{"id":17059,"date":"2015-01-19T13:15:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T20:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=17059"},"modified":"2015-01-19T14:23:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T21:23:04","slug":"book-of-mormon-historicity-and-the-siege-mentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2015\/01\/book-of-mormon-historicity-and-the-siege-mentality.html","title":{"rendered":"Book of Mormon historicity and the “siege mentality”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russell, \"The Custer Fight\"<\/a>
Rather mysteriously, artist Charles Russell titled this 1903 depiction of the old regime at FARMS or the Maxwell Institute \u201cThe Custer Fight.\u201d
(Click to enlarge.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ben Park posted an interesting interview today with Jared Hickman:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.juvenileinstructor.org\/qa-with-jared-hickman\/#more-16820<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to comment on one passage from it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cExciting things are happening in Book of Mormon studies at the moment. Within the Mormon bubble, there seems now to be increasing support for popping that bubble by moving away from a siege mentality focused on defending the historicity of The Book of Mormon. The emergence of new interlocutors laboring under broad intellectual shifts in academia over the last several years (especially the post-secular turn) has made it so that Mormons\u2014if they are willing and make themselves able\u2014can now engage in scholarly conversation about their sacred book in different ways with different people, most of whom don\u2019t have a polemical axe to grind.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let me say, first of all, that I\u2019m entirely in favor of broadening the discussion of things Mormon, including Mormon scripture, to include scholars and others beyond the Mormon community<\/a>. \u00a0I advocated it for years within the Maxwell Institute (and within its predecessor, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies or FARMS). \u00a0With others of my colleagues, I was delighted when Terryl Givens began to publish on Mormonism with Oxford University Press. \u00a0I was pleased\u00a0with Jack Welch\u2019s work on such topics as biblical law, chiasmus, and the Sermon on the Mount, in which he often bridged the Mormon\/non-Mormon gap \u2014 and continues to do so \u2014 in publications and conferences involving non-LDS scholars and audiences. \u00a0I was very pleased to see John Sorenson collaborating with non-LDS scholars and publishing for non-LDS audiences. \u00a0And so forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I think I\u2019ve said before (e.g., here<\/a>), I have no problem whatsoever with academic approaches to scripture of all kinds. \u00a0I have no problem with bracketing truth claims for certain kinds of audiences and in certain kinds of approaches. \u00a0I\u2019ve had occasional\u00a0contact, over the years, with academia, I know how these things are done, and I have no problem whatever with doing them. \u00a0I\u2019ve done them myself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That said, I have to register a gentle demurral. \u00a0I think it not unreasonable to read Dr. Hickman\u2019s reference to \u201ca siege mentality focused on defending the historicity of The Book of Mormon\u201d as referring, in whole or in part, to the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and to its successor organization, the pre-2012 Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 If that is correct, I wish to publicly reject and deny\u00a0the claim\u00a0that those of us who established and built and led what is now the Maxwell Institute were operating from within a \u201csiege mentality\u201d \u2014 a claim that\u00a0seems, to me, to suggest something of a psychological disorder, a mental or emotional dysfunction that needs to be overcome.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
An\u00a0image of the old headquarters of FARMS and the Maxwell Institute as it evidently appeared to the organization\u2019s former leaders (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Wikipedia\u2019s definition of the term siege mentality<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Siege mentality<\/b>\u00a0is a shared feeling of victimization\u00a0and defensiveness \u2014 a term derived from the actual experience of military defences\u00a0of real sieges. It is a collective state of mind whereby one believes that one is being constantly attacked, oppressed, or isolated in the face of the negative intentions of the rest of the world. \u00a0The result is a state of being overly fearful of surrounding peoples, and an intractably defensive attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That simply wasn\u2019t the mood or mindset of those who established and led FARMS and the pre-2012 Institute. \u00a0Moreover, the ability of people such as John Sorenson and Jack Welch to function within the wider academic world \u2014 I choose them because they were the two people most centrally involved in the founding of FARMS, but they were and are far from alone among FARMS-types in their openness to non-LDS academia \u2014 ought surely to hint that this \u201csiege mentality\u201d insinuation is not only insulting (which, frankly, it is) but in need of serious correction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, I would like to point out that, in fact \u2014 I could be wrong on this, but I rather suspect that I\u2019m not \u2014 most of those beyond The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> who\u2019ve given the matter even the slightest attention don\u2019t\u00a0accept the Book of Mormon as an authentic document from the Pre-Classic Americas. \u00a0To recognize this, and to argue against that consensus that the Book of Mormon is actually what it claims to be, isn\u2019t, in my judgment, to suffer from a \u201csiege mentality.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s simply to accurately perceive\u00a0the real world in which Latter-day Saints live. \u00a0It\u2019s simply to comply with the scriptural mandate to \u201cearnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints\u201d (Jude 1:3). \u00a0<\/span>And to advocate and defend a widely disputed or rejected proposition is, also, not necessarily to feel oneself besieged. \u00a0It\u2019s simply to argue for what one believes, and for what one\u2019s community has historically affirmed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said before, I thought, during my last conversation with the current director of the Maxwell Institute (back in May 2012), that we had agreed that the Institute would add a Mormon studies function \u2014 a deliberate, intentional, institutional\u00a0outreach to non-LDS scholars \u2014 to the functions for which the Institute had been created and built up until that time. \u00a0This was perfectly alright with me. \u00a0It was, actually, something I had long wanted the Institute to do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think then, and I don\u2019t think now, that it was necessary altogether (or even largely) to jettison the original mission for which the Institute had been created, and for which many had generously donated funding, and for which many others had sacrificed over roughly thirty-five years, in order to enable\u00a0Mormons to\u00a0\u201cengage in scholarly conversation about their sacred book in different ways with different people, most of whom don\u2019t have a polemical axe to grind.\u201d \u00a0That option was already open to the Institute. \u00a0It had always been open both to the Institute and to individual Mormon scholars, and the Institute could easily have fostered such activity without the upheavals and unpleasantness that in fact occurred. \u00a0The apologetic activities of FARMS and the Maxwell Institute, and the organization\u2019s non-apologetic but overtly Mormon publications more generally, didn\u2019t preclude anybody from pursuing other approaches \u2014 and didn\u2019t even bar those who wanted to pursue such other approaches from forming their own organization, if they so chose, to foster them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The historicity of the Book of Mormon matters to most believing Latter-day Saints. \u00a0They think, and the Church has always taught, that there was a real Moroni, that there were real Nephites, and that Jesus actually visited ancient America. \u00a0These beliefs needn\u2019t\u00a0be asserted as true in every academic discussion of Mormonism nor even in every treatment of Mormon scripture. \u00a0Scholarly conferences aren\u2019t testimony meetings. \u00a0Academic journals shouldn\u2019t be confused with the Ensign<\/em>. \u00a0But it isn\u2019t immediately obvious to me that backing away, wholly or in part, from overtly faithful Mormon scholarship in order to focus on faith-bracketing religious studies scholarship necessarily represents a net broadening of either audience or mission.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But then, it may be that I\u2019m just paranoid, laboring under a pitiable \u201csiege mentality.\u201d \u00a0Some, I\u2019m sure, will eagerly take this very blog entry as decisive evidence of that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Ben Park posted an interesting interview today with Jared Hickman: \u00a0 http:\/\/www.juvenileinstructor.org\/qa-with-jared-hickman\/#more-16820 \u00a0 I\u2019d like to comment on one passage from it: \u00a0 \u201cExciting things are happening in Book of Mormon studies at the moment. Within the Mormon bubble, there seems now to be increasing support for popping that bubble by moving away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBook of Mormon historicity and the "siege mentality"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Ben Park posted an interesting interview today with Jared Hickman:  \" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2015\/01\/book-of-mormon-historicity-and-the-siege-mentality.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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