{"id":96220,"date":"2022-08-13T15:12:25","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T21:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=96220"},"modified":"2022-09-11T23:41:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T05:41:53","slug":"ranking-books-to-rankle-believers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/08\/ranking-books-to-rankle-believers.html","title":{"rendered":"Ranking books to rankle believers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a9<\/p>\n

\"Moroni<\/a>
Torlief Knaphus\u2019s sculpture of the Angel Moroni stands atop the Hill Cumorah
(LDS Media Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a very, very long day, and it\u2019s late, and I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 (For that matter, I\u2019m still not entirely over jet lag.)\u00a0 So I think that I\u2019ll repost something from about five years ago that you might have missed:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was considerable buzz back in 2014 about the results of a Facebook survey<\/a> asking people which books had \u201cstayed with you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A writer for Salt Lake City\u2019s Deseret News<\/em> emphasized the fact that both the Bible (which came in sixth) and the Book of Mormon (which ranked thirty-fifth) made the \u201ctop fifty\u201d out of the first hundred books yielded up by the survey. \u00a0I confess that I myself was pleasantly surprised.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Predictably, however, some critics of Mormonism<\/a>, eager for any evidence, real or imagined, of its marginality and insignificance\u00a0\u2014 perhaps a rather ironic stance for them to assume,\u00a0given the remarkable amount of time and attention that they themselves devote to the Church, day in and day out \u2014 rushed to note that fully thirty-four books ranked\u00a0higher<\/em> than the Book of Mormon on that list.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But perhaps we should examine the list just a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pretty good assembly\u00a0of books that are worth reading. \u00a0Quite interesting, really. \u00a0One could do worse than to simply read through the hundred.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Bible among the top twenty are J. K. Rowling\u2019s Harry Potter books, Harper Lee\u2019s To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/em> and The Hobbit<\/em> (listed separately), and Jane Austen\u2019s Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. \u00a0With the exception of Ms. Rowling\u2019s books \u2014 which I haven\u2019t read (I may be the only person in North America who hasn\u2019t even seen the movies based on them) \u2014 I can personally say that I really, really like them. \u00a0I am, in fact, an unusually passionate fan<\/em> of them, and have<\/em> been, for years. \u00a0I can see why so many of those surveyed named them as having been influential in their lives and thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it seems very odd to me that anybody would seriously\u00a0want to conclude from these rankings that Harry Potter is more important<\/em> than Genesis (or, even, than Pride and Prejudice<\/em>), or that To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> is a more significant book than is, say, the gospel of Luke or of\u00a0John.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Critics guffawed over the fact that, in the list, such books as Lois Lowry\u2019s The Giver<\/em>, and Khaled Hosseini\u2019s The Kite Runner<\/em>, and Stephen King\u2019s The Stand<\/em>, and, even, Orson Scott Card\u2019s Ender\u2019s Game<\/em> outranked the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 (I can imagine Scott Card\u2019s reaction \u00a0to the news.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of these books were simply currently popular. \u00a0Fashionable. \u00a0Even recently on screen. \u00a0(A film based on The Giver<\/em>\u00a0was being shown nationally at about that time.) \u00a0Would they, will they, they last for decades, like Hemingway\u2019s The Old Man and the Sea<\/em> (#71)? \u00a0For a century, like Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenina<\/em> (#83)? \u00a0For millennia, like Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em> (#89)?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who knows? \u00a0Who can predict?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet they beat Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Homer. \u00a0As, it should be pointed out, did the Book of Mormon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those mocking\u00a0what they chose to regard as the Book of Mormon\u2019s relatively low ranking should have noted that it not only beat out Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Homer, but important volumes by Nobel laureates such as\u00a0John Steinbeck and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Herman Hesse and Elie Wiesel, classics by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens and Alice Walker and Sun Tzu and Oscar Wilde and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Mark Twain, and\u00a0bestsellers by such authors as Dan Brown and Anne Rice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the ranking of the Book of Mormon showed it to be marginal and ridiculous, unworthy of serious attention, what of those<\/em> books?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And what of the many great classics that didn\u2019t make the list at all, such as Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost<\/em>, Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em>, Chaucer\u2019s Canterbury Tales<\/em>, Darwin\u2019s Origin of Species<\/em>, Augustine\u2019s Confessions<\/em>, Goethe\u2019s Faust<\/em>, and Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear<\/em>, or, for that matter, any of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, or Kant?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Did their failure to make the cut in this particular survey prove them insignificant and silly?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And many of these particular critics, in my experience with them, are secularists \u2014 either atheists or agnostics. \u00a0So, one might ask, where on this list were the works of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Victor Stenger. \u00a0Or, even, those of Bertrand Russell?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the Book of Mormon was to be mocked because it only ranked thirty-fifth, shouldn\u2019t those authors be dismissed because they failed to make even the top one hundred?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact is that this list, while interesting, was itself of no great cosmic significance. \u00a0It didn\u2019t prove the Book of Mormon true, but it also didn\u2019t demonstrate the Book of Mormon to be ridiculous, silly, and marginal. \u00a0If anything, the list was pretty good company to be in. \u00a0What other books first published in America in 1830 are still read today? \u00a0What other book first published in America around 1830 made the rankings? \u00a0There are relatively few books on the list, as a matter of fact, that date to before 1900, and even fewer that were first published in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But if there is any significance in the list it is, perhaps, this: \u00a0The Book of Mormon is still widely\u00a0read after\u00a0nearly two centuries \u2014 overwhelmingly, most books don\u2019t last anywhere near that long \u2014 which is remarkable in itself. \u00a0And it continues to be found meaningful by enough contemporary people that it ranked quite high among the relatively few books that they\u00a0say have \u201cstayed with them.\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s real empirical testimony, broadly based, to real power in a book.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And one wonders, by the way, where the New Testament would have ranked among contemporary books if such a survey had been conducted around AD 200.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, though, is some real reason to complain and to wax indignant.\u00a0 As should be obvious, it comes directly from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cChurch Donates State-of-the-Art Medical Oxygen Plant in Paraguay: The facility is the most modern in the country\u2019s public health system\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shouldn\u2019t there be a law against such crimes?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Re-posted from Matten bei Interlaken, Switzerland<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a9 \u00a0 I\u2019ve had a very, very long day, and it\u2019s late, and I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 (For that matter, I\u2019m still not entirely over jet lag.)\u00a0 So I think that I\u2019ll repost something from about five years ago that you might have missed: \u00a0 There was considerable buzz back in 2014 about the results of a 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