Introducing the Topic and Guests

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 804

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:29] Hello, everyone, who's listening out there on Facebook. This is Dan Wotherspoon. I'm the host of the Mormon Matters podcast. I'm with my good friend and a longtime conversation partner, John Dehlin. Welcome, John. You're the host of Mormon Stories. I'm the host of the Mormon Matters podcast.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] It's good to see you, Dave. It's good to be here. Thanks for making this happen. I'm excited.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:49] You bet. I'm glad that we're going to be co releasing this podcast together through both of us, and we're looking forward to having some online participation from those who are tuning in. We are really excited today to talk about a topic that in some ways is very controversial and it has like this nasty taste in its mouth.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:10] And it's the term apologetics or it's the act of defending the faith and it's so often maligned and people say, oh, no, I'm not an apologist, I'm avoiding that label. Others embrace it, but for the most part, it's sort of become a pejorative term in many ways for many people. And I think the main reason for that is that for so many, it's like apologetics is only done when you already know the answer. And no matter what, you're going to work your way to get that answer, you know, justified or, you know, shored up or something like that. And it doesn't feel like an open ended discussion, but there's much more to it than just that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:52] And so we're gonna talk today about the role of apologetics within Mormonism, the history of it a little bit, but then mostly with John leading that part of the discussion later, we're gonna talk about apologetics and the way it's being done today. So along with John and I, we have Brian Burch with us, who's the head of the center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley University. He's a fellow Claremonter with me a couple years behind me there at Claremont, and we got to know each other there and we've been great friends and even little golfing partners since. So, Brian, welcome.

Brian Birch [00:02:28] Thanks for having me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:29] Dan and Patrick Mason, welcome as well. You are the Claremont Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies. And how many years now? Three? Four?

Patrick Mason [00:02:39] Six?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:40] Oh, my heck, man. Yeah. And you're even the head of the whole School of Religion right now.

Patrick Mason [00:02:47] I'm the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:49] Oh, Arts and Humanities, which includes religion and things. So, busy guy. Thanks for taking some time with us.

Patrick Mason [00:02:55] No, thrilled to be here. Thanks.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:56] We caught you on your last day of a trip to Utah, so we're glad we were able to do that. So John and I quickly. Let's just. John, you have an event to announce. I have a quick event to announce. I probably should have done this before I introduced everybody. I just wanted to remind everybody who's interested. A week from Friday we begin a Mormon Matters retreat which is the 13th through the 15th. It's in salt Lake City on the east side. It's really easy to get to. It's just a wonderful gathering of a bunch of people who are going to wrestle with our faith and our engagement within Mormonism and things like that.

What Is Mormon Apologetics and Why It Matters

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:35] It's kind of geared towards those who are trying to make Mormonism work but are occasionally a little frustrated or feel like they're left out or they're not quite sure how to engage and share their selves authentically. So Natasha Parker and I, along with Jana Spangler, are going to be leaving that and there's lots of information@mormonmatters.org and please sign up. Thanks, John. You have one at least coming up this month too as well.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] Yeah, yeah. We're having a one day workshop called Rebuilding youg Life After a Mormon Faith Crisis. It's going to be in Utah County, Salt Lake City area, and it's going to be an all day thing and we're really excited about it. Go to mormonstories.org events to register and to find out more information about it. And then I'll just say that Open Source foundation is looking for a web designer. So if there's anyone out there who knows WordPress, WordPress templates, WordPress frameworks, we are looking for a designer.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:33] Great. Super good. All right, so I'm back to the real thing here. So Brian, I'm going to throw to you first. Patrick, jump in at any time. So we're going to kind of more focus in the second half on, you know, your kind of work and some of your colleagues and what you guys are doing within Mormonism a little bit later. But Brian, you wrote an essay. It's a wonderful essay kind of overviewing the history of Mormon apologetics. It's in a new volume from Greg Coford Books called Perspectives in Mormon Theology Apologetics. I think you're one of the co editors of the series, am I right?

Brian Birch [00:05:10] Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:11] And this particular volume was Blair Van Dyke and Lloyd Erickson who were the editors. But your essay sort of served as an overview of things within Mormonism. Some of the earlier essays though, at least kind of framed more broadly the field of apologetics and what the terms mean and things like that. Do you recall that, or do you want me to lead out in this section about, you know, what's the origin of the term? You know, it sounds like you're apologizing, but it's not that.

Brian Birch [00:05:39] So, yeah, I'm happy to give a little bit of background. Just generally speaking, apologetics goes way back to classical times, Right. We have the famous apology of Plato connected to the trial of Socrates. So the word itself comes from the Greek word apologos, which essentially means speech in defense of oneself.

Brian Birch [00:06:09] And the term was taken up into Christian thought as Christianity began to expand from Palestine to the broader Roman world, as converts joined. Some of them were very well educated and sought to reconcile central Christian teaching with the learning of the day. And in the second century, for example, you have a number of thinkers who were writing texts that were attempting to reconcile Christian theology with Platonic philosophy, with Stoic thought. There are a number of different ways in which early Christian scholars were attempting to defend Christianity against criticisms that were coming from a variety of directions, depending on the schools of thought of the day. So it has a very early origin, and it's continued on in various forms since.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:07:12] Cool. And within your. By framing it there, you were saying that apologetics were doing. Was doing two things. In some degree, they were responding to critics, and other ways they were doing, reconciling. They were trying to make it as the most robust version they could, given the understandings of their day and things like that. And so there are these sort of these two strains of apologetics that the volume talks about, too. Do you want to quickly go into those?

Brian Birch [00:07:38] Yeah, just in broad terms, one of the key distinctions is that between what is called positive apologetics and negative apologetics, where positive apologetics seeks to establish one truth or other of Christian thought through the use of reason and empirical observation, science and the like. Where negative apologetics is more modest in its attempt to deflect or diffuse criticisms of Christianity. And they've been employed in various ways and in, you know, different times in Christian history. But even in the earliest efforts by Justin Martyr and Tertullian, you know, some of the early apologists believed that Plato was an unbaptized Christian because his thought, in their eyes, was so closely connected to the teachings of the New Testament. Others were less ambitious and optimistic and merely attempted to parry and respond to criticisms that were leveled by the thinkers of the day.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:54] Cool. Patrick, is there anything on this broader background of the terms, the two type apologetics that occur to you at this point to speak up to before we kind of move into the Mormon versions of this?

Patrick Mason [00:09:06] No, I think that's a great overview. And so I will continue to defer to my colleague, Brian.

Brian Birch [00:09:15] I was hoping I could defer to you, Dan. One thing I might add is, you know, just. I mean, I started with early Christianity, and that's a fun period with the early Church fathers. But one thing that needs to be mentioned, I think, before we jump into the Mormon context, is just how apologetics is done within, you know, Christian theology and philosophy today. And, you know, there's been a very active tradition in Protestant thought and more particularly within evangelical Christian thought, where, you know, there's a very well defined conversation that's been going on for a few centuries regarding how best to connect, you know, faith and reason, Christian thought with science.

Brian Birch [00:10:04] And it's been a fascinating journey for Protestant thought. And there's some really, really interesting connections between what's happening in that conversation and what we see at least beginning to happen within a Mormon context. So I think that'd be a fun thing to explore a little bit if we have some time.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:10:27] Yeah, no, I hope we will.

Patrick Mason [00:10:29] Well, and I jump in and say, so it's been very robust in Protestant context, but also in Catholic circles as well. I mean, one of the most famous modern pieces of apologetics was John Henry Newman's apologia when he was a famous Anglican prelate who converted to Catholicism. And so he wrote this extensive apologia for essentially explaining why he decided to convert and join the Roman Catholic Church. So it's a robust tradition in various strains of Christianity.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:02] Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Hey, Patrick, while I got you right there, there's a light shining, like, right on your lips. So I don't know if you want to just adjust something.

Patrick Mason [00:11:11] I think that's a metaphor, Dan.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:13] There you go. That's right. The light is coming from you. Anyway, thanks, brother.

Patrick Mason [00:11:18] All right, Is that better?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:20] Now, John, you're monitoring the online stuff. Is there anything that's happening there that you wanted to bring in, or is there anything at this sort of basic level?

John Dehlin [00:11:28] Just one commenter wrote, thanks for the distinction between positive and negative apologetics. I got the definition of negative. Will someone just repeat the definition of positive apologetics one more time? Brian, do you mind doing that?

Brian Birch [00:11:40] Oh, in broad terms, it's the effort to prove or establish the truth of one tenet or another, the faith, based upon rational argument or some kind of empirical argument.

John Dehlin [00:11:56] Yeah, okay. Versus trying to Deflect or diffuse criticisms.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:01] And to me, you can even go broader than that. I mean, Brian's sticking with the technical term, but it's really, in some ways you could say you're doing at least a form of positive apologetics if you're just trying to present the most robust version of your theology, the most robust version of your tradition and all its richness and depth and things like that. And there's generally a reason when you're doing that, as you're saying right now we're concentrating on this lesser aspects or we kind of lost the forest from the trees. I don't know. Patrick and Brian, do you sort of agree that that's okay to call that positive apologetics when I'm talking about Waters?

Brian Birch [00:12:42] The term is applied different ways and broad context. You can say that, you know, efforts to create a kind of metaphysical foundation for Mormonism or for Christianity is a form of a positive apologetic. And those efforts have been going on for quite a long time.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:02] Yeah, great. Okay. So thanks, John. If there's nothing more, let's, let's keep going.

John Dehlin [00:13:07] Let's keep going.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:07] Let's go to Mormonism, if you guys are ready for that. Brian, you did a wonderful essay that kind of took us through some of the highlight moments. And I just would love to have you a little talk about the various periods of apologetic efforts and where we've landed today, especially in the last few years with big changes at the Maxwell Institute.

Early History of Mormon Apologetics

Brian Birch [00:13:28] Yeah, well, it's hard to know exactly where to begin the story. I mean, obviously there were efforts from very early in the tradition to defend the faith. And some of the practices within the 19th century context included these. These public debates which Mormon leaders and scholars would engage in with other particularly Protestant groups. I don't know of any with Catholics in particular in the earliest decades, but there was a robust debate culture and there were efforts to prove theologically the truths of the Restoration using the traditional tools of argumentation and debate. So you had that and it was

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:19] a great time of pamphlet, pamphleteering or whatever you would call it, and all that stuff. So these debates would often.

Brian Birch [00:14:26] The tract was very popular at the time.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Right.

Brian Birch [00:14:30] But there's also this other strand in Mormonism which has been, you know, very cautious. Mormonism grew up in a very anti theological context. Right. That's part of the American reaction against European Christianity in some respects is the ways in which it felt that Christianity had depended too strongly on theology and that there needed to be more emphasis on the experiential. And obviously within a Protestant Context, you know, return to the Bible and the text of the Bible. And so Mormonism in a way kind of amplified that anti theological sentiment through appeal to, you know, revelation.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:17] Yeah.

Brian Birch [00:15:17] And all the implications that were there. So you had kind of two interesting dynamics in early Mormonism. Right. The attempt to engage in. Right. Debate and proof, yet on the other hand, a cautiousness with regard to what reason can do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:36] Exactly. And that debate's right there in the pages of the book, the volume with the various essays. We have some folks that are saying, man, this is a lost cause when you're talking about the power and the strength of religion. What are you asking these kinds of questions for? That kind of stuff. So I think that theme will come up throughout the rest of our conversation today. So besides this early period and Patrick, jump in at any time, of course, and John, but let's move on from the Pratt brothers and the various pamphleteering and these public debates and things like this to a little bit more of a, you know, maybe move us into the 20th century.

Brian Birch [00:16:16] Right. Well, one way to start that conversation is to talk about Hugh Nibley.

B.H. Roberts and the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:16:22] Hey, Brian, would it be worth just doing a really brief treatment of BH Roberts? Was his early work trying to be an apologist for the Book of Mormon and then can you give just a really brief history of how that ended up for him and the Quorum?

Brian Birch [00:16:38] Patrick, do you want it? I mean, I'm happy to defer to Patrick.

Patrick Mason [00:16:42] Go for it, Brian. I'll jump in if I need to.

Brian Birch [00:16:44] Well, BH Roberts work was very, I mean, it was very, very broad. And you know, it doesn't fall specifically within a self conscious apologetic, but part of what he was trying to do was to, was to establish the basic tenets of Mormonism in a quasi systematic way. Right. Where he was going through each of the central theological features and wanting to connect Mormonism to the broader Christian tradition, connect it to scientific traditions.

Brian Birch [00:17:21] And in some respects he went much further than previous scholars had gone in probing in a very broad way, you know, the core concepts of Mormonism. And at times his research and findings and probings, you know, took him into areas that made his colleagues in the quorums unsettled. Right. And there were two areas that are interesting, I think, for our purposes. One is, you know, his interest in Book of Mormon scholarship and the fact of his journey into establishing or attempting to, to explore the historicity of the Book of Mormon took him to a place where he became more agnostic about the, the historicity of the Book of Mormon than he had even anticipated he might be when he first entered that conversation.

Brian Birch [00:18:26] Right. And so that was one. The other one, of course, was the legendary debate with Joseph Fielding Smith on reconciling science and scriptural truth, specifically the implications for evolutionary thought and what that might mean in terms of how we understand the creation narratives. And so I think Roberts, I mean, he's an example of a lot of different strands within Mormon thought. But, you know, in terms of apologetics, I think he's a case study in the kinds of sensitivities and tension points that are characteristic of the tradition as a whole.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Go ahead, Patrick.

Patrick Mason [00:19:15] I was going to say, I think he's a great example too, of what Brian was just talking about, of the. In the 19th century, this skepticism about formal trained theology. I mean, Roberts was not a trained theologian, he was self taught.

Patrick Mason [00:19:31] But he was one of the most prolific Mormon authors ever, really. And so it shows on one level the, the power of the quote unquote, untrained mind. Right. That anybody can delve into these topics. You don't have to have a PhD to do very rigorous and intelligent analysis of religion and history and all these kinds of things. But, but he also displayed, as Brian said, a kind of breadth and breadth and ranged over all kinds of materials simply because he was, he was, he was just a naturally curious and intelligent person. So in a lot of. I think Roberts is the culmination of the two kinds of strands that Bryan was talking about in the 19th century and then also anticipated some of the debates we're still having today in the 21st century.

Brian Birch [00:20:22] Yeah. Well said.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] Thank you, Patrick. For those who want to sort of summarize his later work by saying that B.H. roberts either had significant doubts about the historicity of Book of Mormon or maybe even lost belief in the history of the Book of Mormon. Do you guys have a conclusion around that or is that just pure speculation or do you even have an instinct in that regard?

Brian Birch [00:20:48] Well, I mean, his public statements display much more reticence than, you know, earlier statements. So I think there, you know, there was some movement on his part and he was conscientious about that movement. But in terms of a kind of disavowal or deep level of skepticism, he didn't go that far, as far as I know.

Patrick Mason [00:21:16] Yeah, it certainly didn't undermine his overall faith in the Mormon project or the Mormon system. He, you know, he continued to reconcile that. But I think Brian's comment earlier that he clearly became more agnostic, if not entirely agnostic about the historicity of the Book of Mormon is certainly warranted. I mean, he just. He didn't end up where he started with his research, and that was as much a surprise to him as to anybody. And it did create internal conflicts within the church leadership who just couldn't follow where he was going and were even concerned about some of his publications and some of his writings, some of his most important writings weren't published right away.

Brian Birch [00:22:04] Yeah. And he was cautious in his language. You know, people speculate and try to read into, you know, what he said and, you know, want to, you know, want to characterize it as. He couldn't say all he wanted to say, but he said enough to gesture in the direction of skepticism. I think that's still something that people can debate.

John Dehlin [00:22:26] Got it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:26] And there's a book called B.H. roberts Studies of the Book of Mormon. I know when I worked at Benchmark Books, it was available there. Do you either of you guys know if it's still easily able to be found?

Patrick Mason [00:22:39] I don't know. I'm sure you can find it online somewhere.

Brian Birch [00:22:42] Might be on Google.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:43] So check that out. And I know that Truman Madsen's look at B.H. roberts, he concluded that he didn't think he lost faith in the Book of Mormon, at least especially the spiritual power. But, you know, in some ways, Robert's own journey with the Book of Mormon, you know, anticipated that of Thomas Stewart Ferguson and a few others. Do you want to quickly, before you quite get into Nibley, talk about that period of Book of Mormon wrestling in terms of proving it geographically and, you know, and how that switch ended up moving more towards linguistically and all the other different.

Brian Birch [00:23:16] Yeah, I mean, I can defer to Patrick. I've been doing a lot of talking. I'm sure he can do as well as I could.

Patrick Mason [00:23:21] Well, sure. I mean, I'll talk about it briefly because I know we want to also move to the late 20th century. But there was, as the 20th century came about, you began to see people wanting to provide positive proofs for the Book of Mormon. And I think it's important to recognize the context of this as well. That this is the early 20th century is a period of real debate within American Christianity and in fact, Euro American Christianity about the foundations of the faith. This 1925 is the famous Scopes monkey trial. So the debate over creation accounts in Genesis versus Darwinian evolution.

Patrick Mason [00:24:02] And you have the rise of the fundamentalists within Protestant circles who want to provide rational proofs for what they see as the core claims of Christianity. So when Mormons are doing These kinds of things, they're perfectly in concert with the spirit of the times. And there is a debate between what we see as more conservative or even fundamentalist forms of Christianity, and this plays out in Catholicism as well, and also more liberal or modernist versions as well. So Mormons certainly want to provide rationalist and tangible proofs for their faith. Most Mormons believe strongly that the Book of Mormon was a historical historical document. And so they thought, well, if there was a burgeoning science of biblical archaeology at the time, so they said, you know, we should be able to do the same thing with the Book of Mormon as well.

Patrick Mason [00:24:54] And so we said, you know, there started to be these expeditions down in Central and South America, you know, to go find these lost ruins and temples and so forth. And people started to make claims about the archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon.

Patrick Mason [00:25:15] Some of these efforts were discredited at the time. Others have, you know, people have been skeptical. As this time's gone on, I think it's fair to say that none of these archaeological expeditions clinched the argument for the. For the people who wanted to provide positive proofs for the Book of Mormon. In fact, some of them were, you know, came back and sort of were forced to admit, or others forced them to admit that they weren't able to find what they had set out to find. Others were actually quite bold in their claims and thought that they had found proofs. And there were a lot of publications that came out of that.

Patrick Mason [00:25:55] It influenced scholarship. Even today, we see some revised versions of this in people like John Sorensen and others who want to talk about the geography of the Book of Mormon and correlate the internal textual evidence of the Book of Mormon with what they see in especially Central American ruins and geography and things like that. So we see all of that coming out of a period in the early 20th century.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:20] Yeah, let's move on from the Book of Mormon at this time, just because I know we have a hard stop in about an hour from now. But anyway, I'm sure that we'd be happy to engage anybody who wants to a little bit more on any of this stuff. But, Brian, it seemed like you wanted to take us into the Hugh Nibley, you know, period of this star apologist and polymath or whatever, and his influence.

Hugh Nibley and the Rise of Modern Apologetics

Brian Birch [00:26:42] Well, I mean, Hugh Nibley's career really is expressive of, you know, the development of what you could call modern Mormon apologetics. I mean, not only, you know, the content of his scholarship, but who Hugh Nibley was, what he represented, how he was utilized, how he was mimicked. I mean, he's just a hugely influential figure in the development of this enterprise. You know, so Nibley had a 40 plus year career at BYU, trained in ancient languages and cultures, and just became the go to person for questions having to do with, you know, the ancient American context for the Book of Mormon or the ancient American setting for the Book of Mormon, that to draw from the title of Sorensen's book, but also, and most especially Near Eastern cultures and languages.

Brian Birch [00:27:45] Right. Nibley was interested in the early Christian period and believed that he could find evidences and truths that support Mormon restorationist claims that were unknown to Joseph Smith at the time. And that's a characteristic apologetic argument, is that we're finding things in the ancient world, whether linguistically or archaeologically, that or textually that could not have been known to Joseph Smith. And these parallels represent evidence of the revelatory character of the faith. And that was Nibley's M.O. in some respects, in terms of many of his writings. And so, I mean, he was a wide ranging scholar, he wasn't a systematic thinker.

Patrick Mason [00:28:45] Right.

Brian Birch [00:28:45] And so he was famous for these kinds of shotgun blasts in terms of things he was excited about and working on. And, you know, his scholarship, you know, since, you know, since his retirement and death, has come under increasing scrutiny. But in terms of his influence and what he represented to the Mormon scholarly community, it just can't be overstated because Nibley laid the groundwork for what I called in the, in my essay, a second generation of 20th century apologists that adopted not only, that followed up on not only the, you know, the content of his scholarship, but also adopted his style and manner of engaging with critics of Mormonism. And I think that's become one of the flashpoints is that Nibley was not afraid to mix it up with critics

Patrick Mason [00:29:44] and

Brian Birch [00:29:46] was occasionally, if not frequently, engaging in swordplay. Right. Intellectual sword play with his critics. And the snarkiness of the tone, the kind of belittling language that you saw in Nibley's work from time to time was adopted and in some respects amplified by this, the second generation of Mormon thought. And that's going back to your very first comment, Stan. Right. The negative connection between apologetics and scholarship in Mormon circles, I think is grounded in some respects in the manner of engagement, you know, beginning in the mid 20th century and starting with Nibley's work, you know, between Mormon apologists and their critics. And I think there's a sense in which it can be said that, you know, some Mormon apologists, you know, haven't been able to really see any other way or see any other fruitful way of engaging with critics rather than through this, this kind of assertive, at times acerbic manner.

John Dehlin [00:31:02] If I could. If. Oh, go ahead, Patrick. No, Patrick. Well, Patrick, you go then. I'll give a. Just a different slight commentary.

Patrick Mason [00:31:11] Okay, great. I'd say that the one other thing I'd want to say about Nibley, and in a lot of ways the way that I appreciate him most, is that oftentimes his critiques were. Were targeted internally within the Church. And he has terrific and also assertive and acerbic critiques of what he saw as class inequality within the Church. He has a number of terrific essays about environmentalism and the Saints failure to live up to their duties in terms of stewardship of creation. And so he was not afraid to point his pen towards the current leadership and membership of the church as well, where he saw us falling short of what he saw as the ideal of Zion as outlined in the Scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] Yeah, I was just. Thank you, Patrick. That's important. I'm just gonna. My reflections on Hugh Nibley were. Number one, he was at BYU when I was there. Just the incredible lore and respect just everyone viewed. There are all these fables about his memory and his intelligence and his time during the war and how he had a photographic memory and et cetera, et cetera. He was almost worshiped in a godlike way when I was at byu.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] That's one memory. I have a second memory I have. Is. Is like you said, Patrick, that he was. It seemed like he spoke against war. It seemed like he spoke against bureaucracy, against priestcraft, even as it directed towards the Church.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] More importantly, when it came to his scholarship, on the one hand, Mormons viewed him as like a top notch scholar. On the other hand, when I tried to read his scholarly work, it just felt like a wall of words, a wall of jargon and. And I could never really make much sense of it as a BYU student.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] But then my biggest disappointment with Hugh Nibley was when I finally read no Man Knows My History and was really troubled by it. And then I read his pamphlet, no ma', Am, that's Not History. It seemed like it didn't even deal with the merits of the core merits of Fawn Brody's book, but instead just wanted to kind of mock, mock her and keep people from ever taking her work seriously. And in that sense it was very disappointing because either I couldn't understand anything he was saying or he wasn't dealing with the credible issues and Instead was sort of mocking. And I say that knowing that he in many ways is beloved and is a good hearted person, I'm sure. But that was just my impressions.

Brian Birch [00:34:04] If I can just jump in quickly, just a couple thoughts on the content of what Nibley said. I think that Nibley's place and the fact that he was there for so long in Mormonism was as important, if not more important, than the specifics of what he said in any one essay. I think that there was tendency in the Mormon world, or at least people who are attentive to scholarly issues, just saw Nibley as the person on the wall who had the knowledge and background to be able to deal with the issues of the day. Whether or not he was actually correct or made good arguments or was coherent, I think in some cases was of lesser importance than the fact that he was there. And insofar as BYU students and other readers cared to go, he represented, he was the bulwark against the critics.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Would it be unfair to just say it was almost like a humanized appeal to authority that you could basically say, well, I don't understand all this Egyptology stuff, but Hugh Nibley's super smart. He's got a PhD from Berkeley or wherever, and so if he still believes with as smart as he is, then I don't need to worry about the substance of these claims.

Brian Birch [00:35:32] That's exactly the phenomenon.

Patrick Mason [00:35:35] Yeah. So he becomes a really important symbol. Right. So on the one hand, there is an anti intellectual strain in Mormonism, just as there is in American culture, but on the other hand, there's also the appeal to authority. Right. And so, and we all do this. Right. Do I actually understand the science of climate change? No, but I defer to the authority of experts. And so Nibley represented that within Mormonism. I'd say the other thing, the interesting thing about Nibley that I've come to appreciate more as I've come to recognize more, is that how little influence he had outside of Mormon culture.

Patrick Mason [00:36:18] And so now I would expect that if scholars are making really persuasive arguments that are accessible to everybody and not accessible just based on kind of internal truths and assumptions, that those arguments would be persuasive to other people of goodwill who are also looking at the evidence. And I think it's fair to say that even if we, even those of us who still have a kind of affection for Nibley and recognize his importance in Mormon intellectual history, I think we have to acknowledge that he was not successful particularly in persuading outsiders of his arguments.

Brian Birch [00:36:58] Yeah, I share that affection and just want to amplify the point that his influence in Mormonism is so strong that even where his scholarship doesn't measure up, caution is taken in the way in which he's treated and displaced right. In favor of new scholarship within the faith. And I think that's been an important dynamic and something we could talk a lot more about.

FARMS, FAIR, and the Maxwell Institute

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:31] Well, we are looking at Dwindling Clock. So, Brian, can you take us from Nibli quickly into the establishment of Farms Fair and then the new Maxwell Institute within 10 minutes? Just a brief overview, because it's really the shift at the Maxwell Institute that probably sets the biggest controversy right now.

Brian Birch [00:38:00] Yes. Well, just connecting with what we talked about earlier with regard to earlier early 20th century archaeological enthusiasm. The origins of farms, the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, began or was largely informed by the enthusiasm on the part of a handful of scholars and non professional academics to try to establish the empirical evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. So that was an important part of the formation, in a way, continues what Patrick referred to as that early 20th century effort and enthusiasm to try to find evidence for both biblical narratives and by extension, Book of Mormon. There was also more textual work being done on the Book of Mormon.

Brian Birch [00:39:03] And Jack Welch, right. Obviously the founding father of farms, he was doing textual work on the Book of Mormon. And the excitement stuff, right? Chiasmus, yes. And the enthusiasm and optimism of this group. Right. They mobilized to form this foundation which acted independently of the institutional LDS Church for many, many years and sponsored archaeological expeditions to Mesoamerica and other parts of Central and South America to try to look for evidence related to the Book of Mormon, but also other kinds of scholarship that they might, that they thought might be of value in defending the faith.

Brian Birch [00:39:52] And eventually the farm's effort was absorbed into Brigham Young University. It became part of the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Right. Where the Maxwell Institute has been an umbrella organization and has gone through, you know, different iterations over the years. But the work of FARMS was absorbed into that institutional context.

Brian Birch [00:40:27] And one of the more important publications for the purposes of Mormon apologetics was the FARMS Review of Books, which became the most well recognized apologetic source within Mormon scholarship for several years. And the FARMS Review began under the leadership of Dan Peterson and Lou Midgley, where it was not only a review of publications and books, but really contained a variety of material, a lot of which consisted of review essays, lengthy review essays that attempted to challenge criticisms of Mormonism or were taking on broader issues that could indirectly have implications for the truth of Christianity or the rationality of religious belief in general. And so you have this long tradition of publications that were apologetics really in the robust sense of the term, that were taking on critics of the faith.

Brian Birch [00:41:45] But and this is an important point, I think, in the history of this whole enterprise. What we didn't see in that publication and in the Maxwell Institute more generally was this kind of reciprocal dialogical scholarship where the FARMS review was really an effort to broadcast and with an audience primarily of the Mormon faithful in mind, in a way kind of playing to the home crowd in order to defend the church against what they perceived Latter Day Saints could come across as they were reading the scholarship of the day.

John Dehlin [00:42:34] Can you speak to the tactics that the farms, Peterson, Midgley, even Greg Smith and others are sort of, at least in some circles, known for, just so that, you know, whether or not it's fair even. But just to describe some of those tactics that we would, we will soon be referring to as kind of old style Mormon apologetics?

Brian Birch [00:42:59] Well, it's a mixed bag. I think the work that gets the most attention are the ones that were most provocative and controversial. But there definitely was, I mean, going back to Hugh Nibley, there definitely was an adoption of that kind of acerbic style where it was a combination of kind of playfulness and mean spiritedness that we would see from time to time in dealing with critics of Mormonism. And at times it could be uncharitable and did not do justice to the other side of the argument. And that's one thing that I think.

Patrick Mason [00:43:41] Would you say that sometimes

Brian Birch [00:43:45] there was

Patrick Mason [00:43:46] they engaged in ad hominem attacks?

Brian Birch [00:43:48] Yeah, I think that's part of it too. Right. And I think we could.

John Dehlin [00:43:52] Yeah.

Brian Birch [00:43:52] There.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:52] John, do you have any, you have any experience with that, John?

John Dehlin [00:43:56] Well, I'm just one of many, you know, but go ahead, Brian, what were you gonna say?

Brian Birch [00:44:02] Well, I think that's definitely true. I think the ad hominem is another, you know, important part of it, that that was a scholarly publication or has been a scholarly publication in some respects. And in other respects it really falls outside the scope of a serious scholarly publication because of some of the, some of the methodologies and tactics that were used.

John Dehlin [00:44:28] That's sort of sort of like Fawn Brody was a lesbian or Simon Sotherton is an adulterer, or, you know, there have been some really mean spirited and I would say even potentially unethical things that seem to be associated with that era. And then just in addition, there's a lot of information I'VE received that many of these people saw themselves as sort of auxiliaries or arms of the strength in the members committee where these same people would be gathering evidence against people to try and have their. Their status with the church kind of, you know, put on trial. And so it went. It went even a little far deeper than that to actually being almost like a CIA, FBI, sort of arm of the church to try and take people out with disciplinary councils. Is that something you've heard or is that just rumor that I've heard?

Brian Birch [00:45:30] Well, I think in some cases there's evidence of that in terms of the published work, the public face of it all. I think that you see that the publication was attempting to anticipate how the institutional church would view one or another scholar and attempted to be a kind of reconnaissance team. Right. In terms of engaging them outside of an explicit institutional, ecclesiastical context. But the organization was affiliated with byu, made the issue more complicated than it would have been if it would have remained an independent foundation.

Patrick Mason [00:46:22] And I think it's important to note that as Brian said earlier, the FARMS review was a mixed bag. And it's not like every essay was doing the kinds of things that we're talking about right now. And much of it did participate in the long and venerated tradition of rational defense of the faith. Right. That didn't engage in ad hominem attacks, and that was reasonable and fair and things like that. So it was a mixed bag. But I just think we can't deny that there were some of these other tactics employed that. That many of us certainly myself see as somewhat less desirable and falls outside the bounds of what one would expect at a university setting, even a religiously affiliated university, where the mission is to promote the interests of the church.

Brian Birch [00:47:19] Amen.

The Maxwell Institute Shakeup and Its Meaning

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:21] Well, some of this is going to feed into the shakeup at Farm. Well, excuse me, at the Maxwell Institute and the repurposing of it. Brian, we still got to go quick.

John Dehlin [00:47:32] Yeah. What happened? What happened, Brian? What happened to FARMS and what happened at Maxwell Institute?

Brian Birch [00:47:36] To make a long story short, Dan Peterson, a longtime editor of the Farms View, was dismissed. And dismissed in a way that was rather messy.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] Do we know why he was dismissed or do we have a sense for it?

Brian Birch [00:47:54] Well, the leadership of the Maxwell Institute has been relatively silent on this question. So we have to depend to some degree on the narratives of others. Dan Peterson has been very public. Right. And voluminous, I guess you could say, in his retelling and retelling of the reasons why he was fired.

Brian Birch [00:48:20] And I don't want to speculate beyond what we know, but I think it's clear that Jerry Bradford, the director of the Maxwell Institute, had a different sensibility about how this kind of scholarship could be done and that that was percolating before the essay in question, that that had to do with you, John. Right. I think there was a difference of opinion in terms of direction. I think Jerry was trying to look more toward this more traditional, academic, scholarly approach.

Brian Birch [00:49:01] And Dan believed that he was supporting the original mission of the Maxwell Institute and the charge that was given to the Institute from Elder Maxwell to vigorously defend the faith. And, you know, that took a variety of forms.

Brian Birch [00:49:17] So the most interesting part of the story, I mean, there are a lot of interesting components to it, but perhaps in my, at least in my mind, the most interesting part is the conversation that took place after Dan was dismissed in the way in which people were, you know, the kind of the kinds of arguments that were mobilized either in defense of that change or critics of the change who really believe that BYU and by extension the Church, was really selling out to secular scholarly studies in an inappropriate way. And I think that really characterizes much of what we're seeing today is on the part of the traditionalists, if you want to say the traditional apologists.

Brian Birch [00:50:08] They lament the fact that there has been a transformation of that particular publication, but also the Maxwell Institute in general, to a more kind of robust, serious, outwardly looking body of scholarship, as opposed to scholarship that would serve a kind of narrow purpose for the church, but which included a kind of grab bag of all kinds of different, you know, methodologies and ways of doing that.

Brian Birch [00:50:44] And so what happened is pressure was brought to bear on Dan Peterson to actually change the name of the Farm's review of books to the Mormon Studies Review, which he did, he says, reluctantly. So the last issue of that publication under Dan Peterson was actually the first issue of the Mormon Studies Review. And then shortly thereafter, Dan was dismissed and Spencer Fluman, historian, was brought in to be the new editor and under Spencer's leadership, obviously the publication and now that he's director of the Maxwell Institute, right, that that organization is moving in a different direction in some respects and has maintained a lot of continuity in other respects regarding what it, what it wants to do.

Brian Birch [00:51:38] I don't want to over dramatize the changes, but certainly Spencer's sensibility lies more on the side of traditional academic scholarship and a more outward facing set of publications. He wants to engage the scholarly community much more seriously. And so when Spencer came in, he published what came to be identified as the first issue of the Mormon Studies Review. So we really have, right, two first issues of the Mormon Studies Review. But I think that's a symbol of what they represent, right? This transition from a more apologetic orientation to a more explicitly scholarly, and I say scholarly in the traditional mode of academic scholarship and that, I mean, we don't have much time, but they're just a fascinating set of questions having to do with whether or not the connection between Mormon studies and religious studies ought to follow the traditional path of historical scholarship and the social sciences.

Brian Birch [00:52:54] I mean, I come from philosophy of religion and theology, as do you, Dan. And so I'm really interested in questions of apologetics, even though I share the criticisms of that are brought to bear by my friends and colleagues, you know, across the Mormon studies spectrum in that particular case. So I don't know how much of a good setup that was or what.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] So if so if the Old Farms and Maxwell Institute was trying to prove the Church is true with archaeology or whatever, if it was a lot of sharp attacks on critics and ad hominem and kind of sharp elbow type stuff, what is the content and tactic of Spencer Fluman's sort of era? How would you characterize the types of articles and the change in approach of

Brian Birch [00:53:46] what he's doing, Patrick?

Patrick Mason [00:53:48] Sure. Well, I think the Mormon Studies Review has totally changed direction. I think it's fair to say so now. What it does is it reviews. It does not publish any original scholarship. What it does, however, is publish review essays and then book reviews of books that have to do with Mormonism, especially Mormon history.

Patrick Mason [00:54:14] And the primary audience for the Mormon Studies Review is not. Is no longer internal towards the faithful, towards shoring up the foundations of faith for those inside the church. But the Mormon Studies Review is explicitly addressing external scholarly audience. Essentially, the mission is let's assume that there's a scholar out there of American religion or religious studies who might be interested in Mormonism but doesn't know where to start, right? I mean, it's now a huge body of literature. The Mormon Studies Review is there as a tool for those scholars or other interested people in the public to come in and be able to see what is going on in the field of Mormon studies as it exists right now, and to have to hear scholars discuss and review one another's works.

Patrick Mason [00:55:02] So it's much more friendly, and I use that term advisedly, because actually Spencer's first editorial in the first volume was about friendship. And so he saw this as a much more ironic turn for the Mormon Studies Review as It sought to build bridges with outside scholars. And a lot of the authors in the Mormon Studies Review are non LDS scholars, scholars. They oftentimes want people who are not experts on Mormonism to review some of these books to create bridges of understanding. But the Maxwell Institute also publishes other things, like the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. It continues to do things with ancient texts. So there are some continuities with the old farms, but certainly the style, the tone, the approach, and in many cases the audience has shifted.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:49] Got it.

Brian Birch [00:55:50] That's well said. There's an interesting continuity that has stood there and that is that, you know, the Farm's review of books, you know, presented itself as right, reviewing the scholarship that was out there. And there's a sense in which the Mormon Studies Review, you know, does not, as Patrick said, does not attempt to engage in kind of first order scholarship, but more in terms of kind of reflection and as a resource. So the Maxwell Institute can still continue to claim that they don't do Mormon studies per se, so much as serve as a resource for scholars of Mormonism and create opportunities for dialogue, although the

Patrick Mason [00:56:40] Journal of Book of Mormon Studies does produce original scholarship.

John Dehlin [00:56:46] So I have a question, Brian and Patrick. If a critic wanted to sort of frame this change in the Maxwell Institute as sort of an admission that the Church kind of lost in the academic arena that you really. Any attempts to prove the Church is true or even support the veracity of the Church's truth claims through academic or scientific means are pretty much bankrupt. And so in some ways the change is an admission to the fact that the Church isn't on solid scientific ground. How would you guys respond to someone who wanted to frame it that way?

Patrick Mason [00:57:28] Well, I would say that that would be an overdrawn conclusion to the changes within the Maxwell Institute. I think this is a change of tactics much more than long term strategy or an admission that somehow the entire project is bankrupt.

Patrick Mason [00:57:49] I think it's a different tactical approach that values friendship, bridge building, more ironic approach to scholarship, and maybe, and I would say a greater humility in the sense there's a certain degree of postmodernism. And I know that's a scary word and even kind of a messy word to use, but in the sense that in the 21st century, the Academy is much less convinced of its ability to arrive at objective truth, including or maybe especially about religious things. And so. So I think even many Mormon scholars, even who are very committed to the faith, agree that the tools of academic scholarship that have been developed in the modern academy are insufficient to prove the rational verity of Mormon truth claims.

Patrick Mason [00:58:47] I mean, how do we have any tools to prove the existence of God? The search to prove the historicity of the Book of Mormon has so far had, I think, at best, mixed results. I think it's fair to say there have been some interesting archaeological and textual findings that do create some interesting correspondences that people can build on. But I think there's just a greater humility about what the tools of scholarship give us in terms of the ability to lock down and objectively verify the claims of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] And this is kind of what Lloyd Erickson's essay was about in the book, is that right? Yes.

Patrick Mason [00:59:33] Brian, would you agree with what I just said?

Brian Birch [00:59:35] Yes, yeah, absolutely. Just to connect it back to something I referred to way back, you know, where in the debate among evangelical Christian philosophers and apologists, there's a big debate between rationalistic approaches to apologetics and more what you might call humble postmodern worldview oriented apologetics, where the objective is merely to present the Christian worldview, in their case as equally plausible in the way in which it sees the world and presents facts and assembles the events of history, etc.

Brian Birch [01:00:25] Versus the people who are more optimistic about what reason and scientific discovery can give us. I think that's transferable in some respects to the Mormon context. I think we're moving more in the direction where Mormon thought in general is moving more toward a worldview approach, where it wants to present a worldview and it wants to say that this is an equally valid or plausible worldview, given the assumptions at work in Mormonism as a secular humanist worldview, an Islamic worldview. And, you know, that's more humble than what we've seen in the past on the part of a lot of apologetic works. But it does mirror in many respects the development and the evolution of apologetic discourse in other faith communities.

Brian Birch [01:01:21] So I'm interested to see how this humility, as Patrick referred to it, develops and the ways in which it is taken up in all kinds of ways in Mormonism, given the. Not just in a scholarly context, but given the slowed growth rates of the church, you know, and the different way and ways in which Mormon leadership and scholars are trying to characterize Mormonism more as a.

Brian Birch [01:01:51] As more like the Jewish community. Right. The light to the world and salt of the earth rather than a stone, you know, rolling, you know, to fill the whole earth. Yeah, yeah, that would fill the whole earth. Yeah, to use the Daniel thing. So there are all kinds of interesting ways in which Latter Day Saint discourse is evolving and changing, given the demographics. Right. Given.

Brian Birch [01:02:16] Given Mormonism's greater desire to have a place at the table in a variety of contexts. I think we're seeing that expressed in. In the way in which at least the institutional side of Mormon scholarship is supported and facilitated.

Patrick Mason [01:02:35] And I think we should see all this on a spectrum. And I think we should be fair that at least in many of my conversations with what we can, the kind of old farms crowd, that they would also admit that you can't argue somebody into faith. Right. That the rationalist defenses are there to. To shore up the faith, but that ultimately one apprehends the truth of the Book of Mormon or the truthfulness of Mormonism only through spiritual experience. So I think we don't want to mischaracterize the other approach as purely rationalistic and objectivist because it was always primarily based on spiritual witness.

Brian Birch [01:03:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:18] So in the case of the.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:03:19] Go ahead.

Brian Birch [01:03:20] I was just going to say in the case of Dan Peterson.

Patrick Mason [01:03:23] Right.

Brian Birch [01:03:23] Dan is very explicit about the metaphors he uses, and he oftentimes will say that Mormonism leans more heavily on negative apologetics than it does positive apologetics. And one of the metaphors that I mentioned that he uses in his works is that of the buttress. Right. Where the buttress isn't the building, but the buttress is there to support the building.

Brian Birch [01:03:50] And one of the points that I make in my essay is just from the standpoint, from philosophy of religion is just trying to get at what the role of evidence is. Is the evidence something that comes along after the fact merely to support pre. Existing presuppositions and orientations and commitments? Or can evidence really serve some kind of foundational role where people are really arguing from the same body of evidence toward conclusions? And one of the challenges with negative apologetics or with seeing apologetics merely as being supportive is that that in a way could be said to undermine the entire intellectual enterprise where argument and reasoning serves as a kind of rhetorical secondary role rather than a primary role.

Brian Birch [01:05:04] And that leads to some really interesting issues in just, you know, the relationship between faith and reason and presuppositionalism and evidentialism, as it is called.

Patrick Mason [01:05:16] And

Brian Birch [01:05:18] that's part of what I wanted. I wanted to stir up some of the. Some of the ground there to see how that conversation would go as time goes on.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:28] Nice. And it was a great essay. And just let me do some stirring because we have about 23 minutes before we lose Patrick, at least. And that is to say that the first part of the book has Dan Peterson, it has Michael Ash, it's got Ralph Hancock, it has lots of people in it who are, you know, wanting to, you know, talk about apologetics the way it's been. Then it has other folks who come along and are doing these things. You mentioned Lloyd Erickson's piece, John, and that's a terrific piece that's challenging the basic idea of, you know, what Apolloxidics should do. We also have Joe Spencer there towards the end who has an interesting piece about trying to lay the ground for, to actually get people to the, to the position where like, you have to face the fact that religion is not supposed to make sense.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:19] It's supposed to be this scandalous, you know, breaking in of God into the world, into your heart, et cetera, like that. And so he's a politics putting apologetics in that hopefully that will be a new focus. So I just wanted to recommend that book from Coford Press.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] So I'm gonna, I'm gonna show it

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:36] to it in mine. And I'm sure you will too, John, in your write ups. But Patrick, we're gonna lose you, John, you neo apologists and Patrick, along with the Givenses and Adam Miller and people you really wanted to talk to. And so we got Patrick right here for you to try out your sense of what's going on today and let's see how he feels.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] Okay, I'll just add a shout out. Perspectives on Mormon Theology. Mark Kriegel wanted to make sure we gave a shout out to Lloyd Erickson and Blair Van Dyke for their job editing the book. But there's a lot of cool stuff

Dan Wotherspoon [01:07:14] in the book because they just let the people speak. So if you want to hear Ralph Hancock and Dan Peterson with their normal tones and stuff, it's great. There's no attempt to, you know, quiet them down or anything like that. And then you get the counterbalance with the, you know, a studious Brian Birch.

Brian Birch [01:07:31] Let me just say a word. You know, from an editorial standpoint, you know, one of the things that, you know, Lloyd and Blair and I and others are really interested in is letting voices speak for themselves and to bring together those voices in a way where people are able to observe the landscape. They're not depending on someone else to tell them what the landscape looks like. They're able, in a single volume, to see it in action and to see these scholars responding to one another. Not necessarily directly. Right. But you know, indirectly, if you're reading the volume cover to cover, I think you get a pretty good sense of the landscape right now. And what kinds of issues are in play.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:08:14] It.

Defining the New Wave of Mormon Apologetics

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 805

John Dehlin [00:00:28] All right, so I think we've all, I think we all just agreed that there was, there's some old style of Mormon apologetics that has to do with that homonym, that has to do with giving bad evidences like tapers for horses and, you know, redefining terms and sort of maybe shoddy scholarship or unproven scholarship. I mean, I think that point has been sort of directly made in this podcast. What I started noticing as I saw Dan Peterson and Ralph Hancock and Lou Midgley and Greg Smith, sort of, sort of as I watched their decline, what I noticed is an ascent of a different form of apologetic.

John Dehlin [00:01:14] And for me, that would be sort of best characterized by what Richard Bushman does, what Terrell and Fiona Givens do, What, Patrick, what I've heard you do, which is definitely not about ad hominem attacks. It's definitely not so much about trying to prove the church is true. It's definitely not based in focuses on anthropology or archeology or Mesoamerican digs. But instead it's a softer, it's more pastoral.

John Dehlin [00:01:56] It's willing to say maybe mistakes have been made in a passive sense. It's going around to sort of these privately held seminars or firesides or people's homes to reach out to those who are doubting and questioning and to provide some sort of support, oftentimes based more on the humanities or based more in soft and thoughtful and kind ways, trying to still encourage faith in the church, encourage devotion and active membership, but in just a new way. And so I was trying to search for a way to describe it, and the term that came to my mind was Neo New New apologetics. And I've gotten a lot of feedback that people hate the term.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] And so I totally want to hear why you or others may or may not like the term, but I just wanted to first set up the idea that there's definitely a new era of Mormon apologetics characterized by you, the Gibbons, the Bushman's and others. It's happening, it's different.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] And so how would you label it or describe it, Patrick? How would you describe it as different versus the same. And then if you do or don't like the term neo apologetic, what's a way we can name it or label it to set it apart from what's been done in the past?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:33] Sure.

Patrick Mason [00:03:34] No, that's a great setup, John, and I'm grateful for your generous appraisal and description of the kind of work that I've been doing. And you know, for me it's. It's kind of interesting because I. Six years ago, as we said at the outset, I assumed the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. And when I did that, I had no intention of doing this kind of thing. I was very committed to Mormon studies as a scholarly discipline that was in conversation primarily with other scholars in the academy. As much as members of the church or others wanted to listen in on the conversations, that was great.

Patrick Mason [00:04:18] But I was very committed to establishing the kind of traditional academic bona fides of Mormon studies. It was a couple of years into that, and that's where I would say that that's my day job. I mean, my day job is to do traditional academic scholarship.

Patrick Mason [00:04:37] I'm a historian by training, and so. And I continue to do that kind of work that I would say lies far outside the realm of anything resembling apologetics. I continue to publish things for the academy. But a couple years into my tenure as a Hunter Chair, I was approached to participate with the Bushmans in, as you said, going to private homes or firesides or other things to address some of these issues of what we now, you know, call faith crisis. Whether or not that's a great term, but that's the term that stuck. And so I got sort of involved in it out of my own personal commitments.

Patrick Mason [00:05:14] I'm a believing and active member of the church. It's something that I find extremely meaningful in my life. And so I was happy to participate in that, less in some ways as the Hunter Chair and more as a member of the church, although I know that these professional and personal identities get mixed up together.

Patrick Mason [00:05:36] And so out of those visits and travels and conversations with people, my book planted came out of that. And I think you're exactly right. I mean, the word you used was pastoral, and that's the word I use for myself. And for that book, I see it very much as a kind of conversational pastoral in the sense of a kind of one on one conversation. What would I say to somebody if I sat down with them over hot chocolate? And what would we talk about? I personally, whether by temperament or training, I have basically zero interest in what I see as kind of tendentious scholarship. Even in the academy, you see people who build their careers arguing against other people.

Patrick Mason [00:06:21] I've never been particularly interested in that kind of approach. I've always been more interested in making kind of positive arguments, maybe finding gaps or other things that have been left unsaid, and then is there a way that I can address that? So in my own approach, I've never been particularly interested in critiquing anybody in particular so much as having these kinds of conversations. Now, along with that, as you said, comes a willingness for me to critique what I see as mistakes or problems in our past or even in the current church. I do not come at this with the belief that the church instantiated either in 1830 or 1857 or 2017 is perfect, that it, that it is an organization that perfectly represents the mind and will of God.

Patrick Mason [00:07:09] I think the restoration is an ongoing process. And so as part of that, I think humility is a really important Christian virtue. And that includes being able to look at ourselves with a kind of self critical lens and identify points in our history or even our current practice that I see as maybe not lining up with the ideals of science. So I was a little resistant when I wrote Planted. Is this a form of apologetics? Again, because of the association with an older style and brand of it that I didn't myself resonate with, but is planted and is some of my other work, you know, my address at Fair and other things.

Patrick Mason [00:07:48] Is that apologetics? Absolutely. I mean, it begins from the presupposition that Mormonism is good and true and beautiful, is worth defending, is a life and as Brian said, a worldview worth inhabiting that has meaning and value in the modern world. Yes, absolutely. So it begins from that place and then makes arguments from there. So in terms of whether neo apologetics is a good term, I don't have a particular problem with it. I mean, would I get a business card that says Patrick Mason, NEO apologist? Probably not.

Patrick Mason [00:08:21] But am I offended by the term? No, not particularly. I don't care, you know what you call us? You can call us the Avenger or the Mickey Mouse Club or anything else. I mean, you know, what I do is what I do and I've tried to develop a certain kind of voice. And I think you're right. The kind of people that you mentioned, the Bushman's, the Givens, Adam Miller, these kinds of people, I do find as kindred spirits, we actually represent different places on the spectrum. Some of us are more conservative or liberal than others. Some of us are willing to be more or less critical of certain things and occupy certain kind of voice. But I do think that's my cadre of people in terms of our approach.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] Is there a better term than neo apologist?

Patrick Mason [00:09:07] I don't immediately have one. And again, I'm not offended by that term in any sense. Again, if you would have asked me three or four years ago, I probably would have Said, no, that's not who I am or what I do. I have not. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I haven't sat around thinking about what am I doing? Or what's the category that I inhabit, you know, along with the givens and so forth. So. So I don't have a particular problem with the term, especially as you described it in your opening. That's. I would actually be pleased and honored to inhabit the kind of space that you described in the opening.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] One of our listeners wants to say third wave. Third wave Mormon apologetics. I mean, for.

Patrick Mason [00:09:48] Fine, we can call it that. I mean, I associate that with feminism, and I think third wave feminism, if we apply that term, we probably couldn't use it here because third wave feminism generally has to do with people from the global south, people of color, women of color. That's not what you're getting with the crowd, you said. I mean, there are more female voices, to be sure. Fiona Givens has been a really prominent voice, Rosalind Welch and a number of other people. But we're still woefully short in terms of a global sensibility. I think we have global sensibilities, but not global representation and certainly not people of color.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Okay, so I've got, like, a thousand questions, and I'm gonna just. I'll just lay out as many as we can, and you can give whatever answers you're able to in the time remaining. And I really appreciate you guys coming on.

Patrick Mason [00:10:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] One of the biggest problems people have with apologists is just this idea that they start with the assumption that the church is true and then seek together evidence to bolster that position. Some say that's just not a credible position. It's maybe not even an honest position. What would you say to that critique of apologetics?

Patrick Mason [00:10:59] Well, I think it depends on your definition of what is credible and what your standard is. So would it be credible from the standards of the secular academy? The answer is no. And it's one reason, for instance, that planted doesn't appear on my professional cv.

Patrick Mason [00:11:17] I don't see it as doing the kind of work that I do as a professional historian with the same kind of methods or standards. I think it's academically informed, to be sure, and I'm able to apply some of the methods and training that I've received.

Patrick Mason [00:11:33] But I do start, and I'll only speak for myself, although I do think this would apply to the Givens work. I would say it applies less so to Richard Bushman's, to Rough Stone Rolling. I think that falls more in line with the traditional academy and is what we see on display. There is a historian doing historical work, but for our more pastoral work, absolutely. I begin. I mean, just look at the opening pages of Planted. I mean, I bear my testimony in my own way and talk about that. I think Mormonism is a meaningful and true religion that I participate in. And so I do begin from that.

Patrick Mason [00:12:14] I begin from that kind of experience. I begin from those sets of assumptions that I've made, partly rationally informed, but largely just from my own personal experience. And then I make arguments from there. So I think I'd be dishonest if I would say that I was just starting out from ground zero, then built a bunch of evidence, and then, oh, wait, I've discovered Mormonism is the true religion. That's not. Certainly that's not what's happened for me. I began out of my experience with Mormonism and then made arguments, pastoral arguments primarily, some intellectual and rational arguments based on that.

John Dehlin [00:12:49] I think the reason, I think this question comes from the place of people who are really struggling to determine if the church really is what it claims to be. Because if it is, it's worth obeying with absoluteness. But if it isn't, there's a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of decisions in life that would be very different. And so a lot of times people are looking for a neutral source, somebody that doesn't have a dog in the hunt, that isn't biased, trying to push them in one way or the other, that just wants to do their best to lay out the evidence and then let people make an informed, wise decision.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] And so I think sometimes when people struggle with apologists, it's just feeling like I need help figuring out what's true. I don't want a spin or someone trying to push me in a direction based on their own biases. And I know it's hard to do. It's hard. Yeah.

Patrick Mason [00:13:39] I'm not sure who is. Who would be perfectly neutral or what that would look like. This is one of the contributions of postmodernism, is to undermine this kind of modernist belief in objectivity and that we can start from a kind of value free, neutral, bias, free position. And so I do have values. I have experiences, I do have commitments that line up with the institutional LDS Church. I remain strongly affiliated with it. So am I a neutral source on this? No, but I'm not exactly sure who that would be or what that would look like. I'm not sure that anybody is truly neutral in the world.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] No, I Think postmodernism makes a fair point. And at the same time, if it's difficult or impossible to find someone who's truly neutral, the people you can definitely write off are the ones who start by admitting that they have started with the conclusion that it's true, and then they're gonna gather the evidence, bolster the claim. I mean, it's just like you could. You could probably write off anybody who says, the church is evil and I want to destroy it and take it down. But I guess you can see the spirit from which people would have concern.

Patrick Mason [00:15:03] Oh, absolutely. No, I understand that position, and I understand the desire for a kind of neutral, fair and balanced approach where people don't have a dog in the fight. I just don't. I don't see it anywhere. I don't see it in the academy. I don't see it in science. I don't see it in journalism. I don't see it in politics. Everywhere there's always a view from somewhere.

Patrick Mason [00:15:25] So I do think we can, and this is what the academy does, is there are certain methodologies and standards that try to strip back and limit some of our own personal biases. This is what the scientific method tries to do. But even that is, you know, scientists have their own views, right?

Patrick Mason [00:15:43] And so I do think there are ways that we can try to hold those things at arm's length. And in a lot of ways, I try to do that myself in terms of having a kind of critical approach in my scholarship that isn't planted. I try to have a kind of critical distance and the tools that I've learned as a historian to be able to approach Mormonism with a critical lens. But that's different than a pastoral approach.

John Dehlin [00:16:11] Totally. A next big set of questions are around why apologists are even needed. A lot of people want to say, you know, Abinadi and Moses didn't need apologists. They were prophets. They were willing to speak publicly and defend themselves. Isn't that the whole point of having prophets is that they speak to God and tell us what's true? Why do they need PR departments and law firms and apologists to kind of speak for them?

Apologists, the Church, and Institutional Distance

John Dehlin [00:16:36] Apologists aren't sort of officially sanctioned. And in some ways, there's a perceived dishonesty, that the church wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to arm's length, put the apologists out there, have these secret firesides and retreats or workshops to support people, but at the same time, they don't want to ever officially endorse anything because Then they're accountable for what's said. And so some just feel like apologists represent the church leaders, just not standing up and owning their role, their authority, but instead trying to sort of in secretive or what some would say disingenuous ways, trying to slide that off, but not totally onto other people.

Patrick Mason [00:17:26] Yeah, I would say.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] Can you see that?

Patrick Mason [00:17:29] I mean, I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure that I entirely understand the critique. And I'd say this on a couple of different levels. One is that I'm not sure what we mean by secret meetings. I would say that the meetings that I and the Bushmans and Givens have had are no more secret than the meetings that you have with your folks. Are they private in the sense that you only have 100 people in the room rather than broadcasting to the entire world? Maybe. Although actually a lot of our meetings have been live streamed. And so I'm not sure what the secret part of that would be. I mean, every, every time I've done one of these events announced, anybody's, anybody is able to attend if they live in the area.

John Dehlin [00:18:13] Okay. I think some, the perception of secrecy is around this idea that when the church published its essays, it didn't want to let everyone know about them. It just wanted them to be available quietly for people who had questions.

Patrick Mason [00:18:25] Okay, well, I think that's a different, I think that's a different claim and I think that's, that's a fair enough concern and even critique and it's even one that I resonate with to a certain degree. On the other hand, sympathize with the burden of managing and administering a worldwide church.

Patrick Mason [00:18:46] And I was privy to some of these conversations where they were concerned with there were different views. Some people wanted to put it on the front page of lds.org so that everybody saw it. Other people said we don't want to provoke questions and faith crises. And people who don't have those kinds of questions. Right. People, you know, I mean, think about a 12 year old kid or you know, somebody like that, a brand new convert. Right. Let's give them time to develop in the faith before they are able to address these more. And I think those are reasonable debates to have. It's not about secrecy.

Patrick Mason [00:19:19] They weren't behind some kind of firewall. They were open to the public. It was on the Internet. You had to find it to be sure. And that's one of the critiques I have is they're still hard to find unless you know what you're looking for. And So I think too few members of the church know they're there, but I, I personally wouldn't think of them as being secret in any sense.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] So I think the fact that recordings have been historically prohibited for a lot of these events and the fact that instead of having firesides, why shouldn't these things be openly discussed at general conference or in every Sunday school? I think that's where some of the concerns about.

Patrick Mason [00:20:00] No, understood. That's where I'm glad that we're inching towards that direction and some of these things are being built into the curriculum for seminary for Sunday school. Again, we can debate about the pace of change and even some of the tone and approach on these, but I'm gratified that we're seeing some progress on that front. Again, some of us wish the progress was a little bit faster.

John Dehlin [00:20:25] Patrick, we'll keep you.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:26] We want to keep Patrick as long as we can. But it's now 11:30, which is the number you gave us. So you.

Patrick Mason [00:20:32] Yeah, so how about, you know. Yeah, I do have a flight to catch, but maybe five more minutes, John, if there's any pressing questions.

John Dehlin [00:20:39] So just this idea. Yeah, yeah. So why, why do prophets need apologists? Why does the church need apologists at all? Why can't they speak for themselves, you know?

Patrick Mason [00:20:51] Well, I think that's a fair question, but I don't think any prophet has ever been a one man show. I mean, Jesus had his apostles in the 70s and disciples who went out. Paul was an apologist, made rationalist defenses of the Christianity that he received. And so this is, I don't think this is new to Mormonism or unique to contemporary Mormonism. Even in an era of 21st technologies, prophets and apostles can only be in so many places at once. And I think there is a difference in calling and approach.

Patrick Mason [00:21:29] I, I think prophets and apostles are generally called, and this, we can nuance this, but I think they're called to declare what they see as the word and will of God. Whereas then it's left to others to take that theology or that deposit of faith and then start to do the kind of rational work, to systematize it, to make sense of it.

Patrick Mason [00:21:54] And I think this is part of the vocational calling of any person of faith is to make sense of what one receives from religious authorities or from scripture and then reconcile it with whatever they find, whatever their position in the world is. So whether you live in medieval Europe or 21st century America, there has to be a way to reconcile the teachings of the faith and to make them modern. To make them relevant. And I think that's the responsibility of every person of faith, not just a special elite class of apologists and not just an elite class of religious authorities.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] Right, but can you, can you get the sense, can you understand the question that there's a wish that if the brethren speak to God, if they really are God's servants, and I think they want, it seems like they want to perpetuate that impression that they have direct lines of communication. Can you understand the concern or the wish that they would be able to more speak directly to some of these issues that are literally, you know, causing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people to leave what they believe is the true church? Why couldn't they more effectively and forcefully speak for God or for themselves directly?

Patrick Mason [00:23:15] Sure. Well, I would to some degree I would share that wish that there have been times in the past decade or so where I personally would wish that we would see more of the kind of apostolic responsibility for public teaching and not just in carefully scripted moments like general conference, which are also kind of short form, you know, how much can you say in 15 or 20 minutes?

Patrick Mason [00:23:45] And so at times I do wish we heard a little bit more directly from the apostles and maybe a little bit less from the Mormon newsroom. Although I appreciate actually they've done a lot of really important and strong work over the years as well. I mean, look, it's a big, huge multinational organization and so it's going to take on some of the characteristics of a big, huge multinational organization. I don't resent that, even at, even if it's. Sometimes I had kind of primitivist impulses for a pure kingdom of God or something like that.

Patrick Mason [00:24:20] But I have to settle with living in a modern bureaucratized world. But I do. Even if we were to have a kind of very strong view of prophets and apostles, a very kind of hyper orthodox view of them speaking the mind and will of the Lord and having a direct communication with them. I still don't think that rules out the responsibility and availability of rational defenses or pastoral defenses to be made by members of the church. It's built into Mormon theology that we think everybody should be a prophet to one respect or another. We think everybody has that kind of access to God and so we don't believe it's simply the preserve of a certain ecclesiastical elite.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Love it. Thank you. Another concern that people express about. I'll just talk about neo apologetics specifically, and it ties to this thing about postmodernism. I attended that day long seminar on Translation at Utah State University recently. I think one of the things I noticed at that Utah State University seminar on translation with Rosalind Welch and Phil Barlow and Richard Bushman and Terrell Gibbons and others, it seems like the neapologetic approach is to sometimes want to redefine words to the point that they're meaningless. Like, what does translation really mean? I think we all have a sense for what Joseph meant when he said translate, and yet, because now all the evidence makes it really appear like it's not a translation, we're gonna spend a full day trying to redefine the word translation.

Does Neo-Apologetics Redefine or Diminish the Faith

John Dehlin [00:26:08] And it's not just that, but it's this idea of defining down expectations. Let's define down what Scripture means, define down what prophets mean, define down what revelations mean. And it just sort of weaken the bold claims of Mormonism to the point where for many people, number one, it's a different church. The Church of Neo Apologetics is very different than the church at General Conference. And, you know, that's very confusing for people, but also it just starts to water everything down and finesse everything and nuance everything to the point where it just feels strained and weak and kind of un Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:26:57] I don't mean to be mean. I hope you know that these are genuine concerns people have. And I hope you can know that there's a spirit of love in this because they don't want to see Mormonism neutered or weakened. And they're frustrated with the official narrative versus all these nuanced liberal narratives that are post Mormon and in some ways feels like the philosophy of men mingled with Scripture literally instead of, you know, bold doctrine that we can stand behind. So that's a lot. I don't expect you to.

Patrick Mason [00:27:31] No, sure. Well, I think that would be good fodder for an essay in the Interpreter. John, this is now where you have squared the circle here, because there was recently an essay in the Interpreter, which is a publication of Dan Peterson and a lot of those Old Farms people that recently has leveled those exact same claims against me, Grant Hardy, the Givens, and other people that we might. So you are now a subscriber to the Interpreter and a contributing editor. So congratulations, John.

Patrick Mason [00:28:03] But those are. These are serious questions, and I accept them in the spirit in which they're given. So. Absolutely. And I will say that when I was going around with Richard Bushman and Claudia Bushman doing some of these seminars, which we didn't think were secret, one of the things that Richard oftentimes said to the group and to me, Personally is, he says, my biggest fear as we do this, as we look critically at our history, as we are self reflective about some of the bold claims that have been made, the kind of absolutist claims that have been made in Mormonism over the years, that as we take a more humble approach to these.

Patrick Mason [00:28:48] He says, my biggest fear is that in some ways we water down the faith, in some ways we strip Mormonism of its power. And I think that is so. This critique that you're making, John, and that other people have, I certainly recognize it, Richard certainly recognizes it. That Mormonism's power over the past two centuries in many people's lives has largely been drawn from its ability to make bold and audacious claims that then people resonated with and then decided that they were willing to give everything for those claims. Right. The same thing happened for early Christians. Right. Read the New Testament. Jesus is not offering a kind of weak, watered down liberal theology.

Patrick Mason [00:29:35] I mean, those are bold claims. And people literally gave their lives, including Jesus himself. And Joseph himself gave his life for what he thought were bold and audacious claims. And so I think there is something to the critique. Do the neo apologists, or whatever we want to call it, are they engaging in something like liberal theology? Are they watering down the faith and stripping Mormonism of its power? That's a claim I take very, very seriously. My answer to it is, personally, I don't think so.

Patrick Mason [00:30:05] My own view is that Mormonism can be a big tent. I'm perfectly happy sitting next in Sunday school or in general conference, sitting next to people who interpret some of these things in a much more conservative or what we would call orthodox way. I think Mormonism and any robust ideology or system is big enough for internal debate, for multiple interpretations within it. I think that's a strength rather than a weakness. So I would actually. I think one of the problems of Mormonism historically is that it has set itself up in some ways. It adopted some of the tactics and language of fundamentalist Protestants and others who created such a black and white absolutist, dualistic theology and culture that it became brittle.

Patrick Mason [00:30:56] That if there was one part of it that started to get out of sync, then the whole thing seemed to fall apart or shatter. My own view is that theology is more supple, more flexible. We see through a glass darkly. Right. Even though I believe that God can break through the veil and can reveal things to the hearts and minds of women and men, I think our understanding of the cosmos is always going to be imperfect. Right? And so I'm comfortable with a certain bit of ambiguity, a certain bit of flexibility, even while I sit next to people in Sunday school who are not. And different life experiences and trainings have led us to those different kinds of experiences.

Patrick Mason [00:31:40] And I'm comfortable with that. I think that's. If Mormonism can't encompass the whole range of human experience, from the absolutist to the more relativist, then I don't think it's a big enough religion that it claims to be. So I think my approach is not going to be the approach of other people, But I also never want my approach to, in some ways, undermine the faith of somebody sitting next to me who does take more absolute restraints.

Patrick Mason [00:32:09] So I think people who have left the church sometimes have been raised on a more absolutist, dualistic version of Mormonism, that then when they encounter some of these things, it all falls apart. And I think what myself and the Givens and others are trying to do is to say there are other ways to inhabit Mormonism that allow for greater flexibility, humility, while also being completely committed to living our lives according to a system that we call Mormonism of restoration that comes through Joseph Smith, however imperfectly, that that is every bit as meaningful as any other way to live your life, and therefore we can call true.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] I'm so honored you would come on Mormon Stories, Patrick, So thank you for being willing to be here today. It means a lot, and I think you're a good man.

Patrick Mason [00:33:02] Great. Thank you. I appreciate all you guys. And sorry to have to leave Mormon Matters, too.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:07] So thanks for coming.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] And Mormon Matters. And Mormon Matters.

Patrick Mason [00:33:10] All right. Sorry to have to leave early, but I'll hopefully catch my flight. Thanks, guys.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] Thanks, Patrick.

Brian Birch [00:33:16] Thank you.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Neo-Apologetic Approach

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:19] Well, John, that last section with Patrick got to a lot of the things that I wanted to pick up on earlier when I thought we were running more out of time and which we certainly are. But your critiques of the neapologetics is sort of redefining terms and, you know, supporting the institutional narratives and things like that. And so Brian and I, as, you know, philosophy of religion and theology students and things like that, we, you know, Brian, talk. We really have a sense of what theology is as distinct from proclamation or from prophetic utterance and things like this. And even though you kind of called it like a lowering down or, you know, getting the expectation.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:04] Expectations lower and things like that, and that seems like a loss to you, Brian and I probably. And I want you to do mostly the speaking on this, Brian, if you're willing that's just normal conversation within religions as the day comes along and new evidences come along and new theologies and new cultural assumptions and things going on. Theology is always a conversation.

Brian Birch [00:34:31] Yeah, I agree. And, you know, theology, like most other areas of study, comes in many forms, has inclusive definitions, exclusive definitions. But one way to see, you know, theology is bringing the claims of a tradition into conversation with broader currents of thought.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:56] Exactly.

Brian Birch [00:34:57] And to see how these things connect together both internally for the sake of coherence and consistency within a faith tradition, but also the more outward facing, do these things line up with what we observe? And can there be a conversation with broader cultural currents? And this, if you look at the story of theology in Christianity, which is what I know most about it, is a conversation that has a life, that has evolved in different cultural contexts, different methodological approaches have been the order of the day. Right. We see during, beginning with St. Thomas Aquinas, scholasticism and systematization. And then the Reformation comes along and there's much more of a pastoral approach and there's scriptural theology, narrative theology. I mean, there are all kinds of different ways in which the issue can be approached. But, yeah, it is a separate conversation.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:10] Yeah. And there is a loss of the power of the boldness and things like that. But it doesn't seem to me that it's any less important because we do live in a world in which, you know, we're surrounded by assumptions and new fields of study and conversations and things like that. So, John, I'm totally in sympathy with, you know, what leads to, you know, you're talking about we're bringing down the expectations, but I don't know that there's sometimes I catch in your talking about this new apologetics that you're also saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's like they are going around there supporting the institutional narrative.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:55] In other words, it's like their goal in some. I mean, I don't know if you mean it that way, but the way it sometimes comes across is you're saying the goal of the Bushmans or the Givens' or the, you know, Adam Miller and Patrick is to support the institutional narrative, whereas I kind of just see it as man, they're just having conversations with what's going on in their fields of study and in the church and all that.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] I appreciate that. Maybe I'll answer that a little bit. So at the end of the day, and again, I have a PhD but it's in clinical and counseling psychology. It's not in theology. It's not in religious studies, so I don't pretend to be an expert. So I'm going to speak as just a common observer of Mormonism right now and just say that what I. Going back to what I said to Patrick, we have, you know, we have the historical narrative that the Church has taught. Now, of course, they've taught lots of narratives, but we have a point where Richard Bushman says, you know, the prevailing narrative is not true, or whatever he said.

John Dehlin [00:38:02] But it basically references this idea that the Church taught a certain narrative for a long time that now is not really sustainable. And so a lot of us were raised with that narrative. It's why we believed. It's what we based our beliefs upon. And then we make all these incredibly big decisions. How much money we give away, who we marry, when we marry, how many kids we have, what our careers are, how we spend our time. The stakes are phenomenally high for this core question of is the Church really what it claims to be? Now, there's a lot of people who are going to remain Mormon just for practical reasons.

John Dehlin [00:38:45] It makes me feel good. It's a great community. It's where I can develop my spiritual sense. And I don't believe that's. I believe those are all valid paths. But at its core, and this is somewhere where I disagreed with Lloyd in the book at the Core, Mormonism, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's first vision story, it all begins with historical claims that something did or didn't happen on the earth in a corporeal sense.

John Dehlin [00:39:19] And then from there, dnc, the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith himself, every General Conference talk ever given sets up this idea that this is God's one true church with exclusive authority, and only Mormon ordinances count in heaven. And, you know, your family won't be together in the afterlife if they're not sealed in a Mormon ceiling.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] The stakes are just super high, and everything is framed in a very literalistic, orthodox way. And so if that's all true, we should believe it. But if it's not true, or if it's not as the Church claims, then for many, many people, they don't want to be. They don't want to have anything to do with it. But then there's so many people that don't even know the basic problems with the Church's founding narrative. So here's my answer to your question, Dan. When Patrick Mason or Richard Bushman or Terrell and Fiona Gibbons go around the Church, they're not just having interesting theological discussions.

John Dehlin [00:40:24] What I see them as doing is basically saying, stay in the boat, keep believing in the church, keep serving in the church, keep paying your tithing, keep viewing the prophets and the apostles as inspired men of God. That's what I see them functionally doing in their books, in their retreats, in their workshops, in their firesides. And so in that sense.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:49] But you also probably see that they actually believe those things. They're not doing it for this reason.

John Dehlin [00:40:57] Well, that's fine, that's fine. But

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:01] they've taken the life journey that all of us have to do. You know, we grow up with a certain view about our parents and we have to, you know, learn through hard things that they're a little less than we thought we were. Same thing with our national narratives and things like this. They've done these things and yet still believe those things about, you know, an inspiration. But they may, they may be on the front lines of saying, we've got to get rid of this infallibility that's been creeping in when it comes to prophets and things like this. We have to understand that revelation is always a dynamic.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] No, go ahead, Brian.

Brian Birch [00:41:43] I was gonna say I've got a. I've got a hard stop. I've got to an exam.

John Dehlin [00:41:48] Okay, okay, okay.

Brian Birch [00:41:51] If I can I just say one.

John Dehlin [00:41:52] Yeah, please.

Brian Birch [00:41:55] We can decide whether we could talk about here. But, you know, I think, John, your point is fair about the expectations, right, and the recalibration of expectations that are, that are currently underway. I think in Mormonism there is a very, very strong common sense oriented sensibility, Right. A kind of taste for something either being true or historical or not being true. And that, you know, is.

Brian Birch [00:42:29] It's part of the American context, but it's, it's especially Mormon. And, and yet in the face of very difficult empirical facts that can no longer be denied or deflected or explained away, I think there has been a step back into more of a plausibility structure where what you call neo apologetics is saying, okay, in light of, right. Some of these hard conversations and the hard facts of science and other areas of study, can a person recalibrate, reorient the way in which they relate to the faith tradition so that they don't. So that they don't remain as brittle, to use the word. Patrick said. Right. So they can move from the brittle to the supple.

Brian Birch [00:43:27] And are there ways of talking about Mormonism that are more narrative, nuanced and less tied to straightforward empirical claims? And I think that, you know, the conference at Utah State that you reference is one evidence is evidence of one way of talking about it that way. But I think you're right that there is a price to be paid for that move, and that's something that the LDS community needs to continue to talk about, you know, very straightforwardly. Right. We need to be able to reflect on what are the implications of, you know, of nuancing the historicity of the Book of Mormon or the translation process.

Brian Birch [00:44:16] Right. Or the, you know, the origins of the church. So I see this as, you know, some new features are coming on to the ship in terms of what the community needs to deal with. I think, as Patrick mentioned, that the institutional church is responding positively and in beneficial ways to that. But I share Patrick's view that much more could be done and should be done, and much more could be done on the part of church leadership, you know, to be candid and straightforward about, you know, what kinds of shifts are taking place.

John Dehlin [00:45:01] So with that said, I. Brian, you are also a real credit to this tradition, and I'm just so honored that you would come on Mormon Stories and Mormon Matters. So it's been a delight having you on. Thank you for.

Brian Birch [00:45:14] Thank you for the invitation.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] Yeah, appreciate you, brother.

Brian Birch [00:45:17] All right, Take care, man. See ya. Bye.

Patrick Mason [00:45:19] Bye.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] So, Dan, what do you want to do? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I've got about 10 minutes more, and that's not a problem because I want this to be a bit of a series. I want us to continue this dialogue. Maybe bring Lloyd on, maybe.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:36] Yeah, I want to bring Lloyd and Fiona and Julie Smith.

John Dehlin [00:45:39] Yeah, that'd be great. Okay, let me just try and succinctly communicate my concern with neo apologetics. It's that we were all sold a certain narrative that was fundamental to our participation, and we were sold the narrative by the church. And this is still in many ways, the prevailing narrative that comes out of the lips of apostles and prophets in general conference, that the church is true, the prophets speak with God directly, that this is the one true church, that the Book of Mormon is historical. These are all. This is all sort of classic orthodox Mormon narrative 1.0.

Ethical Questions and the Future of Mormon Apologetics

Dan Wotherspoon [00:46:21] And do you believe that the people who are, quote, unquote, selling it don't believe this?

John Dehlin [00:46:25] No, I do. I'm trying to tell you my concern with it. Let me tell you my concern with it. So that's the narrative. Okay. Now we've. Now we had in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, anyone who spoke up against that narrative, you know, was either marginalized or browbeat or excommunicated. And so We've got Juanita Brooks, who was browbeat. We've got sturdy McMurran, we've got Leonard Arrington, Lowell Bennion, the September six, you know, you know better than I do, the long list of people that just tried to say, hey, there are problems with this narrative. And the church beat the crap out of them, right?

John Dehlin [00:47:08] And knocked them down. Now because now, because the Internet now, because the Internet has made it so the church can't be coercive and use, you know, improper authority and even abuse to shut down that conversation and intimidate people. Right now you've got, now you've got the cat out of the bag. And so instead of the church saying, hey, we're really sorry we did this to people, we're sorry that we sold you an untrue and unsustainable narrative, we take accountability for that. We take accountability for all the people that we have abused and shut up and excommunicated for, who were just speaking truths and who were just speaking to the evidence.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Instead, what we have is the church, in a subtle, non direct way, allowing, you know, apologists, whether it's the old school apologists like Midgley and Peterson or the new style apologists to try and make it okay to try and take us to a new place while still preserving the old narrative without taking any responsibility and then letting these other people sort of unofficially try and help us square the circle or make sense of it all or stay in the church. And in some sense, what that does is it puts good people like Mason and Givens and Bushman that mean well and that are doing it voluntarily.

John Dehlin [00:48:39] They're in a sense carrying water for leaders that have now questionable moral authority. They're now unofficially trying to explain the unexplainable. And in a sense, they're propping up the authority and the power of a regime that some would say has bankrupt moral authority and has bankrupt scientific authority. And so it's a real mess that I don't want to paint anyone as an enemy.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:11] It's a tough moment, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] I'm just saying that the Church isn't taking responsibility for all the things it's done wrong, nor is it taking responsibility sufficiently for the fact that the narrative that we've all been sold is now sort of acknowledged by thoughtful people to be bankrupt. And instead they're trying to do this long game, slowly leak out the essays, slowly do these sort of private workshops and seminars and hope that none of us are going to notice that in many sense, some serious abuses and some seriously Grievous injustices have been performed on a lot of people. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:53] Oh, no, what you say, it makes a lot of sense. You know, if we were to take it sentence by sentence, I would, you know, challenge a lot of the extreme language, you know, bankrupt and this and those, you know, kinds of things and the total ease and all that sort of stuff. But this is certainly a difficult moment for that. And I can see all your arguments there that you made, and that's. That's how it would feel.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:19] You know, as somebody who sits in the pews and has a sense of, you know, I have lots of friends who are in leadership positions within the wards and stakes and various things. And I, and I see the lived Mormonism of day to day, and I know that the general church leaders have a concern for the folks for whom I see wonderful people in my wards. I mean, you never would deny this thing. Mormonism is working for them. So for them to say, this is our one major focus to right these wrongs, to own up to all these things, you're right. I cry for, you know, apologies.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:59] I cry for acknowledgement and things like that, too. But I don't sit there and say the church should make this priority. Number one, I know that there are certain voices within the church that do it. There are certain voices within the church that actually led to a lot of these abuses. You know, we know that, you know, Markey Peterson and Boyd Packer and others were the driving forces in some of these difficult things. And, you know, Lowell Bennion fell out of favor. You know, Leonard Ehrring fell in favor with just certain personalities. And so whenever you talk the church, I always kind of got to say it's strong personalities who happen to have risen to positions of importance.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:38] And generally, like we've talked about before, when, When a prophet's less strong and able to sort of keep the whole thing together, like the mice play sort of thing, and the personalities assert. So I don't want to minimize anything that you're saying. I just want to say, you know, they have to have other things on their mind. I, you know, it's like this egomaniac thing. It always, like, what would I say if I were a general authority? You know, I had my moment up there, or what would my priorities be? Or something like that. Not that I aspire to that or anything, but a lot of it is, though, I'm in sympathy with all these things.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:17] I wouldn't, I wouldn't do the wrong things, but I wouldn't necessarily just go straight after the repairs as quickly as, you know, you would like.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] Sure. Well, I think what will be really fun in our series is to discuss and to go into depth more about all these issues and, and what's practical and what's not practical, what's reasonable to expect, what's not to talk about utility versus validity. I think those are all really credible things.

John Dehlin [00:52:48] I think. I just wanted to sort of. On the one hand, I think neo apologetics is this beautiful step forward. I think Bushman and Givens and Mason and others, even Brian Burch and you. I mean, Gina Colvin, some of the most beautiful, thoughtful, sensitive, wise people I've ever met. And I've got, you know, if this is apologetics, I've gone from loathing apologetics to, like, loving the people involved in apologetics, if that's where we've come. So on the one hand, I'm thrilled.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] I'm thrilled with the progress. On the other hand, I think there are some really important ethical, moral questions about what the Church should and shouldn't be responsible for the pace of change, and then the extent to which it's appropriate for other people to be carrying water for or excusing or apologizing for the Church's behavior over time. And then there's just the question of does neo apologetics, does nuanced Mormonism, not only is it compelling, but does it stand up to sufficient scrutiny? Because. Because I would say the scientific. I would say my review of the evidence against historical Mormonism is that the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, has zero, if not negative, scientific credibility.

John Dehlin [00:54:25] That's my view. I'm not saying that's true. And then I would say that Joseph Smith, whether it's his polygamy, his polyandry, the denials, the bank fraud, the claims of translation that weren't historical, that weren't authentic. Joseph's moral credibility for me, borders on, if not bankrupt, negative credibility.

John Dehlin [00:54:50] And then you could take that to modern apostles and prophets, that they fought the civil rights movement, that they fought the era, that they fought LGBT rights, that they fought safe sex, attraction. You could argue that they're also morally bankrupt in the sense that they're 30 years behind any significant social change and only change when forced, and they don't own up to all their inadequacies and failures. And so I'm looking forward to a series where we can talk about all that, because I think that's where the heart and the meat of what we're talking about sort of lies.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:27] Yeah. And I'm glad to keep Going with you. And let me. Let me. The one thing I wanted to break in with a lot. And again, you spoke well of these positions, and again, your heart was very clear that it's not personal. You know, it's a real struggle, and you're giving voice to lots of people. So I know that the piece that's been missing, and maybe if we do bring Lloyd on, perhaps more than anybody else in that book, he did give voice to, you know, truth, history, and things like that, and that really, that these are valid or these are the main, most valid ways to approach religion and to judge religion, you know, as more of a mystical person myself, as more of somebody who, you know, felt rescued by the power of God, you know, who took seriously these scriptures and said, man, maybe this God exists and could still love me after being such an a hole for, you know, and, you know, making such a mess of things or something like that, maybe I can go from, you know, zero to hero again and, you know, finding out for myself, you know, what God thought of me within a Mormon context that informs everything for me.

Personal Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:48] And as I've continued on a path of continued engagement with what I believe is spiritual things, I don't. You know, it's just. Or it's just quieting the brain for enough time for me to get into that space where there's a flow of energy and ideas and space, thoughts that come to me that feel as real as anything else. You know, they're not just emotional, they're not just things that I can explain. The same way I went when I listened to music or when I walk in nature. There's a reality at the base of my life that I'm kind of living out of. And there's a, you know, Mormonism's deep song, its sense of the plan of salvation, the sense of God who, you know, works with other eternal beings, who wants peers and not subjects.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:37] And there's just so many wonderful things in Mormonism that appeal to me at that spiritual level, that these other things, you know, you know, we haven't. We haven't got. We haven't got to them. You know, religion in many ways for me is more like art than science.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:51] You know, it's. It's. What's. Its ability to move you and. And there's just a power that kind of misses when we're always talking about this or that historical or something. So I hope we'll get into that. So I hope we have.

John Dehlin [00:58:05] And I love. I love that every couple years, you and I come back and have. Have re engaged in this conversation and I'm looking forward to it. And Dan, I, I still very much feel the same way you do. If I could have remained in the church, if they would have let me, I think I would potentially still be a member. Although the November. Yeah, the November policy could have kicked me out. But.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:27] And I'm reeling from Elder Oaks just a couple days ago. I mean, this is, it's got me down. It's like, oh man, it's going to be later rather than sooner that things might change and obviously they will change because it's, you know, it's arguing out of the wrong position.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:45] And to me, a witnessed position from everything in my heart and my soul and my experiences with the God who I feel like I've met and what God's priorities are, you know.

John Dehlin [00:58:55] Yeah, I love, I love that and what it has to, you know, Heath Hendrickson made the point that people love Scientology, people love Judaism, they love Islam. There are lots of religious traditions that people either can raise good kids in or have a good community or can find spiritual value. But how do we square that with the church's bold claim that it is the one true church? So lots of fun to talk about.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:59:25] Dan, you have to make some plans.

John Dehlin [00:59:27] I can't thank you enough for arranging that Patrick and Brian would come on our mutual shows because they're thoughtful guys and I just really appreciate that you were able to bring them on. And I love Mormon matters and what you do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:59:45] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] And I'm grateful that you are still pushing the rock forward.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:59:51] Thanks, man. Come to the workshop if you can a week from Friday and go to John's one day thing at the end of the month. What day was it again?

John Dehlin [01:00:01] I'll have to look.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:02] But anyway, John has once a month something or other to it, but it's great and we will see you again.

John Dehlin [01:00:08] All right, Dan, thanks for joining us and all those who join us on Facebook Live. We really appreciate your comments and questions. We'll be getting to them over the time in the series. So there's many questions. I'll take a strong or comments that are there. We will incorporate these into our future discussions. So let's do it.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:24] Thanks. Take care, guys.

John Dehlin [01:00:25] Thanks, everybody. Take care.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:27] Good day.

John Dehlin [01:00:28] All right.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.