Monday, Dec 7, 2015, at 07:46 AM
The Top Ten Happenings In Mopologetics, 2015
Original Author(s):
Doctor Scratch
Filed Under:
APOLOGISTS
Seasons Greetings, Friends and Colleagues! The joyous time of jingling bells, snowflakes, and creepy department store Santas is upon us once again. Maybe you've found time to escape with your special someone to the ice-skating rink, or maybe you've indulged in a hot toddy or two. Maybe cyber-Monday is your favorite shopping day of the year; maybe you make sure to sit stiffly about your living room, nodding soberly at your obedient family members while you listen rapturously and obliviously to Handel's "Messiah." The great thing--one of them, anyhow--about the Christmas season, is that it affords the opportunity for celebrations and indulgences of every stripe. Maybe, even, you prefer the simpler, more banal pleasures of the holidays, such as sitting beside a cozy, yuletide fire. Or, perhaps even more appropriately, in front of the radiant glow of a televised yule log:
Come to think of it, the log is an oft-overlooked symbol of the holiday season. There is the buche du noel, a popular cake in France:
Mushroom-growing logs are sometimes given as gifts to loved ones with green thumbs; there are festive, consumable nut logs, and the TV Food Network even offers a recipe for a delectable "Ranch Dressing Cheese Log," devised by Country Music Superstar Trisha Yearwood. It's sure to be a hit amid the potluck and buffet items in the Cultural Hall this year. (Nothing cuts through the old-sneaker / disinfectant / dust / sisal aroma of the Cultural Hall like a Ranch Dressing Cheese Log!). There may be some readers out there of a certain inclination and sensibility who remember Blammo!'s hit toy called "Log":
It's ideal for those who are still unsure about gifts for younger relatives. ("Everyone loves a Log! Everyone loves a log!")
Indeed, logs abound during the holidays, and, though you may not have realized it, they have a special--albeit somewhat vulgar--connection with Mopologetics. Not long ago, in fact, Dr. Peterson reported on Sic et Non of his journeys across Spain, and it is in fact the holiday culture of Spain that provides us with the vital link between the Christmas spirit and this year's Top Ten list.
Simply put: have you ever heard of Ti de Nadal, also known as "Caga Ti "?:
The Web site Atlas Obscura helpfully explains this unique Catalonian tradition:
In Catalan, Ti de Nadal is roughly translated to Christmas Log and is a widespread tradition in many parts of Spain.
[...]
Tradition states that households begin to "feed" the log every night starting then. The log is also usually given a small blanket during this time to keep it warm during the chilly weeks before Christmas.
After weeks of feeding, it is finally Christmas Eve and the log is placed in the fireplace, little face and beret staring up from the ground. Members of the house then take turns bashing the little log person with a stick and commanding it to defecate out presents, candies and wafers and not to defecate stinky herring. This is where the tradition got its other name, Caga ti , or s*** log.
The bashing continues while traditional songs about the log are sung. Christmas is then celebrated to the delight of everyone in the house as they reach below the ti 's blanket to pull out their "gifts" of defecated candy and presents.
Fascinating! And rather gross.... But then again, this shouldn't strike anyone familiar with Mopologetics as being all that odd. Most of us, after all, are quite aware of the rumors (recently substantiated, apparently, by Blair Hodges) that the apologists were "Command[ed]...not to defecate stinky herring." The relevance of all of this--symbolically speaking--is revelatory. Consider the fact that "traditional songs about the log are sung." [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti _de_Nadal]Wikipedia kindly lists several of them[/url]:
"Tronca de Nadal,
Caga torrons,
pixa vi blanc,
no caguis arengades,
que s n massa salades
caga torrons
que s n m s bons!"
log of Christmas,
sh*t nougats,
pee white wine,
don't sh*t herrings,
they are too salty,
sh*t nougats (turr n)
they are much better!
Log of Mopologists,
write articles,
post blog entries,
don't make concessions to Evangelicals,
they have too much money,
write Mopologetic smear-pieces,
they are much better!
Wikipedia wrote:
"Caga ti ,
caga torr ,
avellanes i mat ,
si no cagues b
et dar un cop de bast .
caga ti !"
sh*t, log,
sh*t nougats (turr n),
hazelnuts and mat cheese,
if you don't sh*t well,
I'll hit you with a stick,
sh*t, log!Defend the Book of Abraham, Mopologists,
Defend Book of Mormon historicity (LGT),
the Brethren, and jello salad,
if you don't Mopologize well,
we'll take away your funding,
Mopologize, Mopologists!
Scatological? Yes, but so is Mopologetics. 2015 was a year in which the Mopologists were once again "bashed," and though the "presents" they (ahem) left for us were a mixed big, it's nonetheless time to step back once more and to survey the year that was. Friends, I give to you The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2015....
10. DCP Affirms His Belief in Dowsing Rods. This past summer, Dr. Peterson kindly reminded us that faith comes in all guises. Whereas the Catalonians beat a hollowed out log with a stick in hopes of getting nougat, the Mopologists use a forked stick in hopes of finding buried pipes. As Dr. Peterson wrote:
I found water running through a buried pipe of which I was unaware. I didn't even know I was looking for anything.
I was simply told to allow the two metal rods free play.
They crossed at a certain point, then uncrossed. It was very distinct.
Only after repeating that several times was I told that a clay pipe ran under the floor right where the rods crossed.
I had several other people undertake the same experiment throughout that day. With one exception, they all had the same experience. (The one exception was a big burly mechanic with huge hands. I suspect that he didn't allow the rods free enough movement.)
I wasn't expecting what happened. Nothing in my worldview predicted it. It didn't fit my scientific notions, and nothing in my beliefs depended on it happening.
Yet it happened.
I found it very strange and unsettling.
When challenged on the validity of his experience, he bristled:
I don't expect you to believe it, and you shouldn't expect me to respect your amateur mind-reading or your somewhat contemptuous assignment of imagined motivations.
(Please give me a reason to permit your rather surly presence to continue here on my blog.)
I've claimed no "ability." I simply report that it happened. I've drawn no sweeping conclusions from it, I've proclaimed no theories, and I have no idea whether it would ever happen again.
You should perhaps work on being a bit less hostile.
The event was noteworthy for a couple of reasons--one being that it coincided with this years Number 1 Happening (more on that later), and another being that it reaffirmed the basic fundamentalism of Mopologetic beliefs, and their grounding in "magic." Yes, Virginia: DCP believes in Dowsing Rods.
9. M. Gerald Bradford Steps Down as Director of the Maxwell Institute. In September, the apologists at last felt the winds of revenge blowing in their favor after it was announced that their arch-nemesis, Gerald Bradford, would be retiring as Director of the Maxwell Institute. The news was celebrated widely in Mopologetic circles, with Bill Hamblin exclaiming "Goodbye to All That" and DCP accusing Bradford of making the MI vulnerable to attack:
Phillip Jenkins, a non-Mormon academic who has recently launched a series of online attacks on the Book of Mormon, can answer that question: He writes approvingly of the "subsuming" of FARMS into the "highly respectable Maxwell Institute." And how has the Institute become "highly respectable" in Jenkins's view? That's easy. It no longer includes "literal-minded apologists."
Though the apologists no doubt hope that Bradford's replacement will be the sort of "literal-minded" ideologue who supports their agenda, it remains to be seen who will be given the job. We'll have to keep an eye out during 2016.
8. The Mopologists Concede that the CES Letter has "Done Damage". In October, the Mopologists made a startling admission--namely, that Jeremy Runnels's widely-circulated "Letter to a CES Director" had "one substantial damage to the faith of a number of Latter-day Saints." Though FAIR, Mormon Interpreter, and other Mopologist organizations have mounted considerable efforts to counter the arguments in the "Letter," it continues to pose significant problems for them. Indeed, there were few other critical texts in 2015 that summoned up more sneering, anger, and disdain amongst the apologists, and one is left to wonder if the "Letter"'s influence will carry over into 2016, and the apologists continue to face growing opposition, apathy, and TBM knuckle-headedness.
7. "The World Table" is Revealed to Be a For-Profit Venture. The colossal and spectacular failure known as "The World Table," which initially promised to "revolutionize the way we interact online," was re-tooled and re-released in 2015, and it was revealed that the entire project was intended (apparently) as a moneymaking scheme, as some critics had first suspected. As the affable poster Markk reported back in May, "The leadership, link below, are a majority of LDS folks and it, the forum [i.e., The World Table], was nothing more than a beta scam for their software." During its first run, The World Table was roundly criticized for its bizarre rating system, which had posters rating each other on the basis of qualities like "Honesty" and so forth. Monologist posters like Ray A, Pahoran, and DCP carried abysmal ratings for much of the original test-run, and they had to be temporarily banned. Meanwhile, some critics wondered if the site--which required the use of real names, and, eventually, extensive proof of identity (like credit card statements and scans of driver's licenses)--was merely a scheme to "out" critics of the Church. Whatever the case, The World Table continued its shaky march out into the public sphere, with DCP expressing hope that "it will do well."
6. Censorship on FAIR, "Spoll Forn Spira," and "Sic et Non." 2015 was a year in which censorship by Mopologists reared its ugly head yet again. On John Gee's blog, "Forn Spoll Fira," he launched a vicious attach on "Mormon Studies" advocates--accusing people of failing to uphold their covenants and of being bad Mormons--only to later delete his posting entirely. On "Sic et Non," Dr. Peterson ratcheted up his policy of banning or silencing problematic posters, while threatening to do so to others on a near-daily basis. Perhaps most notably, though, was FAIRMormon's "cleansing" of commentary from "pastoral apologist" Bill Reel in a transcript of a panel at the 2013 FAIR Conference. Evidently, Reel wasn't friendly enough toward's FAIR's standard policy of operations, which has led to his alienation from the group.
All in all, the events underscore yet again that Mopologists cannot operate on a level playing field, argument-wise, and they must inevitably resort to tactics like censorship.
5. John Gee Attacks "Mormon Studies." Though some of his more biting remarks were ultimately "censored," John Gee nonetheless didn't hold back very much in his blog postings on the direction of the "new Maxwell Institute" and its involvement in Mopologetics. Gee apparently attended a panel discussion at UVU on LDS apologetics, and he wasn't at all pleased with what he heard there. A short sampling of his account:
Brian Hauled....argued that apologetics should not be a full-contact sport. He said that apologetics ought to be done in such a fashion that no one got their feelings hurt.
Brian Birch applauded the Maxwell Institute's abandonment of defending the Church.
Julie Smith thought that apologetics was most appropriate for missionaries and seminary teachers. She thought apologetics was dangerous because it fossilized the status quo and made women collateral damage.
Ben Park thought that there should be a wall between apologetics and Mormon Studies. Maintaining a wall between the two would, he claimed, make better apologetics and better scholarship. For him Leonard Arrington and Eugene England were his heroes because they used the latest scholarly fads in their work.
The posting was notable because it marked yet another eruption of Mopologetic anger over the 2012 ejection of Mopologetics from BYU's Maxwell Institute. It also marked yet another bitter confrontation between the opposing camps, and led, more recently, to a sort of "clarification" blog posting by MI Communication Specialist Blair Hodges, who insisted that the days of the MI engaging in "innuendo, and tabloid reckoning" were over.
4. SSM Fallout: Resignations, Excommunications, and Retrenchment. One of the key political events of 2015 was the US Supreme Court's ruling, in June, in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which legalized same-sex marriage in the United States. Naturally, this was met with grim disappointment from the Mopologists, who insisted that this was just the start of a slippery slope in which the rights of all religious people would be taken away. But the event was really a kind of focal point for a number of shifting developments: notorious Mopologetics enemies like John Dehlin and Kate Kelly were excommunicated, at least partly due to (presumably) their support for SSM-related issues. More recently, a spate of LDS resigned from the Church en masse after rules were established demanding that Mormon children either denounce their gay parent's lifestyle or forfeit the blessings of baptism. One could sense in the apologists' reactions to all of this a kind of smug approval--an attitude that stands in sharp contrast to the Church's usual missionary spirit, and it emphasize yet again that the apologists' role is divisive and discriminatory in nature, rather than pastoral and welcoming.
3.The Mopologist Proteges. There have been times when the classic-FARMS apologists have been accused of alienating the younger generation of Mormon scholars and intellectuals, and over the years, some of their key supporters--like David Bokovoy and Blair Hodges--have jumped ship, expressing disappointment in the unscholarly approaches and viciousness that are so crucial to the Mopologists' tactics. In 2015, however, two key figures emerged as potential inheritors of the apologists' mantle: Stephen Smoot, and Neal Rappleye. The duo were a critical part of the countering attack against this year's Number 1 happening, but both are intriguing characters in their own right. Rappleye is the more scholarly and meditative of the two, having published a number of articles in Mopologetic venues such as Mormon Interpreter, but he isn't above snottiness and bellicosity. Smoot, meanwhile, has begun to fashion himself as a near-carbon-copy of DCP: interested more in polemics than in substance, and eager to try and make critics look stupid. It will be interesting to see how this duo--who, along with the slightly older Ugo Perego were plied with Thai food this past August--will work to shape the future of Mopologetics.
2. Assault on the "New Mormon Intellectuals." As if so often the case, the annual Top Ten list--due to appearing in early December--winds up missing out on some explosive event that unfolds right as the year winds to a close. Indeed, in late 2014 and into the early parts of 2015, and number of attacks were flung at the "Mormon Studies" crowd by the apologists. The whole skirmish got underway after Ben Park published an essay in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, which led almost immediately to an attack piece from Bill Hamblin on "Enigmatic Mirror." Meanwhile, commentary--some of it quite vicious--swirled across Patheos and elsewhere, with the blogger "smallaxe" providing useful commentary, and Dan Peterson firing off potshots of his own (comments from the posting here, and MDB thread here, though the original post on "Sic et Non" seems to have disappeared, though it is archived here). This was just the beginning, though, and what followed was a protracted series of attack pieces from the apologists, followed by mostly civil attempts on the part of the Mormon Studies folks to clarify their views. Perhaps the defining incident--or set of incidents--in this rhetorical war were a series of attacks aimed at former Mopologist supporter David Bokovoy, who was attacked by John Gee, Ralph Hancock, and Bill Hamblin at various points. (See here, for instance, or here.) The attacks were numerous and sustained, and carried on for well over a month, and are arguably still ongoing, given recent remarks from John Gee, Blair Hodges, and others.
1. Philip Jenkins Gives Bill Hamblin the "Caga Tio" Treatment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Number One Happening in the world of Mopologetics in 2015 was the much-watched exchange between Baylor University Professor Philip Jenkins and classic-FARMS Mopologist William Hamblin on the historicity of the Book of Mormon. (A complete summary of the exchanges is here.) The debate was widely seen as an epic smackdown of Mopologist views concerning the so-called "LGT" theory of Book of Mormon geography and history. Of special note was Philip Jenkins's repeated request:
P. Jenkins wrote:
I offer a question. Can anyone cite any single credible fact, object, site, or inscription from the New World that supports any one story found in the Book of Mormon? One sherd of pottery? One tool of bronze or iron? One carved stone? One piece of genetic data? And by credible, I mean drawn from a reputable scholarly study, an academic book or refereed journal, not some cranky piece of pseudo-science.Though the debate went on over the course of days, weeks, and months, no Mopologist was able to offer a satisfactory answer to this seemingly simply question. Instead, the Mopologists retreated back to the safety of their usual tactics and smokescreens: accusing Jenkins of being an "anti-Mormon"; claiming that no should should 'expect' any evidence; claiming that Jenkins was poorly read in the bogus field of "ancient Book of Mormon studies"; and so on. Though many of the arguments and counterarguments were familiar to long-time observers of Mormon apologetics, Philip Jenkins offered up a critique in the form of a highly prominent and eloquent public scholar that called attention to the apologists' argumentative shortcomings in a spectacularly obvious and noteworthy way. It was, perhaps, the most epic takedown of a key Mopologetic theory that we will see this decade, and given the way that it intersects with the apologists' fundamentalist beliefs in a literal Book of Mormon, and the way that, in turn, this figures into their battles with the 'Mormon Studies' crowd (which Jenkins calls "highly respectable"), the Jenkins/Hamblin debate really must be seen as *the* most important Happening in Mopologetics for the year of 2015.
Whew! Quite a year! Dizzying, even... One yearns for the comfort and nostalgia of candy that has been beaten from a hollowed-out log....
Now where did I put my stick?
* * * * *
Of course, there is an Honorable Mention this year:
--Louis Midgley erupts multiple times in the "Comments" sections of the Patheos blogs
--Kerry Shirts emerges as a noteworthy apostate
--Ongoing speculation about Ugo Perego and his DNA research on Joseph Smith
--Young Mormon scholars are warned that affiliation with Mopologetics will ruin their shot at graduate school
Let's all keep our fingers crossed that 2016 will offer up yet another year of splendor and intrigue. Meanwhile, please join me as we trim the Cassius University Christmas tree! Presents will be opened; logs will be whacked; libations will be quaffed. An as always, Dean Robbers will enthrall us with his idiosyncratic rendition of "The Night Before Christmas."
Happy Holidays, everyone!