“Jeremy Runnells and Anti-Mormon Bravado”

Mr. Jeremy Runnells believes (sincerely, I think) that I’ve led a campaign of lies against him for two or three years, smearing him and attacking him personally.  And so forth.  He’s told me so repeatedly in various brief but remarkably unpleasant online encounters, including an unexpected one that extended over the past several hours.

It’s not true.

It’s also not true, despite his claims, that I’m obsessed with him.  Not even slightly.  He points, as evidence, to three short blog entries that I’ve written about his work.  I don’t know whether his count is precisely accurate, but it’s almost certainly in the ballpark and I’ll accept it.  I post several hundred blog entries annually; that I’ve posted three referring to him since 2014 argues for a strikingly low level of interest in his work on my part — which is precisely accurate.  If anything, I’ve thought that I ought to devote some time to his magnum opus since it’s had a negative impact on too many people, but I just haven’t been able to muster the interest.  Which makes me feel guilty.  I read it through once, and it was all I could do to keep going.  I found it utterly exasperating.  Page after page after page.

I did, it’s true, once do a presentation at the annual FairMormon conference focused on his writing, at the suggestion of someone who was then a FairMormon officer.  (I hadn’t made up my mind to do it, but then I saw that topic listed as my subject in the program.  So, I thought, “Why not?”)  That’s my only substantial engagement with what he’s written.  That’s the only time, and the only reason, that I read it.

Now, though, Robert Boylan has put together a little item that I think is link-worthy:

http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.ch/2017/07/jeremy-runnells-and-anti-mormon-bravado.html

My linking to it will surely reinforce the perception of a persecuting obsession on my part.  But I’m linking to it anyway.  Why not?

Posted from Honolulu, Hawaii