I know that my last post was a response to an article I read, but this one is going to be too. (I can’t help it. I read a lot of articles…) The article is called “An Outsider Looks in at Mormonism” by Seth Perry and was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Unfortunately, you have to have a subscription to read the article from the website, but lucky for me, there's a paper subscription at work (but you can read the first couple paragraphs here; also, here’s something else he’s written). Perry is a PhD student studying the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School, specifically, he studies the LDS Church. But he’s not LDS. He begins his article by describing the reactions he gets when people learn this about him. Non-Mormons tend to want to get the inside scoop on the secrets of Mormonism; whereas, Mormons think he must be leaning toward conversion himself. He claims it is plain and simple “an unvarnished academic interest.” It’s refreshing--I guess I’m not used to Mormons being written about in an objective way, but also with respect for what we believe and find sacred. He describes a class discussion that centered on garments: “Like most everything associated with the temple, the garment is deeply sacred to Mormons, and it is not openly discussed. It is thus rarely the focus of academic study, partly out of respect for the wishes of the faithful, and also because plausibly reliable sources are scarce and unquestionable sources nonexistent….But I was more immediately bothered by what happened in the classroom discussion….There was less laughter than modest bemusement, and our professor and many of my fellow students recognized the display as the voyeurism it was. Still, the fact that such an impromptu display could happen among the most self-reflective group imaginable—a group of graduate students in a class on the historiography of American religion—was sobering.” Professionally, Perry recognizes that presently there’s not much demand for non-Mormon Mormon studies experts, but he hopes that will change. And, I guess I do too.
3 comments:
First, I gotta say, it's fun to have started blogs at about the same time, because the Boss and I are much more avid blog checkers this way!
Anyway, this post reminded me of my days back at BYU writing my thesis in response to a publication ostensibly evaluating the Mormon faith from an impartial non-Mormon philosophical point of view. In this case, that pretense was laughable because it just turned out the two guys were fundamentalist Christians hellbent on making Mormons look bad. The fact that they got published at all was surprising considering the quality of their work, but the fact it was in a somewhat prestigious philosophy journal was astounding to me.
More recently, I also remember hearing a so-called expert on Mormons in the Nauvoo period (some history professor in Illinois) comment on NPR in regard to gay marriage and whether its relevant arguments may be comparable to arguments for polygamy. She was, again, supposed to be academic and impartial, but there was a clear intolerance for Mormons in her comments I thought. Polygamy is all bad and exploitive, gay marriage is all good and necessary as a civil right. Please.
I would definitely welcome a few more non-Mormon scholars who could be respectful and impartial.
In December our book club read biographies of Joseph Smith. (Everyone chose their own.) I started reading Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, a widely respected LDS historian. I only got about half way through the book when I had to return it to the library (some fool put it on hold!), so I read Joseph Smith by Robert Remini , a respected non-Mormon historian. It's probably not fair to compare the two biographies very strenuously; their style, audience and coverage were vastly different. But it was interesting to concurrently read two self-labeled "objective" works that were so different. I guess I fall into the camp of historians who think it's impossible to ever be completely objective. From that perspective, I'd also like to see more non-Mormon students of Mormonism. If there's no single account that's 100% TRUE, I'd rather read several accounts that are honest from/about their own perspective.
Seth is joining the ranks of Jan Shipps and Rodney Stark.
Following the Olympics, I was impressed with this article about garments by an outsider.
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