The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2025

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Dr. Scratch, this is indeed a noteworthy addition to your annual list. I am already looking forward to the crazy, kooky Mopologetic developments that the New Year will inevitably bring to light.

It seems like the Afore dedicated a considerable, though ultimately fruitless, portion of the past year to a campaign of image and legacy rehabilitation. This effort was marked by rather peculiar and dubious recountings of a heroic river rescue and his less than convincing attempts to assure his tiny audience that he holds a profound respect for others' deeply held beliefs.

I anticipate the coming year will see even more efforts from the Afore to address the substantial controversies that have come to define his public image and legacy. Specifically, I predict we will witness the Afore's unsuccessful attempts to reconcile his sprawling list of past allegations, including animal cruelty, plagiarism, homophobia, habitual misrepresentation, antisemitism, lying, slander, defamation, and consistently substandard scholarship.

Dr. Scratch, may continued blessings be upon you and your lovely family. Wishing you a truly joyful Smithmas and a Merry Christmas!

[Doctor Scratch]

Heaps of blessings to you, too, Stake President Wang Chung! Your post makes me think about the relevance of “The Afore,” and the fact is that he is growing increasingly irrelevant. He’s asking donors to pitch in for his old festschrift. It’s bizarre: give money so that Interpreter can re-post chapters from the President’s festschrift? Lol. You really *can’t* make this up!

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The Afore really has become irrelevant. At least his career can serve as a case study and a lesson about the high cost of allowing unbridled pride, dishonesty and antagonism to take precedence in one's life. I feel sorry for him, but at the end of the day the Afore remains the sole architect of his own demise.

The Afore's life is one of the saddest I've ever seen. Filled with a yearning and desire for respect, recognition and honor that will never come. His career feels like a memorial to sorrow, or a tribute to everything that has been lost or has died, perhaps dreams, perhaps hope, and most of all, perhaps love.

[Bond]

Happy Top Ten Happenings day!

[MG 2.0]

Yippee kai yay.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

3. Greg Smith Publishes Another Epic Hit-Piece

Arguably the most detestable and unlikable Mopologist is Gregory L. Smith: a mean, vindictive, intolerant and vengeance-fueled person who is perhaps best know for his novella-length "hit piece" on John Dehlin. It was a piece of writing that played a key role in the self-destruction of "classic-FARMS," and it is also notable for being one of the few "peer reviewed" pieces that nonetheless somehow never found its way into the paper version of the "journal."

This year, Smith was back with another epic-length, odious, homophobic hit piece aimed at one of Interpreter's favorite targets: fellow LDS scholar Taylor Petrey. In 2021, Petrey was described as a "red flag" in Daniel Ortner's review of Queer Mormon Theology, and, of course, Smith himself went ballistic on Petrey in his (Smith's) review of Petrey's award winning Feet of Clay. But whereas Smith seemed to be exercising a degree of restraint in the former article, his new one holds no punches, as evidence by the mocking title: Intellectual Colonialism and Air Bud Theology: More on Queer Theory and the Church of Jesus Christ." Air Bud, of course, is the film about a dog who can play basketball, so you can see that Smith is setting things up so that Queer Theory and LGBTQ+ rights, vis-a-vis Mormonism, are every bit as absurd and worthy of mockery and laughter:

This claim requires considerable unpacking, but we should first recognize it as a striking example of what one wise friend has called “Air Bud theology.”37 For those who do not recall this cinematic gem, Air Bud is a Disney film starring a dog who plays basketball. When the opposing team protests at the manifest absurdity of having a dog on a basketball team, the dog’s coach retorts, “You check in your rulebook. Bet you don’t find anything in there that says the dog can’t play.”

Now, the proper answer to this would be, “Only a moron would think there would be.” In the interests of the story, the referee replies, “He’s right. Ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball.”38 Hijinks ensue.

[Page 103]As we will see, Queering offers us Air Bud theology—”ain’t nothing in scripture that explicitly comes right out and says that God and humanity can’t be sexually fluid.” That’s slightly sillier than a dog wearing high-top sneakers.

Smith goes on to make a rather shaky argument concerning Petrey's use of sources. (Surely interpretation of a text can vary depending on the reader, no? And these differences can be honest, and not tendentious manipulation, no?) And the essay goes on, and on, and on. Smith is particularly nasty towards the end, where, after making it clear that he's spent ample time stalking Petrey's various social media accounts, Smith accuses Petrey of being a traitor to the Church who is only interested in "worldly gain":

The cluster of perverse incentives that thus infects the field has led to a proliferation of a certain unfortunate subspecies of Mormon Studies scholar whose work is both predictable and pedestrian despite the assurances of fellow scholars.297 These scholars settle for dull thrills when it is their turn to epater les bourgeois, procuring an ink-stained fifteen minutes of fame when the Salt Lake Tribune anoints them as the expert du jour on anything remotely connected to the Church. Such scholars enjoy self-satisfying bursts of moral grandstanding on social media and, if they are lucky, a sinecure at a third-rate college.

Hilariously--coming from Interpreter--Smith complains that Petrey hasn't been properly "peer reviewed":

Accountability to non-complicit peer review—which used to be the definitive control on all scholarly activity, and the best solution we’ve ever found for the biases that postmodernity highlights—is sorely lacking. At the same time, there seems to be a great deal of informal policing for “proper” opinions and social attitudes. These factors get you exactly what you’d expect, and exactly what you don’t want in genuine thought—ideological conformity based on fear and a tolerance or encouragement of shoddy work if it conforms ideologically.

Meanwhile, Smith struggles mightily to make the claim that Petrey's work is an attempt to "colonize" Latter-day Saint theology and culture. He writes, without citing any concrete evidence, that:

I know professionals in the academy, social work, psychology, and medicine who keep their heads down in training, lest they run afoul of similar moral crusaders who could threaten their licensure or tenure. Medical trainees are blackballed—and told so in writing—because of their faith’s social views. That’s the sort of thing elites only do when they are implacably convinced of both their own rectitude and their own overwhelming power.

"Colonization," in his view, seems to mean that he might be asked to give up his intolerance and prejudice--that he might (God forbid!) one day have to deal with the reality of same-sex couples being sealed in the temple. Would he, like the angry critics of Aaron Sherinan, leave the Church if it came to that?

Regardless, Smith's latest piece is a reminder of just how much rot continues to fester at the heart of the Mopologetic enterprise.

I enjoyed my seasonal tradition of spending an evening with the Year's "Top Ten". It never stands me up, nor takes a rain check. It never disappoints. I don't think that "verbose" comes anywhere close to describing Smith's skill with copious amounts of hot air. I'd be amazed if anyone, other than Doctor Scratch with his keen eye for a Mopologetic happening, would have ever noticed this comically long cry for attention by Smith. As the good Dr has already pointed out, self-awareness isn't a super power that can be claimed by Smith, or by Interpreter (the only venue that would entertain such a lengthy, drooling, outpouring of...well...I'm not really sure what it is). I think in his conclusion, Smith lets slip the mask that's covering his own sense of self importance

In any case, we neither asked for, nor want, the strip mining of our [Page 176]theology for the queer-industrial complex.

Does Smith really think that he's some kind of spokesperson for Mormonism and Mormons? (In reality, instead of labelling his outburst as “we neither asked for, nor want…” it should be corrected to “I neither asked for, nor want…” because he is only speaking for his own angry self. Nobody else) That people should be seeking his permission before writing whatever it is they want to write? Did Smith seek Taylor Petrey’s permission for sharing his thoughts on Petrey's thoughts in the same way that Smith thinks Petrey ought to seek his and Mormonism's thoughts on Petrey's thoughts before sharing them for other people to see what they think?

Smith comes across as an angry little man just spending his days trawling around looking for things to be epically angry about. It was fun to read it with a mental picture of Smith locking himself away, night after night, bent over his laptop tapping away at his vitriol. Great stuff Gregg, keep it up!