouraged from studying and getting Ph.d's in Old Testament because those who do apostatize.

And yet there are many courses in ancient scripture, Hebrew, the Old Testament, etc. By your reckoning, these would all be intentionally empty classes. I suppose they appear in the catalog merely to fool the onlookers.

The Church Education System does NOT allow the use of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek in its lessons, etc.

And yet there are many substantial courses in Greek and Hebrew in the Church Education System schools. Of course actual Greek and Hebrew must not be allowed in the lessons of those courses one must suppose. Its another trick to fool the outside world. We don't actually want any Mormon Scholars.

[CASteinman]

SECULAR IDEAS AT COMPLETE ODDS WITH THE CHURCH I HAVE READ ON

1. Jesus didn't even exist.

2. If Jesus existed he in no wise was divine either during his life nor after the resurrection because it did not occur.

3. Jesus never started a church

4. Nothing in the Old Testament is real or accurate history, it is all re-written form later times replacing what actually happened with the political and religious agenda of Jews as they were returning from Babylon around 550 B.C.

5. None of the Gospels in the New Testament are history. There is no factual history in them

6. Jesus was not regarded as divine by any of the Gospel writers. The words they use and names they called him such as "Son of Man" and "Son of God" were NOT divinity titles indicating his status.

7. the Gospels are stories invented and embellished for political purposes. They are nothing but religious propaganda.

8. Paul is at complete odds with what the Gospels portrayed Jesus and his Gospel was.

9. Jesus was in no wise a Christian or a Mormon, but a full fledged Jew who remained loyal to that religion throughout his life.

10. The New Testament manuscript evidence demonstrates that the later manuscripts in the New Testament (further in the chronology, which is wrong as well) began to be concerned with a church because Jesus' eschatalogical return as the Son of God failed. The second coming did not occur, and therefore they had to do damage control to save Jesus some face

What about the secular notion that there was no original True Christianity -- that there were only competing christianities?

[volgadon]

And yet there are many courses in ancient scripture, Hebrew, the Old Testament, etc. By your reckoning, these would all be intentionally empty classes. I suppose they appear in the catalog merely to fool the onlookers.

Take the ancient scripture classes as an example, not a particularly rigorous discipline.

[Calm]

I seriously really really REALLY flipping BAD hope I have only heard a FALSE RUMOR, but I have heard that now even the Joseph Smith Papers project is going to be edited and censored after all. That not all of Joseph's writings are going to be allowed in it. ld

It would be surprising if so after having made it so public the intent to publish them.

[CASteinman]

Take the ancient scripture classes as an example, not a particularly rigorous discipline.

I was not referring to the "ancient scripture classes" .. at least that was not my intent. I was referring to classes that studied Greek and Hebrew to better understand the ancient scriptures or the Ancient Near Eastern Studies courses.

Do you feel that they are pretty slack and that graduates from those courses would need to attend remedial education to show their faces somewhere else?

[zerinus]

I have been pondering this ever since it was announced that Bradford had noted that he wanted to move in a more secular direction and be more academic. Perhaps this is just his way of having what appears to be a more legitimate reason for changing the old guard, I honestly don't know or care.

My quick thoughts on this is that it simply cannot be done. Look, the students are already discouraged from studying and getting Ph.d's in Old Testament because those who do apostatize. Now why does THAT happen?! Interesting no? The Church Education System does NOT allow the use of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek in its lessons, etc. . . .

Have you established for a fact that he want to make FARMS/MI "more secular"? Is that what he has said, or is that what somebody else has said--or thought? A change of direction does not necessarily mean "more secular". And exactly what is the definition of "secular"? All scholarship will inevitably contain a "secular" element in it--regardless of how "spiritual" it might also be.

Edited June 26, 2012 by zerinus

[zerinus]

It's even more vital and critically important to take the criticisms of religious assumptions seriously and explore the full ramifications of the logical, applicability, culture, etc. of whatever scripture one is studying. It is not nearly as important to believe than to understand with full disclosure of all background information, different approaches, etc. There is no singular one and true correct way to read and understand the Bible or else one is in danger of apostatizing and is wrong. There are myriads of interpretations that make better sense of all the evidence than stances the church takes. We simply do not have the last word on things anymore than any religion does. But it's next to impossible to get this into the heads of we Mormons. We are truly myopic in much when it comes to the Bible. It doesn't have to be this way, it's just the way that has been chosen, and with the internet and the scholarly methods and tools made available in the last few decades, we simply cannot continue being so simplistic and naive about the Bible, Jesus, Paul, etc. If the Maxwell Institute wants to improve our understanding and wisdom about the scriptures, they are going to have to cross this bridge of giving realistic and serious attention to alternative ways of understanding the Biblical meaning besides just the standard Mormon view. We are simply not the only possible game in town, even though we love to pretend we are. Our LDS scholarship compared to the serious Bible scholars seriously lacks, as can easily be seen by a simple comparison of anything our LDS scholars have written to any of the Anchor Bible volumes....... we are nowhere near critical and careful exegetical studies yet. Our is still the fluff of building up faith in a picture that we hope matches Mormonism. Call it what you want, but that isn't scholarship, it never has been, and it never will be. I am not decrying Mormonism, I am saying we can improve and we have a lot to offer......IF we would be ALLOWED to.

Now I think you are being very "secular"

I like what Peter said:

2 Peter 1:

20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

[zerinus]

I am honestly not sure either Cal......oh if only we could make BYU Studies seriously scholarly like the Journal of BIblical Literature! Now THAT is just CLASS SCHOLARSHIP. And we cold be that good! We really COULD have that kind of powerful analysis, integrated systematic discussion of all different possibilities, etc., and do serious classy scholarship on the Bible......but being BYU, the brethren will have to agree first...... I just don't see how it will occur is all. faith is more important than knowledge here in the church now. I know Joseph said a man is saved no faster than he can gain knowledge, but now it seems that is being whittled down to simply listen, believe, and have faith. Nothing wrong with having faith......everything wrong with not coupling it with real knowledge. With real tested knowledge. With real analyzed knowledge. Will full disclosure of all possible knowledge.

The "knowledge" Joseph Smith was talking about was not "secular" knowledge, for want of a better word. It is not the kind of "knowledge" you gain when you obtain a PhD. It is the kind of knowledge that one can obtain only by the power of the Holy Ghost. If that kind of knowledge saved anyone, all the university professors and Harvard graduates would be ahead of everybody else on the road to salvation.

Edited June 26, 2012 by zerinus

[zerinus]

Where did Bradford note "that he wanted to move in a more secular direction"?

Thank you. I hadn't got this far down the thread when I started to replying to posts. You had beaten me to it.

Edited June 26, 2012 by zerinus

[zerinus]

Thanks. Just interested if he said this himself, or if it is just something being attributed to him.

Me too.

[zerinus]

I found the description of Bradford wanting to go to more secular studies from Bill Hamblin's posting information on this issue as he understands it.

http://www.mormondia...entry1209133861

Hamblin has clearly stated that that is his assessment of the situation. Don't you think you are jumping to conclusions quite a bit?

Edited June 26, 2012 by zerinus

[Calm]

From the MI announcement:

But to better position the new Mormon Studies Review within its academic discipline

[zerinus]

From the MI announcement:

But to better position the new Mormon Studies Review within its academic discipline

And that means more secular? How?

[Calm]

And that means more secular? How?

It could be taken a variety of ways.

In fact reading the announcement again I was struck by how little info was in it. Certainly not enough to get anyone excited about it. It is not surprising the reporters turned to Dr. Hamblin's commentary to get some depth.

[Bikeemikey]

Is faith motivated scholarship or research less accurate?

It woukd seem to me that any honest researcher must overcome personal bias to do good work? Is religious bias harder to overcome than other bias?

[Kerry A. Shirts]

YES religious bias is harder to overcome than other bias....... I would propose absolutely.....

[Nevo]

Is faith motivated scholarship or research less accurate?

It certainly can be. Here is a prime example from a handout prepared by the Church Educational System for a CES Conference on the New Testament held at BYU in 2000:

Pharisees

The Pharisees are thought to have originated in the third century B.C. in the days preceding the Maccabean wars. During that time, the Jews were under Greek domination and, due to the Greek’s Hellenization efforts, there was a strong tendency among the Jews to accept Greek culture with its pagan religious customs. The rise of the Pharisees was a reaction and protest against this tendency; the name Pharisee actually comes from the Hebrew root parash (to separate). Their aim was to preserve their national integrity and to strictly conform to Mosaic law. They later developed into self-righteous and hypocritical formalists who prided themselves on avoiding contact with the Gentiles. The Pharisees were the most numerous and influential of the religious sects of Jesus’ day. They were strict legalists who stood for the rigid observance of the letter and forms of the law of Moses. They also advocated the strict observance of a great mass of unwritten oral traditions that had been developed by the elders to assist in the interpretation of the law. There were some good men among the Pharisees, but as a whole they were known for their covetousness, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy.

Needless to say, this description leaves something to be desired in terms of scholarly rigor and objectivity.

(More measured assessments appear in John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 3, Companions and Competitors; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE – 66 CE; the Anchor Bible Dictionary; HarperCollins Bible Dictionary; Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, to name just a few.)

[William Schryver]

Where did Bradford note "that he wanted to move in a more secular direction"?

I think this 2007 article in the FARMS Review is a rather well-articulated description of Bradford's desired direction for the Maxwell Institute:

The Study of Mormonism: A Growing Interest in Academia

[David T]

(More measured assessments appear in John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 3, Companions and Competitors; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE – 66 CE; the Anchor Bible Dictionary; HarperCollins Bible Dictionary; Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, to name just a few.)

Meier's book is fantastic, mainly because its intent/"agenda" is to lay out what could be a consensus of bare knowable fact among those of different beliefs (his 'Unpapal Conclave', as he calls it). He is Catholic, but he brackets specific Catholic faith-based claims in the name of finding what can all be agreed on distinct from the additional layer of faith. Far from causing this to water down the story, it expresses an expanded, highly nuanced, and fascinatingly detailed view of the life of Jesus from what can be known historically. And it's a lot more than many thought. In contrast to many polemical anti-religious "Historical Jesus" books, this really is a work of love and sensitivity. It's a beautiful, and extremely informative and enlightening series of books. There's nothing else like it out there.

It creates a powerful historical 'canvas' of Jesus, on which the faith claims can overlay, intertwine, and enhance, without taking away their religious significance and meaning.

Edited June 26, 2012 by David T

[zerinus]

It could be taken a variety of ways.

In fact reading the announcement again I was struck by how little info was in it. Certainly not enough to get anyone excited about it.

I think what that most likely means is that he is clear what direction he does not want to take it, but not so clear what direction he does want to take it; or the new direction is not one that can be articulated easily. He knows the old way wasn't very good, but can't put into words exactly what the new is going to look like. That does not necessarily mean more "secular," whatever "secular" is supposed to mean. Maybe he still even wants to do "apologetics," but not quite of the same kind, or in the same way as before.

Edited June 26, 2012 by zerinus

[Calm]

I think what that most likely means is that he is clear what direction he does not want to take it, but not so clear what direction he does want to take it; or the new direction is not one that can be articulated easily. He knows the old way wasn't very good, but can't put into words exactly what the new is going to look like. That does not necessarily mean more "secular," whatever "secular" is supposed to mean. Maybe he still even wants to do "apologetics," but not quite of the same kind, or in the same way as before.

Considering his extensive article on the subject of religious studies that Will linked to, I think he knows exactly what he wants and how to put it into words.

It is one thing for major academic publishers to show interest in titles dealing with the tradition and for a few classes on the subject to be taught at universities. It is something else for it to be studied in explicit comparison with other religious traditions in established religious studies programs. The best work done in this regard should result in an enhanced understanding of the faith. In any event, one thing seems certain, as a recent headline put it: "Mormon Studies: Not Just for Mormons Anymore."

Not surprisingly, the way Mormonism is approached at these universities differs markedly from the way it is dealt with at BYU. In the wider academic world, within religion programs in private, nonaffiliated, and public colleges and universities, such study is conducted in a diverse intellectual environment. At BYU the subject is approached from a perspective of institutional and individual commitment. While BYU does offer a few courses on other religions, it does not maintain a religious studies program. It is devoted, in other words, to teaching students the "language of faith" more than the "language about faith." The Departments of Ancient Scripture and Church History and Doctrine (as well as comparable departments at BYU's Hawaii and Idaho campuses) teach courses on the subject to virtually all undergraduates each semester. Several units on campus are charged with producing and publishing scholarly work (books and periodicals) dealing with many facets of the religion, most of it written for interested LDS readers. The more prominent ones include the Religious Studies Center, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU Studies, and, until recently, the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History.

It is too early to tell what impact, if any, the study of Mormonism at other universities will have on comparable work done at BYU. One thing, however, seems certain. Scholars at BYU who in the past have geared their writings about the tradition mainly toward an LDS audience and who want to contribute to the kind of scholarship relied upon by those working in broader religious studies programs will need to write for a wider academic audience if their work is to be published by recognized scholarly presses.

I take a more traditional approach and view religious studies in terms of the following characteristics: (1) It necessarily requires the study of more than just one tradition; in other words, it is inherently a comparative, even cross-cultural, endeavor. (2) It advocates studying religious traditions in comparison with known ideological and philosophical challenges to religion that often function much the same way in society. (3) Because of the multidimensional makeup of systems of faith, it requires that such phenomena be studied from the perspective of several disciplines. (4) It proceeds on the basis of maintaining a distinction between descriptive and structural studies on the one hand and attempts at grappling with religious value judgments and truth claims on the other. (5) And, of particular importance, it requires that students learn how to approach their subjects from the vantage point of those they are studying. I will say more about each of these in turn.

In other words, students of religion need to become familiar with well-established critical positions on the question of religion—materialist views, espoused by Marxist critics and others, atheistic and secular humanistic interpretations, along with various reductionistic views of religion, articulated in, say, forms of positivism or numerous psychoanalytical interpretations of religion. Precisely because such ideologies rival traditional systems of religious belief, they should be studied together. If this is not done, if one position is privileged over another and is thereby granted unquestioned status in the academy (something that, unfortunately, often seems to be the case), then a genuine, open-ended, and pluralistic approach to the study of religion becomes even more difficult to achieve.

Edited June 26, 2012 by calmoriah

[cinepro]

That list is interesting Kerry, but you don't even have to go that far.

Even more (seemingly) innocuous ideas like the multiple-authorship of Isaiah, the local flood of Noah, or Genesis not being written by Moses can be threatening to the faithful LDS student.

Edited June 26, 2012 by cinepro

[zerinus]

I think this 2007 article in the FARMS Review is a rather well-articulated description of Bradford's desired direction for the Maxwell Institute:

The Study of Mormonism: A Growing Interest in Academia

Thank you; that appears to be a good article, and provides a good insight into how he wants to move forward--and I find myself in agreement. (It is a long article, and I have not read it all the way through; but the opening paragraphs were sufficient for me to get the gist of what he is talking about.)

Many LDS scholars can't think out of the box. They are too inwardly focused to be able to step out of themselves, and look at themselves (or the Church) from the point of view of how others might see us, and provide information about the Church in such a manner that it be meaningful to them. Let me illustrate with an example.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity of presenting the lesson in priesthood meeting. We had two investigators there brought in by the missionaries. One of them was British, whose only experience of organized religion was probably the Church of England. The other person was an immigrant from Bulgaria, who was familiar with the Eastern Orthodox form of religious tradition. The lesson contained several paragraphs about the importance of the Sacrament in our religion, and how to partake of it worthily, and the significance of it etc. Now I could see that this discussion was going to be completely meaningless to those investigators, because what we call the "Sacrament" the Church of England people call the Holy Communion, and the Catholics call the Mass! They also use different theological terms to refer to different aspects of them which although different from ours, are not necessarily wrong! So in order to make the discussion more meaningful to them, I tried to widen the discussion a bit by explaining first what "Sacrament" means according to their religious tradition, and inviting them to comment briefly what significance that rite has in their tradition. By so doing I was able to provide some context to enable those people make some sense of what we were talking about. Now if I was the kind of Mormon who was so focused on my own naval that I couldn't see myself through somebody else's eyes, I would not have been able to provide that kind of context for those people.

Judging by that article, that appears to be the kind of thing that Bradford is looking for. Given the increased interest being shown in the Church by the the outside world, he is looking for scholars who are able to write papers and articles which go beyond the traditional, stale, outmoded "apologetic" fare which LDS scholars are accustomed to, and think out of the box, and provide material which will meet the needs of this new group of people who are beginning to take an interest in Mormonism. And I am entirely in agreement with him on that. Traditional style "apologetics" is no longer sufficient to meet the needs this group of interested people. A new approach is required, which is what Bradford appears to be looking for.

Typed on my iPod!

[zerinus]

Considering his extensive article on the subject of religious studies that Will linked to, I think he knows exactly what he wants and how to put it into words.

Yes, I just noticed that article, though I have not read it all the way through yet. See the reply I gave to that post just now.