John Dehlin Responds By Podcast

[mfbukowski]

In view of the image that others have carefully cultivated for me as a mean-spirited and unscrupulous villain, I got a kick out of an encounter early this evening:

As I walked through the BYU Bookstore, having just picked up a pair of Valentine's Day gifts for my wife, a woman caught me and gushed compliments (as well as sorrow over the recent purge at the Maxwell Institute). The part of her comments that caught my attention went something like this: "I love your wit. It's so hard to be both witty and kind, as you are."

As she said it, I imagined a number of my critics with their heads exploding from the sheer overexertion of trying to process so foreign a thought.*

The amusing thing is, however, that she captures what I've often tried to do far better than my critics have. I've frequently employed what I, at least, regard as wit -- typically, my critics won't even grant that -- in order to avoid more blunt statements of disagreement. I prefer the rapier to the meat cleaver. I could use a meat cleaver if I desired, but I don't desire it. I could be genuinely vicious, but that's not even remotely me.

It hasn't made much difference, though. During one recent twenty-four hour period, "Kishkumen," a particularly fevered critic of mine, compared my behavior to "the Inquisition" and to that of "barracudas" and "cockroaches," pronouncing me "corrosive," "disgraceful," "rigid," "evil," a "bad man" who is guilty of both "intellectual vanity" and "vicious sadism" and who should be dragged before a Church disciplinary council and tried for my membership. His ideological Doppelgänger, my Malevolent Stalker, has pronounced me "a human dung heap" and "one of the most evil and degenerate people that the Church has ever produced." Which has never, so far as I can tell, drawn a peep of protest from any of those on their board. Instead, it’s inspired ever more energetic demands that I stop being so mean. Today, a few of them proposed a letter-writing campaign calling for the Deseret News to stop publishing my columns and for all Church-owned venues to refuse to carry anything I write.

I was a big fan of The Twilight Zone when I was very young, and it’s nice to see that the spirit of Rod Serling still lives.

* I'll soon be accused, I'm quite confident, of sadistically fantasizing about blowing up and murdering my critics.

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I'm late in getting back to this thread. For the record,

[mfbukowski]

LoL - I've been serving for about 6 months now.

I'm glad your strange ears were not relevant. My condolences.

[Robert F. Smith]

I think it better that you don't make assumptions as to my experience or background.

I based my judgments directly on the illogical, incoherent, and false historical claims made by you with such reckless abandon.

You have defined 'legitimate' in a way that makes your statement true by tautology, not by any validity, as shown in messages above and I will here as well. To say that a person's reason for leaving the church is less than legitimate is to ignore the harm the church, and people like you are doing to by dismissing the challenges in our history and evolving doctrine.

Anyone is entitled to give any sort of reason for leaving the LDS Church (or any other religious organization), but such reasons can be subjected to inquiry, and that is what researchers on religious switching regularly do. My conclusions are based on such research as well as upon many years in close association with people who have left one religion and taken up another (not just Mormonism). I have had friends convert to Judaism, for example, and did not call into question their felt need to do so (and I was even supportive), and am aware of some very prominent scholars who converted to Judaism (Bill Dever and the late Anson Rainey, both of whom I have met repeatedly and hold in very high esteem).

There may indeed be "legitimate" (logical, coherent, historical, scholarly) reasons for leaving the LDS faith, but I have yet to hear of one. In particular, I have yet to hear of one from you.

What percentage of the Church, say in the early 1970s when I served my mission, believed that "no such doctrine" existed? All the deliberations you mention with McKay were done in private with no apparent loosening up of the policy until it was announced. I was working in the Church Office Building the day it was announced, and while I remember that the air was electric with excitement, most everyone was quite surprised. As noted in the evidence Poly provided above, the Church referred to the restriction as "doctrine" over and over again.

I was surprised too, but that does not obviate the fact that there was no such doctrine. Counting the number of yokels on the head of a pin is a fallacy. The sad reality was that there were many very poorly informed LDS Church members (including Elder McConkie) who imagined that such a "doctrine" existed, only to discover that a false "policy" could only be quashed by the Lord when the people were ready. Many (including you) still do not understand what really happened.

The reason I raised this is that it is but one example of a "legitimate" reason to leave the church. When the Church in official meetings makes the claim that the Prophet will never lead the Church astray, and this "policy" becomes a prevailing doctrine of the church for 125 years, ESPECIALLY in as far as it was never officially documented as revelation, then there is a legitimate disconnect between a claim of prophetic infallibility and the action of the Church for those 125 years. Personally, I fully and completely accept that the removal of the ban was revelation -- I was there where and when it happened (not obviously in the rooms, but in contact with those that were), and it was glorious. Few have had that experience -- so for me, it's a non-issue. But the Church never has accounted for the fact that it was a mistake -- albeit McConkie's admission is refreshing. Without an official apology, and the ongoing claim of prophetic infallibility, I think there is a very legitimate reason to doubt the church's sincerity and authenticity, if I did not have a personal testimony otherwise.

Anthropomorphizing the LDS Church (or any other organization) is a fallacy, i.e., churches cannot be sincere or insincere. Moreover, there is now and never has been a doctrine of infallibility in Mormonism, even though right-wing Mormons sometimes make that silly assertion. The leaders and members of the LDS Church are fallible humans, and wiil continue to be till Kingdom come.

I spent years in regular conversations in the formation of the first internet usenet newsgroups supporting members and was the proponent, with Peggy Rogers, of soc.religion.mormon, as well as being the LDS representative for the largest interfaith council in the US.

Excellent.

The hatred and contempt by the anti-mormons is well known, but the anti-intellectual, ahistorical, and presentist characterization cuts both ways.

No one is free from the requirement of adherence to academic rigor, and there may be yokels on both sides. However, such distinctions are only useful when full demonstrations with documentation are provided.

Mormon apologists have constructed a very narrow interpretation of history in order to justify an near-infallible church and scriptural history that largely gets ignored by mainstream historians (e.g. LDS claims of Book of Mormon historicity are not supported by a consensus of non-mormon native american archaeologists). To say that anti-mormon claims are anti-intellectual or ahistorical is to ignore the facts before us.

I know of no justification for such a statement. What "facts" or interpretation of "facts" are you citing or suggesting?

No Mormon scholars I know apply narrow interpretations of history (the shoe is on the other foot), nor do they ever suggest any sort of doctrine of infallibility. Instead, they apply standard canons of religious and historical inquiry and criticism, as practiced at mainstream universities throughout the world (where they got their degrees).

No non-Mormon archaeologists have ever to my knowledge actually studied the Book of Mormon and carried on any sort of serious scholarly inquiry into its status as either fiction or fact.

What I find strange is that people like you make such absolutist claims when a more mature, sanguine judgment of the situation is in order.

Perhaps you could supply some examples of "a more mature, sanguine judgment of the situation."

I would certainly welcome something other than the rantings of yokels to which we have become accustomed.

Given the lack of transparency in the data, and the known fact that Church rolls contain significantly higher numbers than respective census data, I simply question whether the Church is in fact growing in terms of total active members over and above biological growth. It's a legitimate question. Do you know the answer? I don't.

It is a legitimate question, and calls for an entire thread, wayfarer, but we have been there before on this board. I think it a copout to ignore the available data and those able to provided interpretation.

That is all a very refreshing view, and I agree, whole-heartedly. Yet so many church leaders and many here demand absolute obedience to every utterance of the prophets, even if and when there is no clear revelation from the Lord of why we do something. To say that there are 14 fundamentals of following the prophet, to say the the prophet will never lead the church astray, to require uncompromising loyalty from members on controversial political issues is to ignore that sometimes well meaning leaders, receiving revelation in their own language and erring thereby, get it profoundly wrong on occasion.

We clearly are not discussing the same LDS Church.

If I am committed to liberty, and Jefferson's oath that I swear on the altar of god eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man, then how shall I, as a moral and ethical person (by intent, at least), interpret a moral imperative to speak out and oppose tyranny when I see it in my church? I have personally experienced the harm the ban on blacks having the priesthood had on people. I have personally experienced the harm Proposition 8 has on those incapable of living the Church standards on chastity given their sexual orientation. I have personally seen the division of families when a person who doubts the literalness of church claims becomes vilified by their spouses, families, and church leaders who read Midgley's and Smith's polemic evisceration of those who question, who ask "why stay". I have seen as well how the denigration of those who have a non-literal view of Book of Mormon historicity are condemned by the Bill Hamblins of the world who insist on a "blind-faith" test of liternalness in order to be considered a Latter-day Saint.

Complete nonsense! This is deliberate yokelization of the facts, not a mature or accurate portrayal.

[

I sat down yesterday with a dear friend and former member who would like to return to the Church after 20+ years of being outside, because he dearly loves his wife and would love to support her fully in the Church. He is a very good man, as good as they come, but cannot set aside his mind and accept the extreme minority view that the Book of Mormon is literally true, and that God the Father literally has a body, etc. He has a lot of faith, but can't go lliteral, and the Stake President refused to approve rebaptism accordingly. It's sad to see. I told him that faith is not have a perfect knowledge of things, but to hope for certain things, to accept them, even if we don't know. He said he wouldn't prostitute his mind in that way. I really don't think he's overly proud here, just being in his own way, intellectually and spiritually honest with himself. He's a truly authentic person, and I admire this.

Blind leading the blind?

Edited February 25, 2013 by Robert F. Smith