Today, fellow RNS blogger Jana Riess criticizes her friend (and mine) Diane Winston for criticizing Matthew Bowman for not owning up to his Mormon identity in The Mormon People, his new book on the history of the faith. I'm with Jana on the analysis, Diane on the conclusion. Bowman should have owned up.
In her review of the book back in WaPo in March, Diane complains that in recounting the story of Joseph Smith's religious journey, Bowman (Mormon that he is) "takes all events at face value." That's not quite true, however. Bowman's narrative of the most controversial events--Joseph's discovery and translation of those golden plates--does pretty much roll out as a straightforward factual account. But the author then turns to the reader:
The story to this point seems incredible to many modern Americans, who instinctively dismiss that which seems irrational or unprovable, and that it should. It belongs to a different time, an age when the intellectual revolutions of the Enlightenment still stood locked in uneasy embrace with the intuitive and mystical world of the premodern age. Whether angels, the voice of God, and ancient holy plates appeared in the life of Joseph Smith or not, he and those around himfirmly believed that such events were possible, and his followers believed they were very real indeed.
I'd nitpick the sentence about the Enlightenment. Anyone who doubts that our own time (and place) also experiences that "uneasy embrace" need only consult survey data on belief in evolution and supernatural occurrences. But be that as it may, Bowman discharges his duty as an academic student of religion to address from the outside the truth claims of the tradition he's writing about.
Diane contends that the book's partiality towards Mormonism goes well beyond the allegedly miraculous events of its founding, and that it would therefore be useful for the reader to know where the author is coming from. Jana thinks Bowman's account is sufficiently sophisticated to earn him a pass on self-identification. "The larger question," she reasonaby points out, "is whether scholars of all religious traditions need to reveal their biases, not just those representing traditions that are considered controversial."
I don't think so. But Bowman's position is distinctive. As recently as 1993, his own LDS Church excommunicated or disfellowshipped six intellectuals--including the distinguished historian D. Michael Quinn--in part for what they had written about the church's past. And Bowman not only gives an account of that episode, he describes, in his introduction, how the recent "renaissance of sorts" of Mormon history has been a product of professionally trained Mormon academics, a "diligent cadre of amateur Mormon scholars," and non-Mormon academics studying the faith. Under the circumstances, he should have made clear to which group he himself belongs, and said a little something about how he has approached offering the outside world this historical overview of his people.
Addendum: Bowman dedicates his book to Richard Bushman, the great Columbia University historian, whom he calls a mentor and friend. Indeed, Bowman adopts the same narrative approach to Joseph Smith's revelations as Bushman does in his important 2007 biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. The author's note at the beginning of that book ends with the sentence: "A practicing Mormon, he lives in New York City with his wife, Claudia." Enough said.
Raymond Takashi Swenson | Jun 13, 2012 | 3:58pm
The 1993 excommunications involved people in different situations, and each action was taken by the person’s own local congregation (“ward”) and “stake” (regional unit including 5 to 10 wards). In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the proceedings of a church disciplinary hearing are not public, and no public statement is made about the information that was considered. Even an announcement about the decision itself is not generally made to the ward membership unless necessary to warn members about a predatory activity. So the only information available about the information used in the hearings and the basis of the decision is provided voluntarily by the person undergoing the hearing, and that person is not present during the deliberative portion of the decisionmaking, just as you don’t get to sit in during jury deliberations. At most you only get one side of the story, and no guarantee that it is complete.
It should also be noted that, in general, LDS Church disciplinary hearings are overwhelmingly convened in response to moral transgressions such as adultery, or conviction of a felony. I have both served on some disciplinary councils, and done research on the use of LDS Church councils to resolve legal disputes between church members in territorial Utah, when the Federal courts were hostile to Mormons. Being an academic does not exempt you from falling into immoral behavior, so just because someone was a college professor at the time he was excommunicated or disfellowshipped (removed from teaching and leadership but not membership) does not necessarily mean it was in response to his activities as a scholar.
In the case of D. Michael Quinn, who has written some very interesting analyses of Mormon history and the development of the church’s leadership structure, it is public knowledge that he also identifies as a homosexual, and some of his writings have argued for the normalization of homosexuality within Mormonism. When Protestants quote Quinn as an authority on Mormonism, they tend to leave out that information, which might impair his credibility in the eyes of many Christian readers. As to what aspect of his life and actions was the basis on which his church membership was cancelled, I do not recall seeing anything from him, and certainly not from the church council that made the decision.
In the case of some of the other people involved, the publications of the Toscanos (he was a bankruptcy judge) proposed a radical interpretation of the Trinity that would probably not be embraced by Catholics and most Protestants. Again, I have no idea what the specific basis of the action was.
For Mormons, excommunication puts one in the status of someone who has never been a member, and just like them, you can still attend church meetings. Indeed, it is often an expressed hope by both the individual and the council that the individual would work towards reinstatement, which can happen within a year if there is an application for restoration of membership and evidence of repentance. There is no practice of “shunning” someone who has been excommunicated, either among church members and most especially not among the individual’s family. The church’s desire is that a person excommunicated would choose repentance and reform, but it is up to the individual. Church members and family are encouraged to encourage the individual to reestablish his relationship with the church.
Since almost all Mormons support themselves with ordinary employment, and are not employed by the church, excommunication rarely affects a person’s job. Obviously an exception is if one is employed by the church or one of its affiliates, such as BYU. As far as I know, all of the people excommunicated in 1993 and identified as scholars were able to find other employment, and continue publishing their work; again, not all were employed by BYU.
The LDS Church lives with all sorts of stuff published every day that casts the Church in a negative light. My own observation, since I read a lot of stuff written by Mormons of a great variety of views, is that local authorities are not interested in taking an action unless the affiliation of the author with the church could mislead church members into thinking that some radical departure from church doctrine is tacitly endorsed by the church, or the individual is actively fighting against the church and its basic programs. An example is Sonya Johnson, a feminist who called on people outside the church to slam their doors against church missionaries unless the church reversed its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. She had many Mormon friends who collaborated with her in support of the ERA, but they were pretty much not subject to any disciplinary hearing because their attack was on the ERA policy, not on the mission of the church to teach people about LDS beliefs.
Phillip C. Smith | Oct 20, 2012 | 1:00pm
Excellent, accurate comment by Raymond Takashi Swenson. This is a valuable part of trying to help non-Mormons and some Mormons gain an accurate picture of the Church
Phillip C. Smith