Midgley'S "Defending The King And His Kingdom"

[Calm]

I do not believe there is any middle way. You either are or you are not. If you are not you may still choose to affiliate for whatever reason you seems good to you and at some time you may catch the vision and become a believer.

I think it comes down to commitment which is how we find out just how deep our faithfulness really is and whether we are attempting to fill ourselves with faith or something else. One can be committed without believing if one has developed a habit (which is really just the shell of commitment though and not true covenanting/bonding/sacrificing...all those things that commitment entails, but I don't believe one can become truly believing without commitment. One is too likely to let opportunities of faith growing experiences to flow past one without actually trying to engage any of them. Just as a man or woman who sits back and watches and perhaps even comments on all the potential mates in view, unless there is a moment where s/he moves into commitment to a potential relationship, that relationship will never get the chance to exist. Edited January 3, 2013 by calmoriah

[Louis Midgley]

I find myself agreeing with ERayR. I don't believe we should exclude anyone until or unless they make huge pests out of themselves by making war on the crucial historical foundations and grounding of our faith. But it is clear that there are wolves who appear in the clothing of harmless sheep. It is here that I have to make an informed judgment, as do the rest of you. It was rather easy to decide to respond to Paul Pry Jr (aka Grant Palmer), and to Brent Metcalfe. But I had to explain to Brent's father, who joined the Church in New Zealand and became the Temple recorder and eventually director of the Temple program for the entire Church, why, as he put it, I did not "love his boy back into the Church." It was painful to explain that Brent was so passionately bent on pulling the Church from its historical foundations that his arguments simply had to be addressed. And I also know for a fact that it was very painful for the Brethren to watch all that play out. We have a large public personality in which exactly the same situation exists. Since this person is a former student, and the entire matter is thus very painful for me and several of my colleagues in the political science department, and also for the immediate and extended family of this individual, it profoundly saddens me, as well I more than suspect his family, to contemplate where this matter my eventually end up.

[Tacenda]

Lou, thank you for the story behind what you do (in a few posts back) I understand, I think, what you mean about defending the faith. I've taken for granted my easy belief of our Saviour. Especially now with a wavering belief in my LDS belief. I see how the need to defend comes into play. It's just like the non LDS Christian needing to defend a belief in Jesus.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Tacenda

[Louis Midgley]

Tacenda:

I am constantly fighting to have the me behind the intense mask that presents itself in what I write peep out from behind the sometimes stuffy academic prose. There is some of my story in "Defending" and there was some in an essay entitled "Debating Evangelicals." And a great deal in the essay I wrote honoring Hugh Nibley which is entitled "A Mighty Kauri is Fallen." I remember having a look at what in my estimation the notorious buffoon who goes my the odd handle “doctor scratch” had to say about “Defending Evangelicals.” Every comment was smug bizarre mind-reading. The folks on the appropriately named MAD either could not or probably would not follow my argument. I expected or hoped for better. The reason is that for me all this is serious playfulness. And I fully expect that in a few years no one will remember my name or read what I devoted my declining years to publish. That does not trouble me. What I write is my best offering, given my limited gifts and my own deep and abiding disposition, I can place on the altar hoping thereby to gain favor with the Lord. While cleaning the chapel the other afternoon, a friend said that just reading Nibley’s “Work We Must, But the Lunch if Free” changed his life for the better. And, like a flash, the title to that essay seemed a really deft way of sorting the old business of divine mercy and our deeds. Why had I not thought of that before? After all, I have read virtually everything Nibley wrote. And, of course, we can and should learn from our critics. We actually need bigger and better critics to keep us on our toes.

[Louis Midgley]

Earlier Tracenda wrote, but I did not notice, the following: "I read once [read] where Steve Benson, during his early faith crisis, had a meeting with one of the apostles at the time, and was told, if the church isn't true it's still a good way to raise your family. How do we know that some don't have a perfect knowledge but one of faith only and the belief that it's a great religion for families. Wouldn't this almost be in the category of a middle wayer? Isn't a middle wayer one who goes by faith also, like almost everyone?" I am now going to reply at length to some of these queries.

The idea that if the grounds and contents of faith are false, they still provide a good place to raise one’s kids is the fib that Talmage Bachman claimed that he was told by his Stake President, who he also claimed had heard it from President Hinckley in a solemn assembly. Talmage loved to spread this on RfM. This tall tale turned out to be a bald faced lie. But you want to know if Elders Oaks and Maxwell told Steve Benson this same thing. I don't think so. I spent four hours with Steve Benson, who had been one of my students, and a very fine Phoenix newspaper reporter the morning after both of them had spent most of a day with Elders Oaks and Maxwell. The story that Steve told me the very next morning in the lobby of the political science department in the Kimball Tower was quite different from the later versions he has told and embellished.

The primary topic of conversation that day was Michael Quinn. This very competent reporter wanted to know the story about the ruthless crushing of efforts to tell the truth about the Mormon past. I asked this reporter if he was aware that Quinn was a practicing homosexual and that this was why he had been given the boot. He said he already knew that. I asked him if he intended to pull the rug out from under a myth that had been fashioned in which the evil brethren were hiding history and make it public exactly why Quinn had been excommunicated. He said he would love to do such a piece but it would never get published and the reason was that his editors wanted something damaging to the Church. I asked him if he was telling me that his bosses did not care about the truth. And he asked me if I was really that naive.

Then we discussed, after he and Steve Benson had told of nice open conversations with two Apostles, what was behind Lavina Anderson’s claim what she called “ecclesiastical abuse” (hereafter EA) by the wicked Brethren. So I went to my office and retrieved a copy of the issue in Dialogue in which she made those claims. And I invited both young Benson and the reporter to go through with me her assertions. I showed them that I was listed as one of those guilty of EA. But, I pointed out, I do not hold any leadership position in the Church. Why was a then guilty of EA? The reason Lavina (a former student who I remember well) gave is that I had written negative things about something called New Mormon History and hence had written something reflecting badly on Leonard Arrington. This was rubbish. David Bohn had written essays complaining about a New Mormon History, but I had not done so. Instead, I had tried to trace the history of that label. It started with Robert Flanders, a then lapsed RLDS scholar lifting the title by a Jewish scholar’s one page review of some recent books and essays on the Mormon past. Moses Rischin had only made reference to some recent work by historians. Flanders and then other RLDS had turned that innocent title into a new revisionist movement.

And Quinn turned it into something larger than life. But Leonard Arrington had never once mentioned a New Mormon History in any of the essays I had read. And later, in going through his papers at Utah State, I could not find a single reference by Arrington to a New Mormon History. If he was what one partisan called the “bellwether” of a New Mormon History movement, he did not know it. All I had published was some intellectual history in which I did my best to trace some labels in an effort to root out slogan thinking. Some may already know that I keep a diary and record conversations in it an in memos. I have various reasons for doing this. One of these is that taking notes fixes things in my memory. I learned this even as a entering student at the UofU in 1950 and this habit has served me well. And knowing Steve Benson, and knowing what he told me that Saturday morning during a conference session that I missed, if he cannot produce a diary entry from immediately after that hours with Elder Oaks and Maxwell that matches what they placed in their diaries and notes, then what can we say of such a claim as you mention, if he even made such a claim?

Now to your question about the truth of the Restored Gospel merely being that is somehow makes good families possible and whether this is not what the middle way stuff comes down to, I believe you are probably on the right track. This is a variety of the very famous notion that myths (in the worst possible sense of that word) are possibly useful even though they are not actually true at all. This is a path that Protestant liberals and so-called Roman Catholic moderists have gone down. The Catholic magisterium or teaching office has put a stop to that nonsense by giving the boot to those who advanced it. In the Protestant world it this idea has led to the rapid decline of so-called mainline denominations. And in Europe it was Karl Barth who managed to cut the heart of what was known as cultural Protestantism or liberalism after WW II. It was, incidently German Protestant liberals who flocked to Hitler, while it was Barth who stood against the German Church Movement.

It was my familiarity with these developments in Europe that I was embolden to take on Cleon Skousen, despite the support given him by President Ernest Wilkinson, when Skousen started talking about a huge banker’s conspiracy that controlled the world. My quarrel with Skousen can be found in Dialogue, where we got to slug it out. Dan Peterson likes to remind me of a debate I had with Skousen in the ballroom of the Wilkinson Center. Dan claims that I thrashed Skousen. And I have read that the current editor of Dialogue thinks that my taking on Skousen was Dialogue’s finest moment. When I read her remark, I could not help but smile.

I am, I must admit, much like Dan Peterson, a Neanderthal in partisan politics. But I hate to see the poison rhetoric and all that wild unfounded, absurd claims. If you have read my essay entitled “Debating Evangelicals,” you will have noticed, I hope, the passion with which I stress the virtue of moderation. So there are a couple of people in my Ward who I get out the Duct Tape and tape my mouth shut, while becoming ill, when two people in my Ward begin to opine in Gospel Doctrine and the HPQ meetings. Somewhere Karl Barth once said that from the point of view of the Gospel that partisan politics is boring. I go a bit further. Is not also often quite absurd, if not demonic.

[Louis Midgley]

Tacenda:

I think you are right now trying hard to figure out what I just posted in reply to something you pasted. Amazing.

[Tacenda]

Tacenda:

I am constantly fighting to have the me behind the intense mask that presents itself in what I write peep out from behind the sometimes stuffy academic prose. There is some of my story in "Defending" and there was some in an essay entitled "Debating Evangelicals." And a great deal in the essay I wrote honoring Hugh Nibley which is entitled "A Mighty Kauri is Fallen." I remember having a look at what in my estimation the notorious buffoon who goes my the odd handle “doctor scratch” had to say about “Defending Evangelicals.” Every comment was smug bizarre mind-reading. The folks on the appropriately named MAD either could not or probably would not follow my argument. I expected or hoped for better. The reason is that for me all this is serious playfulness. And I fully expect that in a few years no one will remember my name or read what I devoted my declining years to publish. That does not trouble me. What I write is my best offering, given my limited gifts and my own deep and abiding disposition, I can place on the altar hoping thereby to gain favor with the Lord. While cleaning the chapel the other afternoon, a friend said that just reading Nibley’s “Work We Must, But the Lunch if Free” changed his life for the better. And, like a flash, the title to that essay seemed a really deft way of sorting the old business of divine mercy and our deeds. Why had I not thought of that before? After all, I have read virtually everything Nibley wrote. And, of course, we can and should learn from our critics. We actually need bigger and better critics to keep us on our toes.

You affect a whole lot more people than you know. And the more you allow people to see your vulnerabilities, for lack of a better word, the easier it is to accept your passion in defending. I love the title of the paper by Nibley. I hope to find that and read it!

ETA: I feel incredibly undeserving of getting replies from you and so many on this board because of not paying my dues in the line of study and writing, the fact that you respond at all to someone like me, is very kind.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Tacenda

[canard78]

Someone asked what I meant when I called something silly. I will try to explain. I will do so by borrowing liberally (freely) from a book I have worn out trying to learn something about the richness of the English language. Some, including me, have insisted that calling political science a science is just plain silly. Keep in mind that I taught in a department that shifted for many years to calling itself, with my approval, government rather than political science.

Now with this in mind, let me begin. One could argue that the history of what is called political science could be written in terms of the word silly. How so? Let us begin with the Old French word seely. And then turn to the German saelig, both of which mean, I think, "blessed." Now one can imagine that with the victory at Hastings by the Normans (or originally north-men from Denmark but then later from Normandy, which we all know is a place in France that was for a while...well let us skip the details, and just say that when William the ******* when in France became William the Conquerer at Hastings, when he defeated the Saxons (a word that sounds like we are talking about a people from somewhere in what we now call Germany), he managed to bring with him a French speaking class that with him that had nothing more to do all day than hunt and play. They were, if you have followed me this far, what we might call the "idle rich," or blessed--remember that German word saelig may mean blessed rather than those cursed to work, or it may even indicate something like the fun one has when all one has to do is play all day.

So I believe that the word “silly" in something like this way, which was clearly broad and crooked, came to mean idle. So what? The growth of the democratic ethos came to give a new dignity to labor or perhaps what we call work rather than what the idle rich could do all day--that is, merely hunt or play. So the idea got launched that to be idle and not work by helping in the growth of industry was mere fooling around which idle people do all day. Now I have introduced into my tale the word “foolish,” which is a rather powerful word, which is powerful much like the term antichrist, is it not? Be that as it may, those who were once blessed because they could be idle were now considered foolish. What was originally considered even a divine blessing came to be seen as being foolishly idle. And for me unthinkingly idle in resolving whether they care to place their trust is Jesus Christ rather than some alternative or perhaps just brush aside the Terrible Questions and muddle along.

I hope this helps. Spelling this out in this way has been for me fun. And I rather like fun. This is why I liked teaching rather than growing peaches or peddling used cars or whatever. But others might think that my idea of fun involves an insult directed if not at them directly then at least at something they value. And it might, I suppose. But it does not amount to an ad hominem since that sometimes is a logical fallacy and not merely a sly insult aimed at a person. The reason is that an insult is not a logical argument and hence cannot be a logical fallacy. And some personal considerations are clearly appropriate in judging whether to rely on someone without proper medical credentials when looking for treatment for one’s cancer or dental training when looking for someone to save your hurting tooth. Or someone who really knows population genetics when one would like to have help in sorting talk about DNA and the Book of Mormon, or someone other than a Paul Pry Jr to give an insider’s account of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and so forth. This is my way of saying that some people are silly in the sense of being foolish when not owning their faith. But this opens still another can of worms, does it not. Please notice that I said foolish, which we all are here below, and not simply a fool, which is a naughty thing to say, I am sure. In responding in this way I am being seriously playful, or playfully serious. If we take ourselves seriously, then we will not end up taking the gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. We are on trial and not God.

You score points for combining two of my favourite topics into one post (etymology and the Norman conquest). Very interesting and I learned something new.

I appreciate your explanation of the word "silly" and why you use it.

A couple of further thoughts. Please don't presume that all who engage with the concept of "why stay" are all "unthinkingly idle in resolving whether they care to place their trust is Jesus Christ rather than some alternative or perhaps just brush aside the Terrible Questions and muddle along."

If offense has been taken by some it is perhaps because of the implied message that a person taking a "middle way" or "muddling along" as you put it have also brushed aside the terrible question and resolve to trust Jesus Christ. I certainly haven't done either of those things. I just can't currently see a route to a conclusive answer to those questions. While in the hiatus of uncertainty I try to live as best I can, I muddle along, with the hope and aspiration of eventually finding a resolution one way or another (hopefully 'in,' not 'out'). While I muddle along and on the days my doubts seem heavier than usual I still think it is better for me to stay 'in.' Perhaps the situation I've described and the definition you've given means your article doesn't apply to me. But reading it, I got the impression it did. Based on your further clarifications, I wonder whether there are a lot of people who should stop gnashing their teeth over it and accept you're writing to a very short list of people.

That brings me onto another thing. I work in researching advertising. As I often tell my clients, it matters very little what brilliant words the copywriter has come up with, it matters only what message the audience has taken out. If the priority is "get the right response by delivering the intended message" (and not, indulge in words, metaphors and language that only the brand team can understand) then sometimes the words used need to change or be adapted. Sometimes the copywriter gets frustrated at the ignorance of the audience. "Why can't they understand me" they ask, "why should I be the one to change my beautifully crafted language."

However frustrating it is for the message sender, if the audience get a different message, it's always the senders job to change the language being used. As such, your use and definition of the word "silly" being applied to a small, specific group of people who have forsaken the quest to answer the terrible question, when they once had (in your perception) the very answer is a reasonable one.

The reality is that a wider audience read your article than the intended short-list. And most of them understand the word "silly" by it's more recent definition which, to be fair to the definition, existed long before any of us was born, so isn't really the fault of the audience:

The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (c.1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (late 13c.), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1570s).

Some 'NOMs' (I personally distance myself from the name) may well individually (not collectively) be lacking in reason and be feeble in mind. But answering the question "why stay", (for a lot of people, myself included) takes a very firm mind and a great deal of reasoning. It's not a question I take remotely lightly.

As such, as the sender of the message you may want to consider the impact and receipt of the message as understood, not just as sent.

[canard78]

Canard has asked me what my response to the following more general questions: "If a Latter-day Saint develops uncertainty, to the point where the convictions they once had are no longer strong enough to embrace all aspects of church history, church teachings and the gospel as taught and applied by the LDS today, should they leave, or should they weigh up the benefits and find reasons to still remain a part of the fold? If a member does not have the certainty that you and others express, but still wants to find reasons for staying active and involved, why are they "silly" for finding a positive balance of reasons to "stay lds?"

My answer is that none of this is clear to me. First, I do not understand what it means for a Latter-day Saint to develop uncertainty. Why? The fact is that we all live with uncertainly unless we have what has been called a primitive naive faith--that is, a faith that has not encountered other alternatives. Virtually every LDS family has experiences this. When children discover, as they do in our society, that there are other possible ways of being in this world, some and even many choose some other way. But no one who come to faith from outside the circle of faith can have this common experience. And in our profoundly secular world, which includes sometimes almost rabid critics of our faith, it is hard to imagine anyone who could be entirely unaware that both the content and historical grounds of the new faith they have freely chosen is not challenged by other possibilities. In some way countercultists may even do us a favor in helping to weed out those who otherwise would not know what they were getting into. And secular critics do the same thing. When we face those challenges, which I believe most of the Saints in one way or another we all eventually face, we undergo a crisis. I believe that I explained that a crisis commonly identifies a point at which one either lives or dies, in this case in faith. (I have written about this in several essays.)

If and when we find ways of resolving a crisis, we end up with a stronger and more thoughtfully sound and resolute and mature faith. Somewhere our scriptures call this sort of thing a test of our faith, after which we can see a blessing.

I do not at all advocate a kind of cost-benefit analysis in which we size up how much more disposable income or free time we would have if we bagged going to boring meetings on Sunday over against having friends and a kind of handy social club and a group we can call upon to load and unload our possession if and when we move our residence, or a group we can peddle insurance to, and so forth. I do not think that these are the items one ought to weighs. I do not know I do not know what you weigh. And I don’t see how or why you use the word balance. I think you may mean choice. If so, I am all the way with you.

I addressed something like what you might have in mind in an essay entitled "The Utility of Faith Reconsidered," in the Festschrift for Truman Madsen. It turns out that even some of the most careful thinkers who themselves do not believe in the reality of God can see the social utility of faith in God. For some like Alexis de Tocqueville the utility of faith (or what they call religion) is its truth. I think we need to join forces with those types in opposition to those who trace all the many evils in this world back to what they designate and then denigrate as religion.

The fact is that our faith–what can be called the prophetic truth claims–is historical. Let me explain. We we live by and in stories. I have written a lot about this. When we confront historical accounts, and the gospel is such an account, we cannot have proof. This is why I argued that everyone is an apologist for whatever they believe, if they are at all rational. And also why I make a big fuss about the absurdity of talk about objective historians and history. When any of us tell stories, there is always necessarily both uncertainty and a perspective. And, in addition, all all the attempts to explain away the grounds and contents of the faith of the Saint are also challenged by uncertainties.

I am, of course, troubled by much in our past. I don't like what happened at Mountain Meadows, and a host of other things like the idea that Blacks could not be ordained to the priesthood. But I do not get my bowels in a knot over these sorts of things, which are merely public relations problems for the community of Saints, unless we wrongly expect what our current ideological horizon sees as perfection in ourselves and our leaders. Unfortunatly at times we approach these issues from what is a mirror image of a Protestant fundamentalist heresy about both human and divine things.

You then put your question differently: "If a Latter-day Saint was unable to resolve their doubts and uncertainties but could live faithfully, while doubtfully, would you encourage them to stay, for whatever reason they can find. Or do you think the doctrine invites them to leave entirely and reject all fellowship with their Mormon associates?" I don't feel a burning need to try with my limited intellectual gifts to resolve my doubts and uncertainties. I have looked for as many reasons to doubt the gospel as I could find. Doing this sort of thing is what I did with my students while teaching at BYU.

I began my academic career by taking a long and very hard look at the most radical challenge to my own faith that I could find. This then became the topic for my dissertation. In the second issue of Dialogue one can find a sketch of my way of dealing with Paul Tillich's challenge to my then still somewhat naive faith. And subsequently I have been on the hunt for the best possible sectarian and secular challenges to my faith. As I said in “Defending,” no one wants or should want their faith to be merely wishful thinking. And so we all should be gearing up to give a response to one like Tillich or Dawkins or whoever who demands from us even indirectly the reasons for our faith. Put another way, we are or should be apologists for what we believe. Hence the title of my essay. And the energy and emphasis in it, which I know annoys some because they see me as a mindless ideologue bent on harming those trying their best to hold onto the iron rod on their faith journey.

Thanks also for this explanation. I would agree that living faithfully 'in' uncertainty is a good thing.

It currently means my trumpet gives an uncertain sound. I try to avoid blowing it too loudly or playing the tune of uncertainty around people whose faith I might undermine. I tend to keep those 'songs' to myself for now - except of course under the cloak of anonymity on this board, for which I am grateful as it at leaves gives me a partial outlet. Even on here I'm mindful of the faith of other readers so try to be balanced in my questions and expressions of doubt.

Some people can stand in testimony meeting and say they "know without a shadow of a doubt" about things that, I feel, will always be an uncertainty. Some people say "I know" because they "have no doubt" and "feel certain" (even about things which the dichotomy of the past and future means that they can't really ever be).

You speak of a "primitive naive faith." I get the impression that a lot of people at church are in this status. I think a lot of my struggles is the realisation of how naive I was to the reality and problems of LDS past. Even a convert can be in a naive faith. Most converts will hear only the 'Preach my Gospel' and 'Gospel Principles' version of church history and church doctrine. We are comfortable baptising 'naive' converts. I you asked most full time missionaries (or even a mission president) whether an investigator should read the full history of the church or all of Mormon teachings before baptism, we both likely know the answer. I appreciate that many people can successfully navigate their whole life in naivety.

As such, if a person stumbles from their naivety and goes through the painful process of doubting what they once felt certain about, there may be a season when they need to find reasons to stay. I'm grateful for you sharing the fact that you empathise with the challenge of experiencing doubts and getting through them. It brings hope.

When I was about 16-17 I went through a season of doubts about the church's truth claims (without knowing the extent of the history issues). For a while I wanted to stop attending, I wanted to try some other things and other theologies/philosophies. Fortunately the Bishop's daughter was very pretty and very active. I was trying to impress both her and her father. For a few weeks, the only reason I "stayed" was to see this girl. Over time I found an increased conviction and testimony of the restoration and reality of the saviour. But for a while, the answer to "why I stay" was nothing more than teenage hormones. Silly? Perhaps... Fortunate? Certainly.

Wind forward umpteen years (and no, my wife's not the teenager in the story) and I find myself in a similar situation. Rather than impressing a girl (my girl today would be happy for me to stop altogether), I find other reasons to stay during what I hope is a passing season. I don't know what the next season will be. I hope Spring follows my Winter. Until it does, and while I don't have the spiritual confidence to stay and engage for the reasons you propose, I will rely on other, sometimes more practical, reasons for doing so.

[Calm]

You affect a whole lot more people than you know. And the more you allow people to see your vulnerabilities, for lack of a better word, the easier it is to accept your passion in defending. I love the title of the paper by Nibley. I hope to find that and read it!

ETA: I feel incredibly undeserving of getting replies from you and so many on this board because of not paying my dues in the line of study and writing, the fact that you respond at all to someone like me, is very kind.

Tacenda's, here is a link to Nibley's paper:

http://mimobile.byu.edu/?m=5&table=transcripts&id=119

[Tacenda]

Tacenda's, here is a link to Nibley's paper:

http://mimobile.byu.edu/?m=5&table=transcripts&id=119

Thanks for the link and your time!

[Louis Midgley]

Atomic:

I hope this thread, which I did not start, has proved enlightening. If you have questions about "Defending," I would be pleased to provide answers.

[Louis Midgley]

For those who might be interested in having some information on the extent of differences within what has been known as the evangelical movement which emerged among conservative Protestants after WW II, this morning my essay entitled "Evangelical Controversy: A Deeply Divided Movement" was posted earlier today. See http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/evangelical-controversy-a-deeply-fragmented-movement/. Please note that this journal is not called Mormon Interpreter.. There is, of course, an Interpreter Foundation that published Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. For me the initials MI stand for my friend Massimo Introvigne, an Italian patent attorney who heads what is called CESNUR, which is Massimo's effort to contribute to the study of what are now often called "new religious movements" from a Roman Catholic perspective. It was a fantasy of a very strange gossip on different board who formed the false notion that there is now something called "Mormon Interpreter."

I would enjoy reactions to my essay. So let the questions and complaints now be posted on this thread, since I have no idea how to start a new thread and I am probably not permitted to so so even if I knew how.

[canard78]

For those who might be interested in having some information on the extent of differences within what has been known as the evangelical movement which emerged among conservative Protestants after WW II, this morning my essay entitled "Evangelical Controversy: A Deeply Divided Movement" was posted earlier today. See http://www.mormonint...nted-movement/. Please note that this journal is not called Mormon Interpreter.. There is, of course, an Interpreter Foundation that published Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture. For me the initials MI stand for my friend Massimo Introvigne, an Italian patent attorney who heads what is called CESNUR, which is Massimo's effort to contribute to the study of what are now often called "new religious movements" from a Roman Catholic perspective. It was a fantasy of a very strange gossip on different board who formed the false notion that there is now something called "Mormon Interpreter."

I would enjoy reactions to my essay. So let the questions and complaints now be posted on this thread, since I have no idea how to start a new thread and I am probably not permitted to so so even if I knew how.

You're probably better off starting a new topic given the comment you've made is 15 pages deep into this thread and will be missed by most.

Go to the main page of 'General Discussions.' Click on 'Start New Topic.' (circled in red here... it won't be on the actual page). On the next page put the title of the topic in 'Topic Title' (skip the field saying 'Tags') and then write your topic starter in the main text box (or copy over your latest comment from here). Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'Post New Topic.'

If you get stuck, let someone know and I'm sure we'll all be happy to help.